This is a prime example of piece of RABID press work.
This one is particularly obnoxious. There was a rash of really evil coverage a while ago, this is the first for quite a while, of this severity. Hate to give it space on my site, but, it does give an idea of how a reason argument with some folks, is quite imposible.
I hope to be taking advice, to see if we can’t proceed against these people……..
BEWARE THE RETURN OF THE SUMMER INVADERS
09:00 – 02 July 2002
Problems caused by illegal ravers at an airfield in East Devon have brought back chilling memories for MARK DANIEL,
For many, the scenes at Smeatharpe near Honiton, where 1,000 travellers, thought to have been frustrated by the successful security at Glastonbury Festival, have encamped for their own substitute rave, have caused a shudder of recognition and well-warranted fear. Every year for many years, Westcountry farmers – and motorists – braced themselves for an annual invasion at or around the summer solstice as those purportedly seeking to celebrate peace and nature demonstrated that they were the habitual enemies of both.FOR many, the scenes at Smeatharpe near Honiton, where 1,000 travellers, thought to have been frustrated by the successful security at Glastonbury Festival, have encamped for their own substitute rave, have caused a shudder of recognition and well-warranted fear. Every year for many years, Westcountry farmers – and motorists – braced themselves for an annual invasion at or around the summer solstice as those purportedly seeking to celebrate peace and nature demonstrated that they were the habitual enemies of both.
In what Ian Johnson of the National Farmers’ Union yesterday described as “a grotesque sort of relay”, convoys of rickety vans and caravans, often several miles long, were passed from police authority to police authority as they travelled westward. Farmers in each region quaked. Once allow these itinerants to park on your land, and only a laboriously-won injunction could move them on. In the four days or more which it could take to obtain such an order, fences could be ripped down for fuel, crops trampled, livestock disturbed and often endangered, and human inhabitants intimidated by the giant dogs favoured by the travellers.
When at last the invading convoy moved on, it left behind, in lieu of visitors’ cards, a characteristic trail of litter and ordure.
Farmers, of course, are not a listless or namby-pamby bunch, and they took action to deter these unwanted tourists. In general, this was defensive action – granite boulders and heavy equipment on verges, narrowed gateways and the like are still to be found throughout the region. At times, however, action became more direct and offensive. I know of farmers who, among other tactics, “accidentally” showered encampments with slurry and bombarded them with sporadic and offensive sound, day and night. The police found themselves attempting to keep the peace in what was increasingly looking like an annual, ever-escalating war.
As with most wars, the right was not all on one side. Many would damn travellers simply for being travellers. Having lived in rural Ireland and fought to defend my property and livestock from the worst of itinerants, I consider myself a connoisseur of this culture. There were, then, at least four distinct classes of traveller. The true gypsies, versed in Romany lore and extraordinarily skilled with horses, were the most welcome and the rarest. I was invited to the funeral of one such, at which all his property, including many thousands of banknotes, were ritually burned in his caravan.
Then there were the “suburban” travellers, whom I classify as such because of their tastes rather than their travelling habits. Their caravans, which travelled alone or in twos or threes, were invariably crammed with ornate crystal or china. Laundry always hung between their caravans and the hedgerows, and their children attended school regularly, and generally looked a deal cleaner and smarter than mine. Some were born to the travelling life. Others were ideological travellers, who merely preferred life on the road. Others again – surely a rapidly growing class in this country – had acquired the apparently almost unbreakable travelling habit because of the disparity between incomes and house prices.
And then there were the “knackers”. These were highly organised villains. They lived in filth, they fought among themselves, they fought with the Gardai, with their children’s occasional teachers and with every representative of authority, but they had friends and relatives who wore very, very tidy fatigues.
There was a well-known rule for Irish landowners – never give a glass of water to a stranger. Greet him or her rather with a glower, a curse and a fierce dog, barely restrained. The knackers usually sent one of their women, usually equipped with an infant, to your door to beg for a drink for the child. Once identify yourself as a soft touch, and you were done for. One caravan would be parked on your land within hours, 20 within days. Within weeks, following an injunction, they would leave. Within a month, your house would be rid of all valuables. Within another 24 hours, those valuables would be with experts in Holland or Switzerland.
And finally, there was the “New Age” crowd – “ideological” travellers in so far as ideology was convenient. Those I encountered were lazy, physically no less than intellectually. They were promiscuous and riddled with HIV. Meningitis trailed in their wake. They were inexpressibly dirty. They used drugs, had large dogs, espoused nature worship but hobnobbed with “knackers”. They were urban spume drifting into rural waters. This is a rude analysis, but I beg the indulgence of the travelling community. I am, after all, pleading that they be treated as members of distinct classes, rather than as a homogenous whole. Imprecision is surely preferable to the gross prejudice which brands the worldwide community.
In 1994 British law was changed to bring the hostilities, if not to an end, at least to a tense ceasefire. The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act empowered the police to demand that travellers leave a site “so soon as practicable”. No arrests, have yet been made under this provision, presumably for fear of European Human Rights legislation. The Act also enabled the police, however, to search vehicles, and the condition of most of these meant that the invading army could no longer campaign in force.
“We can only hope this latest gathering does not mark a renewal of the annual cultural rebellion,” said Ian Johnson. “The travelling community is diverse, and many of its members are law-abiding and respectful of property. As ever, it is the bad apples which taint the whole barrowload. I believe these are partygoers deprived of a party, which makes them a friendly and cheerful crowd but for a few idiots. I pray I am right, because the bad old days were very, very bad, and we do not want to see them recreated.”
