Feeling upset and a little intimidated

The law of trespass would soon be applied to any of us if we dared to do the same thing though.

I despise them with every fibre of my beng after a LOT of negative experiences. I genuinely don't know how they have manoeuvred themselves to be so above the law. The Police can't touch them.

I often wonder if the travellers would be less messy if the council left a skip for them to put rubbish in.

Like Luckygirl I have been in contact with many Traveller families through educating their children over the past decade. The children I have taught have always been very respectful to adults and the families have very high standards of personal cleanliness. I have learned a lot about Traveller cultures and traditions and appreciate that many of them are absolutely lovely people. Typically the children I have taught come from settled communities and most now live in houses.

The fact remains that some Travellers do unfortunately cause hostility by the way they treat the areas and amenities where they alight. And there seems to be one law for them and one for regular residents. There seems to be a nervousness re law enforcement and the perception is that they are allowed to go on their way without being fined or needing to make any recompense whatsoever for the damage they cause. Councils just seem relieved when they move on.

Sar53 I understand your fears. I hope that you do not alarm yourself unnecessarily re your own personal safety / security, but I suspect your community will have some clearing up to do in due course.

We had travellers on our village green. A few people who lived nearby saw that they were arriving and blocked the entrance with their cars. The travellers just pulled down the post and rail fencing alongside the entrances and drove on. The police were called but didn't show up for hours and by then it was too late.

The travellers were there for quite a while and literally trashed the place it cost £7,000 to clear up. They left old appliances, bags and bags of waste, garden waste from jobs they'd carried out and even a dog! They were aggressive to anyone and everyone. Even the police seemed not to want to get involved.

The same thing happened the year afterwards and residents managed to prevent them pitching up.

We now have a earth boundary around the green and both entrances have been blocked with massive stones. The only access now is via a heavy iron gate.

There are good and bad in every community but the problem is so many travelling groups are antisocial and leave large amounts of waste and offensive mess where ever they go.

Improving relations is a two way stretch. If the travelling community want to have better relations with the rest of the population, they could improve it no end by just stopping fly tipping and leaving offensive rubbish behind them.

Over the past few years I have become friends with quite a few traveller families within my work as manager of a well known Charity where we supply everyday emergency essentials to families in need of help, the traveller families never applied for help of any sort but they did supply many many boxes of useful items that could be donated to people in need so please don't class them all the same, some are rough and ready but make a friend of a traveller and you have one for life they don't go in for fare weather friendships in any way at all.

Yes, good and bad like with everyone but if i tipped the contents of my chemical toilet out onto the hedges by the village cricket pitch I would be in serious trouble, It is bad enough in this village if you don't clear up after your dog! Interestingly, there is a community of settled travellers near here, neat site, immaculate vans, and rumour has it they asked the cricket pitch temporary travellers to move on. Most of us are tolerant, but it is the mess, the destruction, the filth left behind, and no amount of cultural awareness or mutual respect can excuse this behaviour.

I understand your anxiey, sar while also agreeing that not all people in the travelling community are out to do harm.

There are three licensed traveller sites within 10 miles of us, English, Irish (which has recently doubled in size without permission of any sort being sought) and a sort of mixed site. The children attend the local primary schools. Some are very well behaved, some are the exact opposite. The major issue comes from a few very aggressive adults who seem to believe they are above any law and make their presence felt in an intimidating way within the school and often outside of it.

In the town we have a group of travellers who are moving from open site to open site leaving huge amounts of rubbish behind them. There is much reported intimidation of adults and children alike. I imagine the people from the licensed sites who are considerate are as angry about it as local people are. Its a problem, no easy answer but yes, I would be careful too, sar, until the behaviour of this group can be understood.

One of the reasons that the provision of sites is such a thorny issue is that there are different traveling groups: Irish, English, Welsh, New, Roma etc. and mixing them together on a site is often a problem as they have different traditions.

Jalima1108 - a stopping place is not a permanent home; most Travellers do travel in search of work and because it is their tradition. A stopping place is just that - a place to stop for a while. There are a lot of "settled" Travellers who have given up their travels as there are no stopping places. They do not however cease to be Travellers - there is more to it than that. It is about culture and tradition. One Travelling family I worked with had bought a wonderful house with a lots of grounds and they lived in the yard in their (very posh) trailer and used the house just for bathing and toileting. And yes, they did pay their rates!

There are tax, rent and rates dodgers in every walk of life, and the travelling community is the same - but I know this does not apply to all in either community.

There is a huge Christian movement with the travelling community (http://www.lightandlifegypsychurch.com/) and their morality is very strict. They, and other non Christian Travellers) are very active in the field of charities.

Good and bad, just like us.

Jalima I do stick to what I said and of course as in all societies the bad uns give everyone else the bad name
I hate to hear a whole community hated and decried before they ve even landed
Living here in a seaside town we often have travellers pitch up and the minute anyone mentions the word, traveller the name calling and bad mouthing starts
The council/police move them on usually quickly and everyone has a good moan and a story of destruction whether it's happened or not

I can only imagine how it feels to grow up in a society so feared and hated

The police know just what problems they cause, both criminal and social.
Time, I would have thought that travellers ceased a nomadic life in the UK, settled in a proper site, and eventually they would get a good education and leave that way of life altogether.
They cannot make enough money cutting a few hedges and crime always soars when they are around.Trading scrap metal.....our church has had the roof lead stolen three times, my DD's firm was broken into after hours ( travellers set up next door) and they also hooked up to a local firms electricity supply.
When they were around here, houses, and sheds were broken into and garden tools stolen.A van and a car were stolen.Traveller women beg around cafes and are threatening selling tiny bunches of white heather.Then they move on....and the process begins agian somewhere else.

Luckygirl, even where LAs have provided sites a lot of travellers won't use them because they have to pay. Recently there was a group who parked up on a local cricket pitch. They stayed the usual couple of weeks whilst the council tried to get them evicted and when they left they had dug holes in the pitch, totally wrecked the toilet block which will have to be replaced and broken into an officials office. The toilets had been deliberately wrecked, whole rolls of toilet paper being crammed down the toilets, holes punched in walls etc. It is thought it is unlikely the club will be ready for when the season starts. Is it any wonder that people worry and are even afraid when they show up?

My D is touring manager for a holiday park that has various groups of travellers residing for a few weeks at a time. Ok, I understand it's different when they set up camp on public land and leave their mess behind. Some of the staff are very derogatory about them all but D says if you treat them with respect you will receive the same. She has always managed to set up agood working relationship with the main man. Any complaints she takes to them about noise or the children misbehaving are dealt with amicably.
As someone else said there are good and bad in all cultures.

For your sake and theirs I hope a proper stopping place is found for them soon.
They would have to find a new name then as 'Travellers' would no longer be appropriate.

I do think people are incredibly whipped up about the 'dreadful' people they are
Perhaps people have had negative experiences of travellers on their doorstep or next to their DC's schools. This has happened twice where travellers have parked on land next to schools in two different areas where we have lived and I am afraid that the mess was dreadful. Perhaps the caravans were immaculate inside - but certainly the hedge between the vans and the school was used as a toilet.

I am sure that not all are like that but people can only go by their own experiences.

I do feel for you Sar53 - I live on the edge of a village green - have had them pitching up on the green two years running. As others have said, it seems that they move on just the day before the eviction order is served. On both occasions they have left the most awful mess (including human waste)
Really hope that 'yours' are moved on soon

I m so please a few posters have supported the travellers they aren't all bad people whilst I can understand you not wanting a group of caravans on your doorstep I do think people are incredibly whipped up about the ' dreadful' people they are and as Luckygirl rightly said it isn't always their fault they are pushed around They do have in a lot of instances very moral lifestyles whilst in other instances traditions we don't understand or agree with of course there are 'baduns' as in any group or community
I m sure they will be gone within a few days pushed out of society like lepers and on to bother someone else
Try not to worry too much they are not necessarily the devil incarnate he might be living nearby in a permanent house

There's an old saying isn't there? 'Don't mess on your own doorstep.'

Travellers just go and mess on somebody else's.

Their cleanliness within their trailers is mind-boggling! - they never remove the plastic protection on the seats and you really could eat your dinner off the floor in most trailers

I could not dispute the cleanliness of their caravans Lucky its the mess they leave behind that seems to be the problem. I drove past the site near my DD this lunch time and it seems that they are in the process of packing up. They have literally hacked down several mature trees and rubbish is scattered all over the place. Something tells me they won't be clearing it up.

Someone I know who had a problem with travellers on their land went along to chat to them and casually dropped into the conversation that they needed to be careful with their children and especially dogs as the field had just been sprayed with weedkiller.

The field was empty within hours!

In one of my jobs, which lasted 10 years, I had lots of contact with Travellers.

The parking up on random pieces of land is the result of an act of parliament under Mrs T that removed the duty for LAs to provide Traveller sites. They therefore have nowhere to go and are just moved from pillar to post, to the massive detriment of the children's education.

They are, I found, very like us - there are good and bad, tidy and untidy, honest and dishonest etc. The common factors that unite them all are a strong sense of family and a desire to find ways of continuing the travelling lifestyle into which they were born - a lifestyle that has been destroyed by changes in farming practices and in legislation.

Sadly their needs often clash with those of the settled community.

I met people whom I was proud to call friends, and others whom I would be happy not to meet again. Their cleanliness within their trailers is mind-boggling! - they never remove the plastic protection on the seats and you really could eat your dinner off the floor in most trailers.

There are many aspects of their lifestyle that I do not like - the tradition of very small boys boxing, the role of women in their culture etc. But things are changing gradually and education (for both sexes) is becoming more of a priority, although there is a general anxiety about drink, drugs, sex education etc.in the secondary education system.

Please try not to feel too anxious - it is likely that these folk have no more desire to be there than you have for them to be there - they may have no choice. The chances are that these people have no evil or criminal intent - they just have a different lifestyle. For your sake and theirs I hope a proper stopping place is found for them soon.

There were pictures in the paper today of two sites where travellers left, in one case, 250 tons of rubbish, building rubble, garden waste and heaven alone knows what else, behind them when they left, which is going to cost the local council up to £100,000 to remove.

paddyann you say that they knock doors and offer to cut hedges /grass,dispose of old white goods etc that the council charges ridiculous amounts to do and after a couple of weeks they move on but you should be very careful about checking exactly where they intend to dump the waste. It probably is not in an approved waste tip, but on some verge, woodland or other non-approved site where the land owner or local council will have to bear the cost of clearing up after them.

A friend told me that a local farmer had some travellers move onto one of his fields, he went in with his tractor and started "muck spreading" - they soon left. Of course, what he did was probably against the law but it was effective.

I think a lot of travellers are just like you and me and are trying to make a living as best they can.We hava group who rock up once a year and park in afield a few hundred yards from us ,they knock doors and offer to cut hedges /grass,dispose of old white goods etc that the council chrges ridiculous ammounts to do and after a couple of weeks they move on .They always come to us and we are happy to pay them to cut our large very tall hedge which they do quickly and remove all the cuttings.I may view them differently because my cousin ran away with the travellers when she was young ,married one and has been happliy married for over 50 years .Dont tar them all with the same brush ,they are all individuals like the rest of us