I come from a gypsy / travelling family AMA

[TowerTumble]

I have name changed for this. I see so much misconception and ignorance around the travelling community and towards families like mine. I've started an AMA so if you have any questions to try and stop this misconception I'll answer everything I can!

Harassed? People have to earn a living. Knocking on doors asking for business can be annoying, but is it really 'harassing?' Elderly are the most respected in our culture

You’ve said multiple times that things which might be tolerated in other communities aren’t in your own. Are there any mechanisms where all/most traveller communities can get together and discuss their problems as a collective? Are there important people who could speak for each community and bring in changes that are voted for as a whole?

Are the women very possessive of the men @TowerTumble ?

We had some travellers coming around our village the other week, (seeing if anyone had any scrap metal,) and I was on the driveway and stopped their little truck. I asked the man who was driving if they wanted to come and look at some scrap metal that I have at the back. I smiled, and said 'bit cold today isn't it?' He said 'very brisk yes!'

There was a woman (I presume his wife) in the passenger seat, and she looked me as if she wanted to kill me, proper death stare. I said to her 'hello' and I smiled. She looked away. Clearly didn't want to engage with me.

So as I say, are the woman very possessive of their husbands? Why was she so hostile?

There's more to it than this though. Do you have any suggestions on how to support children who are constantly on the move?

Most of my pupils from the Scottish Traveller Community lived in council accommodation with their mothers most months of the year and went on the road again with the entire family during better weather, so - for the girls at least - there was little missed education.

(It was different for the boys - someone would hand in a form to say that they were being 'educated at home' and that was that - no follow-up from the authorities - and they would go to work with their fathers. It might be different in the rest of the U.K.)

In the case of those who were permanently on the road, Local Authorities would each have some kind of Liaison Officer. I recall seeing one lad temporarily in our class at school in '71, but I can't recall any children being at any of the schools where I worked on a temporary basis (though some would disappear for Appleby, etc).

Do you have any suggestions on what could be done to help provide education for those children who are permanently on the road? Even now, I'm aware of families where men are basically illiterate because of being kept away from education in their boyhood. (There are other families which have more or less settled and have good businesses in the area.)

The challenges for children from Romany families were different - boys were kept in school, but girls from some families were being pulled out to provide childcare or to go begging.

I have no recollection of ever teaching children from Carnival families.

Harassed to have their driveways powerwashed 😅

Hard working men and boys knocking your door and trying to sell you their service isn't harassment.

I don’t know much about the travelling community but it does strike me that tiny, built up countries like England in 2026 are really not set up for a travelling lifestyle. You need plentiful land, wide open spaces, big countries, at least that’s what it seems to me. It doesn’t look fun being a traveller in a small, built up, cold, wet country.

It's not a bad example. She made comments about us as a community. I already knew the dangers of cot bumpers, she could have told me once and that was that bur she didn't. She didn't believe me when I said they were display only when completely spoke at me lecturing me about endangering my child. The child was never going to sleep with a cot bumper.

I've just finished rereading "Five Go to mystery moor". I used to love it as a child but it's very problematic reading it now!

Anyway, a gypsy boy leaves the Famous Five patrins to follow. Are patrins a real thing? Are they still used, and if not when did they die out? I'd love to hear more about them.

Thanks for this thread, so interesting. Is there much art and craft in your community? If so, are there any people you can recommend on Instagram?

@TowerTumble

Thank you for your informative thread.

You say you can always tell other travellers? How so?

You mention being a single parent. Is your DC's dad still involved? Is he from the community and how was your break up viewed by your nearest and dearest?

Final question, do you tell people (school / uni friends / colleagues) your background or do you keep it quiet?

I haven’t read the whole thread so I’m sorry if this has already been asked and answered but I don’t want to make a mistake. I’ve heard that “gypsy” is no longer an acceptable term and we should always say “traveller”. Is this true from your point of view?

I don't think you've ever had you door knocked by a group of burly men wanting work if you think that's reasonable.

I was going to say the same thing as the pp here.
Glastonbury isnt a fair comparison as people pay for tickets and are on site at the intended time and for the intended reason.
I always lived in an area where we only ever saw one romani caravan per year and it all worked.
Then I moved to the south east, and my encounters with travellers were very negative - coming onto rec ground, stealing and breaking outdoor toys from local playschool, and leaving human poo everywhere!
Ive never had any other encounters - except a tarmac man being horrificly rude to me when he was blocking our road - i was very frightened and im no mouse. And yes, confirmed they were an Irish traveller family.

OP - are you aware of why many people form the opinions they do when these are their only encounters?

Did you do swimming lessons as a child?

There's a group of white British kids in the next town over that are constantly all over my social media for shoplifting, harassing people, and destroying property.

I'm also white British. Is it my responsibility to go and sort them out?

Actually, from the latest pictures (don't you just love local facebook groups?), one looks to be Asian. Should I take a random Asian person with me so we can each be responsible for the anti-social behaviour of people we don't know but happen to share a background with?

Sorry, that was meant for @RaininSummer (I quoted the wrong post!)

really?? There are a lot of travellers’ horses near me (we’re on the Appleby route) and unfortunately many of them are treated appallingly. Every now and then I’ll see a traveller’s horse which is in really good condition and obviously well-looked after but sadly that’s pretty rare.

It's harassment when anyone (Traveller or not) persists in trying to get custom from elderly folk, no matter who is turning up at the door.

In our part of the country Travellers who do this tend to claim to be gardeners, though I've had one occasion when someone wanted to tarmac my drive "for £50".

I've never had too much trouble with persistence, but my parents had. On one occasion, my Mum's carer stopped a man from pushing his way into Mum's house. In the end, she was only able to stop him by lying and saying that she was wearing her carer's uniform because she was coming off shift and that it was her house.

And actually - yes, knocking at a stranger's door without a prior appointment is harassment. I'm now widowed and living on my own. I don't like opening my door to any strange man, no matter who he is.

That goes for equally for the Irish accented gentleman in the ghillie suit who insisted that he would cut down the cherry tree (that my husband had planted) in order to 'widen [my] driveway' and for the Glaswegian accented young man who wanted to con me into paying an exorbitant amount to have my roof replaced. I didn't want either of those jobs being done and I didn't want them on my doorstep trying to insist that they needed to be done.

What do you think of the film "Into the West"?

If there were more sites for travellers and more areas where travellers are welcome it would help this problem. But again it's a very small group of people who do this and it doesnt represent our culture as a whole

Who should provide these sites though?

Yep, this is very common sadly!

Laugh all you like. It is harassment when they keep on and on and don't want to take no for an answer, particularly when you're on your own and feeling fragile.

It's harassment when you have strangers keeping on going, trying to persuade you to part with cash that you actually need for other things.

Perhaps the same people who provide the land for copious houses to be build on? There's enough space for everybody if the land is utilised well.

MN tend to ignore anti-Irish comments and even more so anti-traveller comments. I'm not a traveller but am Irish and report whenever I see them. It's nothing short of racism.

There are good and bad in every community. Unfortunately, people tend to focus on the bad and ignore the good in the travelling community. I have had lovely experiences and dreadful experiences with travellers. Most experiences are somewhere in the middle.

I've had lovely experiences and dreadful experiences with English/American/French/Irish/etc people. I don't tar the entire nationality based on those experiences any more that I do travellers.