Scene: The Travellers (1978)

horse-drawn trailers in the countryside and people enjoying a carefree life that's the romantic image of the Roman is people with centuries of history wandering from India then through Europe with a language and a way of life all of their own the Gypsy of today has exchanged his horse for a lorry and has to survive in a world unsuited to his way of life but many things haven't changed for his life was never easy in the winter especially life for the gypsy and his family is hard it's a life which is simple but we're just providing the essential things takes up most of the time it's a way of life which for the children especially may seem very different from yours but it's the way of life followed by some fifty thousand people the travellers Tom and Rose old Lee have seven children still at home large families are far more common amongst travelers and traditionally they stick together Leonie the eldest daughter is married to a traveller and they live with their own children on the same site as Tom and Rose their other daughter and her husband also share the sight the children have spent all their lives traveling but their parents once lived in houses and Tom served in the RAF so why did he go back to travelling dear my latter part of his service in the RAF we've met quite a few traveling people some of them had turned out to be relations from way back you know and well and brought out the fact we went away strawberry picking we tried a bit of hot picking whilst we were in the house and went the way the straw would pick and cherry picking with friends of ours it was still travelling about they come and took us away for a period of time from there we naturally sort of changed over to travelling away we gave the house up got ourself a trailer only a rough box on wheels to start with but then once was in the swing of traveling life didn't farm jobs net all got first to find your feed but well I mean actually took two is the natural way is in your blood some more I suppose life inside the trailer is very different from in a house one end serves as a kitchen but there isn't a sink unit no running water there's no electricity so cooking and lighting is done with bottled gas the rest of the trailer serves both as living room and bedroom the heating comes from a log fire which is also used for boiling all the water in conditions like this keeping the trailer clean and tidy is almost a full-time job but cleanliness inside the trailer is very important to the travellers when it comes to eating just finding somewhere to sit isn't easy it's very cramped and although some of the children sleep in other trailers most of their time is spent here and it's like this every day they're not just putting up with it for a short holiday but their main problem is finding a place to stop they need a site large enough to take all six trailers and it must be near a water supply at the moment a friendly farmer allows Tom and rose to stay on his land they do work for him in the summer but they can stay there longer they're lucky normally finding somewhere isn't easy well these days it's pretty hard but if you've got a work routine laid out on the first of the men we are now we sort of come here with potato picking invariably if you behave yourself that allow you to come in early or stop on a little bit layers of natural wet work / there are places but most of them have been used in the past by travelers naturally enough and quite a few of them have left and dirty so you meet with what you say a place is unsuitable to stop because the law are pushing you on all the time obviously in some cases because your traffic hazard other places was complaints by people when you go to a place that's being used before whatever other say you've meet sometimes with the same thing the law had trouble with travelers in the past maybe sort of then all disturbing people around or dirty dirty sites being moved on that's the worst thing for the traveler if they stop just anywhere the police or the local council may take action and if they use the site for storing scrap metal the local residents soon object on this illegal site the local council brought in bulldozers to surround the trailers with high walls of Earth preventing movement on and off the site the council had first tried to get the travelers off by flooding the site with sewage that scheme failed but the bulldozers succeeded for the few who can afford it there is a solution some travelers get together to buy their own plot of land the site looks just like a park for holiday caravans and they've provided themselves with excellent facilities only a few can afford to do this and most travelers have to rely on official sites provided by the local council here the travelers pay rent for their place most councils are required by law to provide sites but many have failed to live up to their responsibilities the problem they face is that the ratepayers the local people are often opposed to gypsy camps once travellers are on a site like this they sometimes settle down and the children can attend school properly for some travelers this is just what they want oh yeah they point now you speak you could take a look up the shop or anything like that we don't bother they need oh by the way more like it yeah because it's a we're gonna make it permanent and we're gonna stay us think of the kids going to school now a mobile classroom which calls two afternoons a week provides all the education for Tom Monroe's old loads children as they still want to travel about during the year it's all the schooling the children can get but wouldn't it be better if they attended school properly first of all it's inconvenient when you're moving from place to place secondly what education is they require if they can read and write reading primarily then it's done in a sensible way they'll be able and willing to teach themselves you know they might have learnt something but they don't know now but by going to school also pick up things but tomorrow I think there are advantages would the children have been better off at school yes but do they go to school they know that in some ways by some stands they're inferior like you said they haven't had the full education they may not be dressed the same although quite a few travelling tools our well dress and they may have need to prove a point are they learning enough there were this very limited amount of Education well I think they are local then enough to our ways you know you get these children well educated but where does it get them there I've have to take a normal hum dum I'm jamming good job they've got a good qualified patience look at her Bethel the children seem to have time on their hands and there are plenty of opportunities to play on this site but there are chores for them to do and they help with the work so is this also why they don't go to school no it's not so much the help with the work obviously the more hands that I could have for the money to buy and pocket I'd like but you're first of all fetch the children up in the way that helps you to a degree it keeps the children occupier so that I've missed you they are also learning the fundamental of survival sort of thing and most of my children now can go out and do a job I wouldn't say they can go out and find the job some of them could as they get older sort of range but it keeps them occupied as I say that's the big thing so how do they earn most of their money what worker travellers able to find well as I said that I've said before me talking about stopping places we like where we can to stop on farms as a consequence of that you tend to do more farm work I would like to be in the old days in father's time where you're going on tingling on the light father used to rivet Challinor we can all make paper flowers in the night but the call for that these days is out so you've got to do a job for someone else invariably so as tom says he and rose and most of their money from farm work yeah it's potato picking it lasts about ten weeks and they can earn several thousand pounds but that money is only earned by all the family working together the more potatoes they pick the more they earn so it's a long day and hard work this sort of work is getting more difficult to find as machines take over so many travelers now go calling for scrap iron and rags I'm glad to get rid of it thank you very much you're welcome quite enjoy don't go every day if I could you know provide me web was a reasonable you can't go to pawn rain because people well he meet anywhere you'll get soap anyway but I do like going to get the little children calling you names but once you start talking to him something long-term and friendly they follow him for miles round the streets and after term not to follow us too far because they lose their way but one little boy came up to me and they said oh you can take me away in that sack and I said now I said we don't do that they said well our mothers told us you did I said no well you wouldn't tell your mother we don't do for the site there I said I thought your mother told you I've so got enough to order my own I don't pay I'll pay for this okay you don't know to do their reception isn't always friendly thank you much nearly 90% of travelers have done some scrap collecting it's now probably the main source of income for many travelers as the traditional work gets less and less but the price of scrap metal is always changing so they can't be sure they'll earn enough to live on a major problem is finding somewhere to store the scrap Tom knows how much local people object to untidy sites the governor here mr. firehose the farmer his language says he has always said to us when we've asked him if we can do bit of scrapping he says quite fairly anything you like for running don't leave a mess and once that's understood and we abide by that and although ok you know and obviously as we've got young children running right you don't want too much rubbish going now broken glass and there are bits of tin so you tend to stack things properly and clear them up as soon as you can but many sites are untidy oh I agree a lot of the rubbish is left by the travellers I won't deny that but also a lot of rubbish is dumped there by people from houses or presumably from houses they come in a car or van whatever you get your bill with a sort of thing but mostly builders rubbish is stuff that does suit the sword and you know plaster on the light you do get quite a few bits from calling and so say this quote really good clothes what well I wouldn't fairway there - good - fair way and we have gone to the odd jumble so which one last well let's do the same so what's wrong in getting a few clothes hair you know when you're calling woodrose describe them as a poor family financially well we are in a sense when Lester said when there's no work working it sometimes when there is work the money isn't there not for sort of family because I said I've got a seven ohm you know and we've got to think of the food before you think of anything else the potato pick and the farmer lets us take a few potatoes home as long as we ain't taking no you know things like that but and otherwise we're we're not work a lot of travelers or classes well-off you know with the new Land Rovers and new trailers well as you can see we haven't got that and there's quite a lot of us like that shopping is done in the nearby village the family are now well-known here and get on well with most of the local people but even in this village they've had their problems well did get refused up the pub up the village if we was told it's because some other tremors have caused bar up there so focused turn round so they went service wherever they go travelers come up against discrimination some traders are prejudiced others are frightened of upsetting their regular customers practically every pub in the wisbeach areas got a sign up no van dwellers in some cases no Troublesome van dollars I mean it's like saying no troublesome people allowed in the pub and that's a that's an understood theme so why put the notice there in the first place quite often you find that you move into an area and the local thieves every community has got its thieves those boys they go out and start feeling and thinking I suppose well okay then Diddy cars or gypsies are moving up the road there next I'll get the brain we have been turned over by the law in place in them by that I mean you get the early hours of the morning we were stopping on a farm and was actually on the farmers property the Lord turned up at half past 4:00 in the morning knocking everyone up and we've no objection to the police arriving they came here now for instance in the daytime and said well what's what who's who whose motors this have you got attacks and so forth although we're on private property I wouldn't be reversed and coming in and asking questions I can see their side of it they've got to know you know you get frybo knots like ourself coming in something goes on they Metron uh want to check with us that's fair enough if it's done in a civil way but if you're disturbed early hours of the morning for no specific reason just a case what your travelers is bothering the area it's the travelers that are doing it you know it hits your house despite all the problems Tom and Rose like the traveling way but it's getting harder to find places to stop and work to do travelers are being obliged to settle down so will this way of life be able to survive will roses children carry it on well yes I think my jolly term well cuz I can say it but they say they'd like a nice place the winter you know and I understand the mud in there and their clothes all getting messed up and things like that there's one of those things laughing there they're travelled with all the difficulties does Tom really enjoy the life yes I do I do enjoy the life no doubt there's things that I would like I would like a port of call my ambition if I had one as such would be to have plots of land throughout the country of my own where I my family could stop on but to do that I'd have to accept the other things that go with it so is their way of life worth it or what is our idea is it really as I said at times but then at times is ya know it's in it I have lived in ours and I've lived in flats we've been all over the place but I wouldn't go back in a house not me you know how to stay in me try even you shouldn't say that if anything ever happened to Tom I'd still stay in the trailer well so for the next 20 40 years whatever I've got in me left I don't know their defeat I'm dr. Steinhaus I just couldn't do it [Music]

Channel: treffynnon19

Views: 72,265

Rating: 4.9223299 out of 5

Keywords: BBC1, BBC Schools, 1978, archive, Scene, documentary, The Travellers, gypsies, gypsy, Romany community

Id: QkO0mKalV9I

Length: 19min 24sec (1164 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 31 2018