Twenty-Five

Romani Rights

For many years me dad had owned a piece of ground just up the road from his place. It was a horse paddock where Storm, his old mare, had lived for twenty years. She was left to me, so I bought the land off me mam and had the mains water put on for old Storm, for without me dad’s old Landrover I could no longer manage the dozen milk churns I had used to carry the daily water up to her.

As so often happens when a family member passes away, our family split at the seams. We all fell out with each other many times over and though it was sad it couldn’t be helped. Me mam was left on her own and started drinking, though she had always hated that old lush. She would phone me at all hours of the night, drunk as anything, either crying or singing.

In the end she asked each of us children to buy her place and stay with her. Terry and I sold our house and moved into a trailer with her. Soon, though, she changed her mind about selling us the place and ordered me out, so we ended up on the transit site at Middlezoy, near Bridgwater.

This was my first taste of living on a government site. We were only allowed to stay for twenty-eight days and I was frit as anything about what might happen to us after. What were we to do once those twenty-eight days were up? Yes, we had money from the sale of the house, but I couldn’t bear to go back to another brick-and-mortar house. I had done my time of settled living. It wasn’t for me and I felt I had suffered enough over the years. My boys were grown up now and I could travel like we used to do, but when I asked other Romanies about stopping places, I was shocked to find there were none left.

I was told that you travelled at your own risk and the risk was forever being moved on, from pillar to post. I couldn’t believe what they were telling me. I had thought those days were over, but everyone I spoke to confirmed that we ‘Gypsies’ were being treated like animals.

What was I meant to do? Stop being myself? Give up all my way of life to make the gorgie happy? Should I put myself back in a house somewhere and lose myself?

I went to the council and was told to look for my own land. Me and my Terry searched for ground up for sale and, as we’d been told, took what we’d found to the council before we bought it.

I identified a piece of ground at Westonzoyland. “No,” we were told. “We will not give you planning on that.”

I identified a plot of land at Greinton, with cowsheds and a host of other buildings on it. “No,” I was told. “That land isn’t suitable for a Gypsy site.”

My time ran out at the transit site, but they gave us a few extra days to stop as I had nowhere else to pull my caravan. We found nothing else and so did the only thing I could think of. We pulled into me dad’s old paddock.

I thought that all I would need to do was visit the council and explain where I was, put in a planning application, but the village people got there before me.

GYPSIES MOVE ON TO LAND AT ASHCOTT

The newspaper headline was humiliating, for these people had known of my family for more than twenty-five years. Me mam and dad had lived at Pedwell for all that time and each Christmas most of the village came to buy their trees, wreaths and mistletoe bunches from us. They bought and sold our scrap. Poor Holly’s three little girls had all gone to the village school!

A few days later I noticed a police car driving up and down past my place. Back and forth it went, so eventually I stepped out onto the lane to wait for it. As it passed me by I waved the driver down.

“Have you lost something?” I asked. They answered no. “Then why are you driving up and down this lane?”

The policeman in the passenger seat was holding a clipboard with lots of writing on it, turning it away slightly as I made a show of looking at it. The driver told me that a load of Gypsies had moved on to my paddock and, ever since, the houses in Ashcott had been burgled. The culprits, aged ten to twelve, had been seen coming in by my gate.

“Is that what all that writing says, then?” I asked, pointing to the clipboard.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Well, mister, I got news for you. I can read what it says and there are no burglaries mentioned on that bit of paper.” I glared at the two men. “I will now phone my husband and he’ll be visiting your police station with a formal complaint, because you two is harassing me!”

With that they left quickly enough. The two policemen never came back, but things just went from bad to worse. I went to the council, only to be told they would get me off my land at all costs. I was given a planning officer to deal with. I thought her the nastiest person I’d ever met.

Terry and I visited her in the public council office and as she greeted us she turned to my man in front of the crowd of waiting people to ask him loudly if he was a Traveller.

“I’m not,” he answered her.

“But you married into that?” At that everyone stopped and looked at us, as if we were criminals.

“You hang on, missus,” I said. “It’s nothing to do with you who or why my man married. It’s planning I’m here for, not marriage guidance!”

So now I knew right where I stood. This was going to be the battle of me life and what I knew about planning wouldn’t fill a snake’s eye. I was as ignorant as a newborn babe, but I vowed that I would learn what I needed if it killed me.

“You are not staying on that land,” she told me plainly.

“Surely I got rights!”

“Gypsies have no rights,” she answered.

“Is that so?” I glared at her. The battle had begun.

♦

I spent the next few weeks tracking down other Romanies living on their own land, always dreading that I would return to find that my trailer had been towed out by the council. I was getting threats by the week until finally I found a woman who told me of a lady living in Bristol who might be able to help. I went to see the lady, Penny Smith was her name, but she was so overworked she could only give me a small amount of advice and a copy of the Buckley v. UK* case that had gone to Strasbourg.

≡ Buckley v. the United Kingdom was a legal hearing taken to the European Court of Human Rights in February 1996, which concerned Mrs June Buckley’s battle to be granted planning permission for land she had owned since 1988. This was the first occasion that a problem concerning the treatment and rights of ‘Gypsies’ had been referred to the ECHR.

Penny told me to read it over and over again, saying that it would help me to help many others of my race. She also gave me the phone number of a solicitor in Bristol, Brian Cox.

Our Robert was waiting for me when I got home. I gave him the June Buckley case to read since I was too worked up to concentrate. An hour later he came back, leaping over the gate rather than waiting to open it. He was hollering like a dinalow*.

≡ Fool.

“We got rights, our Maggie!” he yelled. “We got rights!”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “The council woman told me I had no rights at all!”

“Well, you have to let me read this to you!” and off he went, reading the words of a government circular numbered 1/94, which instructed councils to encourage private site provision, helping Romanies to help ourselves and advising us how to develop their own sites where legal and possible. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, but Robert was bright and if he said we had rights then we surely must!

By the time I went to meet Mr Cox I was worried out of me mind. Terry and I had spent a lot of the house money making our bit of ground liveable and we were frit that we would not have a case at all, let alone win it.

At first, Mr Cox wasn’t happy with our case, but because my Terry travelled to earn a living and therefore hadn’t given up our nomadic way of life completely, Mr Cox decided that we had a chance. Now we had a solicitor on our side and, having lost our planning application at committee stage, Mr Cox lodged our appeal.