So my quiet town had a visit from our traveller 'friends' this week and

[AndThatsWhatIThinkOfYou]

They wonder why people are so against them setting up camp where ever they please.

They arrived last Wednesday on a football field with a park and caused a whole load of trouble, for example, going to the petrol station handing over euros, being told they won't accept euros as payment, they simple got in their vans and drove of.

Made a visit to our local Sainsburys got caught shoplifting, were locked in until police were called.

Local children playing on park got beaten up with sticks by the traveller children.

And to top it all of 3 vans pulling up outside a local pub, very busy, dropping their trousers and all three disgusting men casually took a shit one by one on the pub doorstep. Got in there vans and drove of.

Then left the football field and park in an absolute mess. Rubbish everywhere.

Each incident police were called but nothing has been done.

So AIBU to wonder why travellers think this behavior is acceptable? and why can't anything be done to stop it?

encyclogirl - who cleans it up?

ubik that is exactly what struck me most from what i saw-that it is a hard hard life being a traveller.

"On average there are ten times more driving fatalities within the Traveller community. At 22%, this represents the most common cause of death among Traveller males. Some 10% of Traveller children die before their second birthday, compared to just 1% of the general population"

AndthatswhatIthinkofyou

Local Traders, Members of the Tidy Towns Committee, residents, everyone really.

everyone apart from the people that made the mess in the first place?

Yep.

yes, I can see why Travellers as a whole get a bad reputation when groups like the ones in the OP's example exist.

It's the same with any group, not just Travellers, but she has a point - Travellers will get a bad reputation and people will be against them if their only experience of Travellers is a bad one.

Fwiw, factors which affect child health / safety in Traveller families seem to me to include:

• Very low adult literacy rates in very closed communities, meaning that many health messages do not get through (e.g. safest ways to make up bottles, importance of immunisation etc)

• Very, very low maternal levels of education. Data from developing countries repeatedly show that infant health and mortality are linked strongly to maternal education.

• In non-legal sites, sanitation difficulties.

• Difficulties registering with preventative healthcare (for injections etc), a distrust of 'authority' which makes accessing such care culturally difficult, and difficulties accessing even 'urgent' healthcare services due to non-registration (illiteracy makes this a duanting prospect even in relatively settled communities), also prejudice amongst medical professionals.

• A cultural norm that children are cared for within extended family groups, often with younger children being cared for by those who are only slightly older - hence accidents.

• Relatively unsafe housing in terms of damp, cold, child safety (burns from small stoves used to warm the trailers were quite common), smoking.

• I can absolutely empathise with the car accident statistic quoted above - the impact on children being that large families were often driven around in cars without quite enough space, car seats or seat belts to accommodate everyone.

Duchess:

• English football fans abroad.

• Young adult drinkers, in pretty much every town centre every weekend night.

(I appreciate that both of the groups I name are probably, in their own homes and with their own families, entirely law abiding and well-behaved. Which I suspect is exactly the same as the vast majority of the Travellers referred to in this thread - its just that very few of us have encountered them in that context)

not just that, but if any person of any status/group/belief displays untoward behaviour, then the entire group gets tarnished with that reputation.

think of Muslims and a few extremists blowing things up, and suddenly, all Muslims are treated with suspicion
football fans as teacher said, and definitely young adult drinkers.

(Referring back to the posts about clearing up - I don't think that the young destructive drunks who urinate [or worse] in doorways, leave pools of sick in flower containers, fight one another and break street furniture in town centres up and down the land each weekend clean up after themselves either. But hey, they are from 'our own' cultural background so it's just young people having fun, isn't it?)

Most of the people on this thread have had negative encounters with travellers, rather than positive ones. Understandably those of us in this group are wary of travellers as a result. It is not racist to discuss this. There needs to be an honest discussion about antisocial behaviour from travellers, in the same way that there has been honest discussion about other unpleasant, cultural issues (forced marriages in certain Asian communities being an example, notably the Pakistani Muslim community I worked in at one time).

Discussing these issues is NOT racist. It is necessary to protect children. I think that roaming travellers who deny their children the opportunities settled children have (educational, healthcare etc.) are harming their children. And by tolerating antisocial behaviour in their own community they affect wider society too. When young traveller men participate in criminality and uninsured, unlicensed driving it affects the whole community, settled AND traveller.

Neither of those groups are an ethnic group. As I said before people are saying 'replace traveller with Muslim/black/polish' but none of those groups have such a high rate of law breaking/seeming to do what the fuck they please so you can't compare.

Anyway, I never said that all travellers behave in that way, in fact i know for a fact that they dont. What I object to is when people shout 'racist' and 'bigot' at people who have made the observation that it is not just a small minority of travellers who display very anti social behaviour.

Then I will say that I am very wary of young white men wearing football shirts, and of all young people on weekend nights, because I have never had a positive interaction with an avid football fan, nor with a young drunk on a saturday night - can't you see that it is a ridiculous generalisation, to tar a whole community?

I agree that some of the cultural norms in Traveller society do have a negative effect on their children and young people - some of those are only negatives from 'my point of view' (e.g. a level of education for girls that makes it very difficult not to follow the normal path to young motherhood) but some are 'absolute' negatives (e.g. high infant mortality).

However many of the reasons for these cannot be changed UNLESS we change OUR habits and attitudes towards Travellers, and develop a better understanding of the underlying reasons behind the behaviours (one reason for low educational levels in young women is sexual harrassment by settled people of young women from Traveller / Gypsy Roma backgrounds in school, for example) . It cannot be a unilateral change, and in particular a starting point which is 'your' disgust at 'their' behaviour and culture is unlikely to bring about positive change.

Well, no one seems to be able to tell me how all these permanent sites every council is supposed to set up to support travellers are going to be paid for and maintained.

"a small minority of travellers who display very anti social behaviour."

But my point is that a very large majority of the young people (of settled White British backgrounds) out on weekend evening show an extraordinarily high level of very antisocial behaviour. And they leave a huge mess to be cleaned up by others. But if I said 'all white people are drunked louts who vandalise property and do disgusting things' on the basis of that group, you would [rightly] call me racist

Well said conflict dodger. Call me a middle classed sob, or whatever you like, but our village park is for everyone to enjoy. It now looks horrible with caravans parked round the edge ad strings of washing. Its not what I pay my council tax for!

• snob

KMH, no they would not be welcomed with open arms (see my former posts) - they would be viewed with suspicion and prejudice and made to feel unwelcome, judging by some of the deeply prejudiced views on this thread.

As a proportion of all the theft/disorder/violence/vandalism etc in the UK, travellers commit only a tiny fraction of it. It may be true that the proportion of travellers committing such offences is higher than in the rest of the population, but if you compared them to other very poor communities with a high rate of school absenteeism, low income, larger families in cramped conditions, low uptake of vaccination, parental illiteracy, you may find there are many similarities/trends.

and in BOTH scenarios you will find good decent law abiding people who are trying to do the best for their kids despite all their disadvantages.

teacher - I agree 100% with everything you have said.

Kiss,

But the point is, if a new Traveller family turns up in your neighbourhood, whatever their previous behaviour - or even if they have never been there before - they are treated as if everyone expects them to behave appallingly.

As I say, I have personally witnessed the behaviour meted out to a group of Traveller children, of primary school age, who were walking along a street in the company of a (non Traveller) teacher. If I was treated like that every day of my life, everywhere I went, I might be tempted to 'live down to expectations'.

You believe that Travellers who we have a negative enocounter with (e.g they leave rubbish at an illegal site) and drunken young white British men are totally disparate?

• Both behave antisocially, and may commit petty crime
• Both leave huge damage in their wake
• Both are perceived as threatening whether or not they pose an actual threat.
• Both require others to clean up after them

In the case of the British youth, what do we say? 'Oh, I was like that when I was younger [fond smile at behaviour of younger self], they'll grow out of it'

In the case of the Travellers 'All Travellers are like that through and through, they always behave antisocially'