Gypsy Roma Traveller Leeds
The permanent site of the Gypsy Roma Traveller Communities
Text Size |
Around the site
Dragonory
An audio CD of seven stories called Dragonory was specially prepared by Jess Smith the Scottish Storyteller for the Travellers Storytelling Project.
Listen to one of stories to whet your appetite.
In their own words
Tommy's Story
Extract from "Gypsies and Travellers in their own words"
I was born in Dublin by accident, not by choice. My mother went up there and I was born in 1937. On my Register of Birth it says – "Caravan, so-and-so". Funny thing is that I was born in Dublin and never, ever lived there. My father always stuck to the North of Ireland.
 |
You can read the whole of Tommy's Story in the book "Travellers and Gypsies in their own words" published by the Gypsy Roma Traveller Achievement Service. |
I think I got my kick from me grandmother. Now she wasn't a Traveller. I really remember her. She was my mother's mother. She was; we would call her a 'country woman'. She was called Winnie Burns, and me grandfather went off with her as a young girl. He was a boy then. She was not a Traveller, but me grandfather was.They were all Travellers bar her. I'm sure she'd be cast as an outcast.
In them days you (Travellers) were dirt, you were nobody. If you went to hospital you were put to one side, we were classed as dirt. My parents had less education than me.They were married very young my mother was sixteen or seventeen, my father was eighteen. I had it bad in my time, but they had it twice as bad.
I only spent one day in school - me and me brother, Bobby went to school. In the morning me mother and father brought us down to school, and I could smell the chalk, I could smell the milk, I could smell the classroom and I was looking forward to getting some of this milk - in little bottles, you know and sitting down.The teacher was a lovely woman, she was a grey-haired woman. Suddenly these two policemen come in, RUC men come in, and talked to her and pointed down to us, and said, not through her fault, "You have to go, boys, you're moving on." That's the only education I ever got - half a day. So we went back with the policeman, me father had already tackled up and was ready to go. Me mother was hawking all day - she'd come back and find we'd moved.
Me father marked the road. We leave marks. Indians had the same rules, marking where they'd been. And we had the same sense as that; we'd mark the road. We'd put a bit of grass down going that way. Come to a crossroads, and we'd put the grass one way. It wouldn't blow away, we'd find something hard on the road, so it wouldn't blow away. Or a bit of flour down, if you had any, throw it on the floor, and they'd find yer. Me mother, she'd walk miles and miles to find us. So that was one very sad thing for me mother. We really suffered back there. There was no security - nothing like that.
If you were on the road in Ireland there wasn't a lot of traffic around, and the weather seemed different then - there was always warm weather. If my father saw a bike coming in the distance and saw a cap shining, he would go and hide. Me father was a very strange man, he was very nervous. He thought it was an RUC officer and his experience of them in the past was terrifying. He'd go and hide in a field till they'd gone. It could be a postman, only one man on his own.
There were certain places you could go and the worst time of the year if you were in Northern Ireland, was the 12th July. You had to get out of the area, if you were in a Protestant area, you had to move out of there immediately and get to a safe area. A safe place was Newry, part of Newry was safe. Armagh city was safe - it was a Catholic area.
If you were in Portadown when they came back from the black march,well you were number one target. They'd come back drunk and kick everybody on the place, break everybody up. I remember as kids they'd make us sing "The Sash My Father Wore",we had to sing it.The women were there,the men had to go away and hide in the fields, but the women never went away and we'd move out of that area immediately.
Tommy in Leeds
I come to Leeds because travelling was really bad in the 50's and 60's. I wasn't going to get involved again, because my wife said "You're going to get killed. You're going to get murdered."
One day I was going down Kirkstall Road, before they altered it, and I saw a family being moved on by the police and they rough handled them. My nerves got the better of me and I got out of the car and I confronted the police.
After that I started to campaign really strong for Travellers in Leeds, and when they were attempting an eviction in Leeds I went and stopped it. Nine times out of ten we stopped it. We organised the Travellers not to move for them. We got Travellers to leave their vehicles there. It grew so big that the Yorkshire Post got on to it, and I was called from John O'Groats to Lands End to Travellers; it was a full time job then. They called me the King of the Gypsies. And it's been all me own money. I never had any money from Travellers. Never asked any money from Councils. That went on for about three or four years. I approached the Council on a site for Travellers. They wouldn't hear tell of it. No way. No site for Gypsies in Leeds.
About 1965 Leeds University got involved. We started a campaign.We had a number we could ring at Leeds University Union. One number to ring - and we'd have hundreds of students out in minutes. And that stopped the police moving the Travellers on.
Preventing Evictions
I would use delay tactics. I remember I went to Preston in Lancashire, one time. There were about forty Travellers there and we were in a bit of nowhere - like a sewer farm it was. But they'd nowhere to go. Again the police come down there heavy-handed, and the Council men come down too. I arrived, anyway. The police had known me in Preston. I organised them not to move and the Travellers stood against the police. So the police had a brilliant idea: they'd bring the bulldozers down and block us all in - forty families, you couldn't see them all in this tip. I had a brainstorm, I got over the tip and went to the nearest Fire Station and asked for the Fire Prevention Officer. I said:
"Look we have a problem, we've got Gypsies on here, they've been blocked in. Can you see if there's any safety for Ambulance or Fire Engine to get in."
A roadside camp in Meanwood, Leeds 1966. The council officer is moving the family on from one unofficial camp to another. There are no 'official' sites for Travellers in Leeds at this time.
The Fire Officer come down, he looked around like and then he said to the police:
"Look as far as I'm concerned, if there's an emergency, that's a community of people, I can't get a Fire Engine in there, and therefore you must make a space for them to get through."
That was a great victory that day, everybody was up in arms, clapping the police, and the bulldozers had to move away the earth to make a gap. All the Council came down next day and said:
"We cannot accommodate all of you, but we will accept twenty of your families." Wherever I was, there's been a site made, there's one there too, now.
In Leeds the Town Clerk more or less sympathised with me that the Travellers should have somewhere to go. A fellow called Pat Crotty (he's now deceased) he was a solicitor in Leeds, he was all for the Travellers and there was also a few of the councillors for the Travellers.
Then the Caravan Act came in '68, which gave us some power. They set several sites in Leeds all over the place, from a sewer farm right down to a cattle market, anywhere. Well, some of the Travellers wouldn't go to certain places, you know. "I won't go there. I won't go there."
Police action during an eviction in Birmingham in the 1960's.
So eventually they pointed out a temporary site at Cottingley Springs, that was for six months, and they said "You can go on a temporary basis." All the local farmers round there got a petition up saying:
" If Gypsies move in, we move out."
It never happened. The only people that never signed the petition were the Jewish people; the Rabbi at the Jewish Cemetery wouldn't sign the petition. Had he signed it we wouldn't have got our site. Thank God the man didn't go for it. So the site was opened there temporary. Now it's the permanent site, Number One and Number Two sites, so that was the kicking off point in Leeds.
Education for Travellers
But the Travellers still wasn't being educated. We approached all the schools in Leeds and they wouldn't let the children start schools. So we went down to Leeds Education Department with all the Travellers' children. I said:
"According to the 1944 Education Act, you're not doing your job. These children need education."
The press was there, Granada Television, and the BBC covered it, and it embarrassed them. So there were places at ten schools for Travellers immediately.
It's school time for the Travelling children
First day of school for these children of caravanners camping on cleared sites in the Holbeck area.
They were received at Bewerley Street Mixed Junior and Infants School.
On our first day at school we were frightened to go in.
A score of children, aged between five and eleven years old, attended school in Leeds today for the first time.
For most of them, it was the first time any member of the family for generations had crossed the threshold of any educational institution.
From the Yorkshire Evening Post 18.4.1967
'They wouldn't let any of the children - in the schools.
They said they were full, there was no room, so we went down to the Education Offices by the Town Hall with all the children.
They had a meeting and promised that they would have places for all the children in twenty-four hours.
The Evening Post took the photographs of the children as they started school.
This was the beginning of Education for Travellers.'
Tommy Doherty
Travellers in Strasbourg Flying the European Flag
This is taken in Strasbourg. We went to Court there in 1968. That's me and the doctor - a French Traveller - who was giving evidence on our behalf.
We were all giving evidence to The Court of Human Rights about the treatment of Travellers.
The British Consulate denied all harassment of Gypsies, but we showed a film to the Committee and they were convinced. It proved we were right in what we were saying.
The film was called "An Outlaw's Life" and was made by the 'World In Action' team.
The camera was hidden in the trailers in a camp in Birmingham.
The film shows the police coming in buses. They lined up at the side and baton charged all the trailers.
It proved at Strasbourg that it did take place.
The Caravan Bill went through Parliament after this.
Around the site
In Their Own Words
Gypsies and Travellers in their own words compiled by the Gypsy Roma Traveller Achievement Service is a fantastic read, and gives amazing insights into the lives and times of Travellers in this country.
Unfortunately this book is no longer available.
The collection of stories and personal histories in this rich volume creates a vivid picture of life within the Gypsy and Traveller communities.
Also read about
Annie's Story
I think it was much better when I was a child than it is now, really. You hadn't as much money or anything, but things were cheap and stopping was good. You could stop on a roadside for forty-eight hours and they couldn't shift yer, with having horses and wagons – but now they shift you any time.
Tilly's Story
There are differences in the culture and the beliefs and in the way we live. Well me brother's married to someone who was brought up in a house, a girl from Leeds and he lives in a house. More boys seem to marry out than girls. You only hear of a very very odd Travelling girl marrying out but I know an awful lot of men that are married outside. I think it's because Travellers people have got their own ways.
| Top of page | Mail page | Print page |