I would like to briefly tell my experience, I've namechanged as there could be quite a few identifying details. A few years back we moved from the city to a semi-rural village - a very picturesque village in the south east (not essex). There's a disproportionate number of travellers in the local area, compared to the rest of the UK in general. Prior to moving to the village I had no ill-feeling towards travellers whatsoever - knew there were a few bad apples, but live and let live etc. In fact, when at uni, I rather fancied the new-age traveller lifestyle myself.
These just some of the incidents, and these are absolutely not things that have just arbitrarily been blamed on the travellers.
- At 2am one night a truck drove up and down our main village road - 2 men on the back whacking the parked cars with an iron bar. My husband's car windscreen was smashed, and many neighbours lost windscreens and wing mirrors. We slept through the whole thing
(we have excellent double glazing) but my neighbour saw the whole thing, and identified them as travellers from a camp in the next village, about 2 miles away.
- My ds went to local village school when we first moved here. I sent him there because I wanted to be able to walk to our village school and I had no problem that there were quite a few traveller's children there. Turned out they had a problem with my ds though, as I had to hear daily stories from my lovely, gentle, kind ds about being kicked, tripped and pushed over in the playground, chased around, told he smells of poo, told that he had to give them £20 or they would kill his mum. The Head would not do a thing about it - would warble on about how school had to 'be a haven' for these children - literally we had no redress. We lasted 1 term before I moved him - thankfully he is at a wonderful school now.
- My daughter was very ill at 15mths old and hospitalised for 3 days. I stayed in the local hospital's children's ward with her; another patient was a irish traveller - a 15 year old girl. She was seriously ill and in a private room, the doctors didn't know what was wrong with her. I know this because I chatted with her mum in the tea-making area. She was nice - admired my dd, swapped stories, gave my dd an on-the-spot diagnosis
(incorrect though). They were a very loud extended family, and there were lots of disfferent family members to-ing and fro-ing. It was obvious from overheard conversations that there was some sort of massive family feud going on. The next thing I know, the police are on the ward, guarding the daughter's room - some feuding family member has tried to attack her (either the mother or the daughter - I don't know) and now everyone except the mother are banned from the ward. The feuding family kept trying to gain entry, and so we were all asked to ring our visitors in advance and tell them not to let anyone else tag along behind them. Me and dd were actually going home that day and I don't mind saying that after the upset of dd's illness, the prospect of running into aggressive grown men who thought that it was morally acceptable to physically attack women in hospital, was very upsetting.
- A friend in my village owns a farm and a business run from the farm. They have a running feud with some local travellers, who regularly trespass on the farmland - the amount they have had go missing is truly shocking. Most times they actually see the men involved - always the same men - and call the police. The police come out, and many a time actually find these men and confront them - only to be told 'we're just looking for a dog'. They've had to build up the banks of all their land to stop them actually driving onto the land, but now they come in on foot instead. The police just send them on their way
- A little old lady, living alone had a concrete block thrown through her living room window, again eywitnesses saw them, and identified them as local travellers. That old lady is now too scared to sit in her own front room.
Plus, there are countless BB gun vandalism on car and house windows - but these are without eyewitnesses, so can't say for sure who that is. Personally, though I suspect the little old man that lives in the row of cottages opposite us
I find it very difficult to reconcile my previously held views about travellers to my recent experiences of living in a close proximity to these ones. I also find it very hard to talk about the subject without feeling that I am somehow saying something 'racist' - I know that not all travellers are like this, but godammit these ones are! We are a normal law-abiding middle class family, and it is very difficult to live with a collection of people who have a completely different moral compass to us - they simply do not care how their actions impact on others, it's like they're completely lawless. The police are well aware of the above criminal acts, but have taken no action. I have heard similar stories that corroborate the lack of police action where eyewitnesses know travellers are involved as well.
My experiences in the school and in hospital will stay with me forever - I have quite simply never come across behaviour like it. If, as dilly says, the illegal residents of dale farm are like this, then the local residents have my every sympathy.