Protest section 4 Police Bill.

Here are some links, from various charities and organisations.
Please read and if you can help to keep our culture from becoming criminalised it would be very much appreciated.
Even just sharing on social media can help enormously.

friendsoftheearth.uk/system-change/out-site-britains-nomadic-people

www.crowdfunder.co.uk/drive-to-survive/comments#start

www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/0bfb5304-9f30-4c99-aa26-87c23cf4d9b6

Many thanks, and if you want to comment hopefully it will stay in trending for a while.

Thank you for the links, there are some very dangerous implications in that bill.

I know.
I think some people just see those that leave a mess and think this is what we are all like.
But if they knew our culture they'd know it's the complete opposite.
I do think they should be punished, but the majority of us are law abiding citizens, who work and pay tax and other bills, even council tax when we are on sites.

The few who behave badly get more publicity, unfortunately.

I'm not sure the first link is right?
Maybe you could ask admin to change it.

Bills like this slip through unnoticed by the majority. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Oh! I see what's happening here.
The formula 1 info is overshadowing the video at the top!

anyone interested needs to see the TOP video on the link

Hi romaroot, I think there needs to be some serious “myth busting” re travellers and I do appreciate it is usually the minority that give travellers a bad name.

However I think the people who turn up on private/community land and create fear, mess and intimidate should be taken in hand.
They fit the stereotype and are almost untouchable.

When my daughter had her oil tank emptied by travellers leaving her in a freezing house with a toddler and £450 down the police said there was nothing they could do, they were aware of who it was but wouldn’t enter the travellers site because of the unrest it would cause.

This is why people become intolerant.

So perhaps these are the people you should be speaking to.

Nonsense to say ‘ethically cleanse’ ( if you really know what that phrase means) Romaroot.
If they obeyed the laws of the land like everybody else did then there wouldn’t be problems, or need for these bills.

We are obeying the laws of the land currently. It's the change of law we object to. Which would criminalise our way of life and culture.
It is ethnically cleansing without the guns, and has been happening in some form for the past 600 years since we arrived here.
Bit by bit our human rights taken away from us, and not enough sites for us all.
Racism and hatred from society and governments who see us as winning elections for them.

If you could spare the time to share on social media or even just to educate yourself about who we are and of course how cleanliness is next to Godliness to us.

Sago that is absolutely disgusting, I'm so sorry your dd went through this.
I say that the law should take these people in hand, but you don't crack a nut by using a hammer.

romaroot What is it that you would like?

Equality and human rights to be upheld.
Our culture, traditions and heritage to be understood.
Better outcomes for our children, improved access to healthcare.
This would be a start.
Until the recent census, I doubt anyone knew that Irish travellers and Romany travellers were two individual races in their own right.
I pray for the racism and inequalities to stop.

romaroot Is it not fair to say that access to continuing health are and education is difficult for a community that moves around the country?

I volunteered at a primary school that had a number of traveller children that arrived for a few weeks in the winter.
We worked in conjunction with the various authorities to ensure the children and parents had access to health care and family support.

It’s difficult when you live a settled life to understand travelling communities and unfortunately the reputation of so many deters most people from wanting to get to know them.

Yes, this is a fair comment, but in context the parents will be on a temporary site and have to move.
It makes continuation almost impossible.
A lot of the problems would be helped if past present and no doubt future governments would stop seeing us as a problem and more of a solution.
Especially ito the housing crisis. None of us want to live in council houses away from our extended family, it's not our culture. Building enough sites for travellers would ease the pressure, many would move out, hence making more available houses for the rest of society who also need homes.

In our City we have dedicated sites and land set aside for a proposed site, yet caravans turn up on industrial estates, playing fields and recently a supermarket car park.
The electricity was illegally tapped in to and because of the young children and dogs wandering around the company had to close the store as parking was not safe.

I really feel your community need to educate your own people.

On a visit to Ireland recently we drove through Rathkeel it was interesting to see the lengths the travellers had gone to to protect their own village and properties.

Anyone who has lived next to a traveler site has no sympathy towards them, we have 3 in a 10 mile radius, all the rural properties have electric gates and ditches to prevent breakins.
All these sites are “no go” areas for the police, if they do have to enter it is with an armed response unit. Then they can retrieve property previously stolen, surprise surprise nobody knows or have seen anything. Their culture is based on thieving, otherwise why would the isolate themselves in that way, other minorities don’t live in that way. The problems have got worse in the last 10 yrs because the Irish government clamped down on traveller activity and they moved over here.

It’s not the travelling lifestyle that is the problem, if they lived in open sites and stopped thieving there would be no issue.

What a thorny problem this is.

I worked alongside Travellers for many years and came to the conclusion that they are basically no different from the rest of us. There were wonderful people who I was glad to count as friends and dreadful people who I kept clear of......just the same as the settled population.

I saw the best of their culture: strong family ties and loyalties, charitable giving and organising of charity events, kindness, adherence to Christian values (there is a strong Christian element in Traveller communities).

I saw the worst too: stifling of girls' life opportunities (although this is changing gradually), leaving sites in a mess, settling arguments with fists rather than negotiation.

As Travellers are so visible - and in the main we cannot understand their desire to live on the move - any unacceptable behaviour gets highlighted and sticks out like a sore thumb. It used to be this way with black people.

There are without doubt Travellers whose behaviour is entirely unacceptable; but we do not hear about those who live decent law-abiding lives - they do not get the same level of publicity. So I am trying to redress the balance a bit here. I in no way condone the bad behaviour, but I know that there is another side too.

There is a historical element here. Travellers used to be accepted in communities and valued for their seasonal work on the land. There were changes in the law (Maggie Thatcher's time I think) that meant that the traditional places where they used to stay were closed to them. A raft of problems followed on from this, and we began to see illegal encampments and all the difficulties that they bring.

It is also important to know that Travellers are not one entity: there are many different traditions within their number.

Luckygirl Spot on!
I agree there are two sides to every story, but there is now a huge element of illegal activity within the travelling community which makes them very unwelcome wherever they go. If they (all of them) could learn to live within the law of the land, dispose of their rubbish legally, and return to seasonal work instead of thieving then we would all get on much better.

I agree there should be many more legal sites like this, but I guess some of them won't want to live under site rules and regulations.
www.teignhousing.co.uk/neighbourhood/travellers-site/

I had a post written for this thread this morning, but decided against it. But here I am anyway...

romaroot came on to give us a chance to understand the issues facing Travellers in Britain today. But we've had the usual accusations of thieving, being dirty, law breaking, all the rest of it. Even a suggestion that romaroot, along with her fellow Travellers, was responsible for stopping the illegal actions of people she doesn't even know, and that she doesn't know what ethnic cleansing means.

Its racism, and you don't even know it.

I moved ten years ago onto a new estate which had been built next to a long-established traveller site. A dozen pitches were permanent and there was an adjacent field for family visitors and the horses.

The people living there were very much part of the Community who had lived in the area for generations and the visitors coming and going were pretty unobtrusive really.

It was next to a builders yard that didn’t worry too much about security because the traveller site kept an eye on it and everyone knew that.

I had a good friendship with one of the grandads. We bonded over the Spring foals ?

In contrast, some people living on the Estate caused endless problems with dilapidation of the new housing, litter and police presence.

Just read what Lee Anderson had to say.

I’m sorry you have come up against some awful attitudes and prejudice in this thread romaroot

We had some travellers set up on the car park of an empty building near our house some years ago. People were wary and worried about having ‘those sort’ near them. There was no increase in crime and they moved on after a couple of weeks. There was more trouble from youths from a nearby estate breaking windows on the empty building, climbing in, smoking pot, starting a fire, etc. The building is now occupied and has security gates so it’s never happened again.

I just did Avalon25

I hope he resigns for it, but I don't expect he will.

He has the backing of his constituents so don’t expect a resignation.