I’m a Romany Gypsy. Over many years, I have been affected by every policy that rolls out of government.
In 1968, the Caravans Act came about. That put a duty on every Local Authority to provide a permanent caravan site for every Gypsy and Traveller in an area. It was a very slow process, even in those days, as Councils had developed a loophole: if they had a meeting every year about provision and looked at potential sites, they had ‘intentions to provide’. There were a few that provided. These were well over-subscribed.
So there were still loads of families on the road. All over London, we stopped everywhere, on old derelict plots of ground. There were many evictions, we even tried to defy these actions, by putting our children in bailiffs’ JCB front buckets and daring them to move us; barricading ourselves in with car tyres and setting them on fire.
