In the Field. Prof. George Gmelch
driving 90 mph couldn’t go quickly enough for us. David warned us to anticipate a confrontation with Huey since Gypsy affairs were highly politicized and given Huey’s personality. Instead, Huey turned out to be very cordial and took us to a department-store cafeteria for lunch where he refrained from asking us a single question about our backgrounds, work, or intentions. Afterward, we returned to his small office which was located on the grounds of a public school.Its walls were covered with maps of England, Scotland, Wales, and London with pins marking Gypsy sites; its floor crowded with stacks of NGC publications. Huey then laid out the history of Gypsy politics and regaled us with stories of the NGC’s battles with other groups he claimed were organized and run by “intellectuals” who used Gypsies as front men. He also revealed the grudges he held against various scholars whom he accused of stealing government money that had been earmarked for Gypsies. Hours later, on the way home, David told us about some Gypsies’ accusations about Huey’s own nefarious financial doings. We listened as attentively as we could, but having to absorb so much new information was exhausting.
Only a week after arriving we were in the car again, this time driving to South Hampton, again at breakneck speed, for a week-long conference on Traveller education. Most of the ninety-five attendees were teachers or government officials, but a few Gypsy representatives were there. It was a great opportunity to make contacts and to learn more about the issues facing Travellers in England and Wales. Listening to talks and discussions about Gypsies for eight to ten hours a day, even though the focus was on education, provided us with a wealth of background information that would otherwise have taken weeks, if not months, to acquire. Most presenters were articulate, if not erudite. But the conference also underscored what a sensitive political issue Gypsies and Travellers were in the United Kingdom and impressed upon us the need to be careful about whom we listened to. We also received a warning from one participant that our findings might not be published or distributed as we might expect. Nevertheless, the more we learned, the more engaged in the project we became.
The conference had its lighter moments too. Most presenters injected humorous anecdotes into their talks, which were greeted with uninhibited laughter from the audience. The personable headmaster of a local school volunteered to drive us to visit a nearby Gypsy site. On the way there, he further contradicted just about every stereotype we held about the reserved and “proper” Brit by revealing his salary, the difficulty he had having sex with his wife while caravanning with friends, and even that his hemorrhoids had forced him to give up sailing.
On the drive back to Leicester, the three of us decided that George and I should spend some time in Ireland, interviewing Travellers about their migration patterns and economic activities in England. We reasoned that since Irish Travellers were the objects of so much animus in the United Kingdom, they might be more forthcoming at “home.” So in mid-August we took the ferry from Holyhead, Wales, to Dun Laoghaire, Ireland—the main route Travellers used to cross the Irish Sea into the United Kingdom. With the help of Mervyn Ennis, a social worker we knew, we were able to interview forty households about their migration to and travel within the United Kingdom. We also talked to social workers, government officials, and ferry and port personnel on both sides of the channel..
We returned to Leicester in mid-September and began making weekly research trips to different parts of the country in search of Gypsy encampments. Unlike most anthropological research, we spent a lot of time on the road, looking for groups of Gypsies and Travellers. It was easy to locate official sites, but our primary interest was in the mobile population. We often learned of an encampment only to arrive there to find that families had moved on or been evicted. Initially, we stayed in hotels, but the smell of cigarette smoke (smoking was then permitted in hotel rooms) soon prompted us to look elsewhere, and we began staying in smoke-free youth hostels instead. Leicester proved to be a good base from which to operate since it is located in the middle of the country. Our goal was to administer our survey in as many parts of England and Wales as possible, also talking informally to families about their travel patterns and evictions, their thoughts about official sites, and related topics. On these trips, we also interviewed the local authorities who dealt with Gypsies and Travellers (for example, county and city planners, government officials, site wardens, and police).
During the course of the year we visited close to one hundred camps, everything from single caravans on the side of the road to large groups, including a sixty-caravan encampment of carpet dealers parked in a field outside Hounslow, a London suburb. Such large groups could be intimidating. As soon as we parked our car, we were usually surrounded by child and teenage “gatekeepers” who aggressively quizzed us on our purpose for being there. We were always greeted by dogs too. The small ones could be real pests, nipping at our ankles as we walked toward the caravans. But as George later wrote in his field notes, “So much in gaining the cooperation of strangers depends on how you approach people and explain your purpose for being there. Finally, we’ve become experienced at this, and our confidence about what we’re doing determines in large measure the kind of reception we get.” Today, this is advice we regularly give students.
Many families turned out to be perfectly willing, if not happy, to talk to us. Some expressed surprise that the “authorities” were actually contacting them in person to seek their opinions. Others expressed frustration, saying they had answered similar questions before. It was often striking how different our experiences of a particular group turned out to be from what we had been told to expect by local authorities. The families we spoke with were almost always more approachable and reasonable. We listened over and over again to stories about the hardship of evictions, the economic losses families endured when forced to leave an area before their work there was done, and the missed doctor’s appointments and family members left behind (sometimes in the hospital). Most families simply wanted to be left alone, to be allowed to stop or camp wherever they liked. But given the realities of modern life and the harassment they experienced from local authorities, the police, and householders, they knew this was not possible. We asked them about the kind of official campsites they might be willing to live on and what amenities and rules were reasonable.
When we met Irish Travellers, we discovered that it meant a lot to them that we had previously lived with Travellers in Ireland. Upon discovering this, they’d usually run through a litany of names until we found mutual acquaintances. I once had the awkward pleasure of speaking with a man who at the end of our conversation pulled out a book and handed it to me, saying, “Now, this person knew what they were on about.” Somewhat embarrassed, but also gratified, I hesitated before admitting that I’d written it.
Much of fieldwork in anthropology is simply listening, a fact of research that is often underappreciated. We realized this when David accompanied us on occasion to visit a local authority. We were frustrated by his propensity to talk, and I found myself mentally pleading, “I know what you know. I want to know what they know!” Interviewing is not the same as a conversation, which David often appeared not to appreciate. Other frustrations also cropped up due to personal and cultural differences. David didn’t take many field notes, got mired in insignificant detail, and struck us both as inefficient. In what seemed to be a British propensity, he would meet with us in the office in order to set up a meeting for the following day to discuss something that could have been dealt with then and there. But he was also knowledgeable and patient and had a dry, ironic sense of humor.
TRAVEL AND EVICTIONS
Which government department a social issue or population is allocated to reveals a lot about how it is perceived. In the United States, American Indian policy was once handled by the War Department. Policy for Gypsies was at the time of our research the purview of the Department of the Environment. Gypsies were apparently categorized as an environmental issue—a moving blight on the landscape—as they roamed the countryside and urban areas, largely uncontrolled, arriving unexpectedly to camp wherever they could, to the alarm of local homeowners and the government officials responsible to them.
Local residents objected to the “unsightliness” of Gypsy camps, the visual clutter of parked trailers and trucks with milk churns, wash basins, domestic paraphernalia, and litter scattered about. Carpet and scrap-metal dealers were the worst offenders because their camps, if they remained long enough, contained heaps of cut carpeting, cannibalized car bodies, and domestic appliances. Tarmacadam (asphalt) layers traveled with trucks