In the Field. Prof. George Gmelch
families tried to gain entrance to land on which to camp. Sometimes buildings and public facilities were vandalized. Just as frequently, house dwellers were disturbed by the noise of the electric generators that some families used, by barking dogs and straying horses, or else were worried about sanitation, theft, or property values.
The typical response was to complain to the authorities and demand that the families be sent packing as soon as possible. Many local councils employed private security firms to enforce eviction orders; others had their own Gypsy eviction task forces. The procedure was costly.10 Knowing this, some Gypsy carpet dealers and tarmac layers intentionally moved and camped in large groups in order to make evictions logistically difficult and more costly and, thereby, gain more time in an area. Local authorities also incurred the expense of cleaning up the site and, in many cases, of trenching the periphery of the land or barricading it with concrete posts, rubble, or fencing to prevent future encroachments.
Evictions were the bane of Gypsies’ existence. Of the 118 families we ended up formally interviewing in 16 English and Welsh counties, 90 had been forced out of their previous campsites. In the previous twelve months, they had moved an average of seventeen times, or about once every three weeks, usually in response to eviction. Many of Britain’s Gypsies and Travellers, therefore, were probably more nomadic in 1980–1981 than they had been at any time in their history. The experience of one of the couples we interviewed is instructive.
Figure 3-2. Police and county council workers enforce a Traveller eviction in Leicester.
After being evicted several times in Birmingham, Percy and Margaret Boswell decided to leave the city and head east. Arriving in Leicester, our home base, they found a place to camp on the outskirts of the city near two other Gypsy families—the Gaskins and the Prices. They spent the first night settling in and talking to their neighbors about work opportunities and mutual friends. The next day, Percy and sons began their search for tarmacking jobs. They found several, and things were going well when ten days later a convoy of police cars and two open-bed trucks carrying city workmen pulled up in the morning.
“All right, lads. Get up!” bellowed one of the policemen, according to Percy. “You have an hour to pull off or we’ll tow you off.” It was early, and the families were still in bed. Striding past their barking dogs, four officers went from trailer to trailer, banging on doors and repeating the message. “Give us time to get our breakfast and feed the children,” Percy had yelled as his baby began to cry. “We have a court order. You’re to be off by eight or we’ll tow you off,” came the answer. The trailers were parked about thirty yards from the highway, shielded from motorists’ view and a nearby factory by a heavy barrier of bushes and shrubs. It had seemed a perfect spot, but once again they were being evicted.
Percy dressed quickly, and while Margaret turned on the gas to make tea and rouse the children, he went outside to confer with the other men; about this time we arrived on the scene. The men debated about whether to cooperate. They were angry enough to force the local council to tow their trailers away but knew they could be mishandled and damaged in the process. Their conversation was mostly a way of passing time, since they had little choice but to leave.
Margaret and the other women went about packing. There seemed to be little urgency in their actions; perhaps they felt there was no reason to treat the authorities with undue consideration. Besides, it took time to feed and dress the children, wash the dishes, fold the bedding, and put loose items securely away. Outside, the older children were loading the trucks with firewood, bags of coal, work tools and tarps, spare truck batteries, assorted scrap, and the milk chums that the families used to store water. The police stood some distance away, watching.
After Percy and the other men hitched their trailers to their trucks, the youngest children piled into the cabs while the teenagers and dogs climbed into the back. Then they slowly pulled out, trailers lurching from side to side over the uneven ground and onto the road. One patrol car pulled in front, and two others brought up the rear, escorting them away. The Boswells had been forced out again. Since the men still had asphalting jobs lined up, they would try to stop as soon as they could. It was expensive to lose a day’s work and to tow a trailer, so they hoped the police would not follow them far. The Gaskins and the Prices knew of a few places nearby, they had told us, a vacant field next to an industrial park, a strip of land by highway construction, a little-used parking lot. As we watched them disappear down the road, the city’s workmen busied themselves digging a deep trench around the perimeter of the land just vacated. No Gypsies would camp there again.
PREJUDICE AND STEREOTYPING
All Gypsies suffer from stereotyping and their failure to conform to the settled community’s romantic image of “Gypsies.” In the early nineteenth century, when England was reeling from the excesses of rapid industrialization and urbanization, their picturesque and seemingly carefree, nomadic lifestyle had inspired the admiration of such authors as George Borrow and Sir Walter Scott. Painters during the Romantic Movement, like Richard Westall, often placed Gypsies and their tents and donkey-drawn carts in their bucolic landscapes. Contemporary Gypsies, who tow their trailers with trucks and often live in the midst of urban decay rather than camp in tents at woods’ edge, were, and still are, often regarded as “imposters” by mainstream society. We were frequently told by householders and some local officials that such families were “drop-outs” or “vagrants,” not “real” Gypsies. As one Camden (London) councilor said when justifying his district’s eviction of several families, “If we had a happy group of rural Gypsies sitting around making clothes pegs, then the committee might have been minded to leave them there.”
Prejudice also stems from the belief that Gypsies and Travellers no longer pull their weight in society. Not recognized for the useful services they perform, such as the recycling of scrap metal, they are seen instead as living off the welfare state, tapping into the full range of benefits available to the poor and honest ratepayers while deliberately shunning regular employment. “There was no Gypsy problem until the Gypsies entered the 20th century,” a local official responsible for carrying out evictions in Birmingham told us.
Years ago, they were camped on land where they wouldn’t be seen. And they were poor, visibly poor. Now they have moved into cities to make a living and there isn’t enough open land for them. And now that some drive flashy Volvos and own flashy caravans, there is little sympathy for them. People resent Gypsies driving better cars than they have.
Gypsies and Travellers have been the objects of public scorn and the repeated targets of government policy for hundreds of years. Nomads always create problems for the state, no matter where they are found. Their lack of permanent residence makes them difficult to count, control, and tax. They also cause resentment, and sometimes envy, if for no other reason than they can succeed outside the formal economy and conventions of settled society. In contrast to most workers, they operate independently and control the terms of their labor. The family remains the primary economic unit, with all capable members contributing to its livelihood.
Their subsistence and identity has long been linked to their mobility and family-based operations, which have allowed them to fill gaps in the market that are uneconomic or too variable for businesses that are large or rooted in one place. When they exhaust the possibilities in a local area (for example, collect all the available scrap metal), they simply move on. They can also switch from one activity to another to take advantage of changing opportunities. Unencumbered by property and income taxes and the overhead of a permanent business establishment, Gypsies and Travellers have managed to live successfully on the margins of settled society for centuries.
THE “SETTLED” AND LOCAL AUTHORITY VIEW
As mentioned, we not only talked to Gypsies and Travellers, we also interviewed local authorities in half the United Kingdom’s counties. They provided us with local statistics, insights on residents’ attitudes toward Gypsies, information on the logistical and legal issues they faced, and, always, biscuits and tea. Most took their task of providing official campsites for Gypsies seriously, but given zoning regulations, businesses’ and taxpayers’ vehement objections, highway safety concerns, funding