Posted on 08/31/2011 3:25:15 PM PDT by dynachrome
Hundreds of anarchists and student protesters are plotting to join the battle against the bulldozing of Europe’s largest illegal traveller camp. Police fear bloody confrontations with bailiffs and officers as outsiders attempt to turn the protest into a politically motivated riot. About 50 anarchists have already joined the 1,000 travellers at Dale Farm and Basildon District Council has spent ten years trying to remove around 500 travellers from Dale Farm after they settled beside dozens of legal plots. It ended up in the Court of Appeal last year when 80 families on 52 plots were ordered to leave. The council issued a 28-day notice to leave the camp which expired at midnight last night. It said it would be ‘checking compliance’ in the coming days. But police insiders fear that when council-appointed bailiffs arrive it will either trigger
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Another great story! Are you like me, in that you had to forcibly prevent yourself, resist the temptation, to romanticize them? Even most of the cops I talked with said they had that dilemma — they really got to like these CROOKS who would RUIN the lives of elderly. It took a special kind of cop to really stick to nailing Travelers, and they all seemed to have a soft spot for Travelers, even though they lived to put them in jail.
That series was on Channel 4, and I imagine available on youtube
Mitch, all I can say is that the Travelers (Tinkers) here in the U.S. operate entirely differently, from what I've been able to determine. What do you say, Muawiyah?
And also, Mitch, thanks for the reminder -- it IS stupid to romanticize these folks. Hard to resist sometimes, but stupid just the same.
It seems to me that leading a nomadic lifestyle is entirely different in a vast country like the US, than it is in a country of 65million people roughly the same size as Oregon!
Hadn’t thought of it that way — excellent point, and well said!
The McCafferty's, McCaffreys, the Williams' and the williamsons ~ 6 tribes of Indians (maybe more), and the local mafia numbers guy who also hauled whiskey on the weekends.
Over time even more of these folks came through the neighborhood,even a Skurlocke or two ~ and when you run into one of those guys they tend to be on the rough side.
Had to encourage the folks to leave the place.
This was pretty typical of the upper reaches of 46218 ~ and you can look that up if you want ~ back then we even had a few college graduates, artists, Vegas croupiers, CPAs and maybe a chemist or two. If I lived there today Carson would be my Congresscritter. He'd be drinking beer in my garage with the door closed ~ just to be neighborly of course.
I've watched these folks become assimilated, and then I've seen mob debt collectors come around and burn them to death in their trailers on the back of the lot. (Saw the aftermath BTW, if there are any questions about being a direct witness).
There's a lot of pressure on them to stay in the rackets and move around so they can take advantage of life with no fixed address. At the same time the ones who went to college wanted to be normal ~ and own that "camper" for "camping"!
Trying to think back and try to remember if I ever saw any inter-racial dating and I don't recall it at all. The Indians weren't even into intertribal dating ~ not even at church.
Now deceased Senator Stevens of Alaska grew up pretty much in the same area ~ so he'd have recalled when he was a kid having the Roma (Gypsies) come to Fall Creek and Sherman Drive and campout ~ by the thousands.
It'd been a Gypsy tradition to go to Indianapolis and have a meeting, and then go somewhere else for the summer. The Travelers did the same thing ~ but the cops in Indianapolis had the nation's largest collection of pictures and makes on every Traveler and Roma, so they didn't hang around Indiana.
More recently they've forgotten their own history and you'll see Gypsy and Traveler "beating the child" scams popping up in Indiana.
Those kids are tough so it doesn't hurt as much as you might imagine. That comes from playing outside all the time.
The English evangelist Rodney "Gypsy" Smith, a sort of Billy Graham of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was proud of his Gypsy heritage. The UK could certainly use the likes of him today.
LLS
I can hear them riffling through wallets as we speak. (Bwahahahahahaha).
Wow. Thanks for the history and the info.
Do you all remember about 5-10 years ago when the woman was arrested in Indianapolis for child abuse? She was a nice looking, well dressed woman who was observed slapping her child in a parking lot and roughly throwing the little girl into her late model SUV. It turned out that she was training her child to shoplift and the little girl wasn’t doing it right. She lost custody of the kid for a while. But, they turned out to be “travellers” who lived in NC but they were working the circuit in Indiana for the summer.
See #51.
For those interested, here’s a short documentary about the self-styled ‘King of the gypsies’ Paddy Doherty.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFlMNAx_U1A&feature=fvwrel
This gives you a flavour of what the life of a traveller in Britain is like
The kid was jumping around like she was really getting hit.
We have a WalMart nearby and I've seen the same trick being acted out in the parking lot. Nobody comes. The local people are wise.
Did you know that WalMart installs security camera pickups at ankle height in the electronics section. When I first noticed that I was kneeling down to get hold of a super deep dish discount discontinued item ~ and there were the pickups looking UP.
WOW!
WalMart plays a game with these people and I think all it does is sharpen their edge.
There were bands of “gypsies” that roamed California in the 1940s and 1950s. These were NOT Mexican migrant workers, athough they followed the crops. I remember a girl was registered at my elementary school. She was dark complected and had long, dark hair. She didn’t stay long.
Then, when I was in college and working at JC Penney, the fabric deartment got a shipment of many bolts of silk chiffon at $1 a yard. This would have been in 1956, or 1957, cotton broadcloth was 39 cents a yard, and fine wool could be purchased for less than $2 per yard.
This is the rest of post #55. I’m typing on a stupid laptop that just jumps to different programs all the time and sometimes I can’t finish my post.
(continued from #55)
I was an elevator operator, and I spotted this bargain chiffon as they put it out in the morning. I rushed down on my lunch break and bought enough to make a “formal” for college, just guessing at the amount I would need. It was lucky that I did because a band of Gypsies came through the store soon after and purchased every single bolt of that silk chiffon — every scrap.
I think these were Romany Gypsies because they were all dark complected. You might mistake them for Mexicans, except for their speech and their dress.
My son lives in S Carolina and has lived in FL. He’s told me about the Carolina Travellers. I’ve forgotten the name of the settlement, but they have a whole enclave there of beautiful, lavish houses. They travel all over the place doing bogus home repairs and then they use the proceeds to build themselves elegant homes. The family will build a new home for newlyweds as a gift. They are skilled craftsmen when they work on their own places, and they always have plenty of materials that are “left overs” from the jobs where they scammed people.
According to my son, they are Catholic and they have their own priests.
The “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” series was an eye-opening account of their customs. They did not delve into what the men did, or didn’t do, for a living; but in the UK the women did not work outside of their homes after they were married. Although they claimed to be strict Catholics, they dressed like prostitutes — even at their weddings. The brides worked at designing their wedding dresses all their lives, and they married young, as young as 15.
They often went to a popular horse fair (where the men bought and sold horses and ponies) to stroll around in provocative outfits and meet their husbands-to-be. The girls did not date without a chaperone. Some of them had ony seen their grooms twice, or three times before the wedding.
But, you should have seen the dresses — a lot of them had see-thru bodices! Not what you see in church here! And most of the skirts were gigantic — so huge that often the father of the bride could not walk down the aisle next to his daughter. And they would have to keep the location of the reception secret so that they didn’t get kicked out before the wedding day.
Many of them rented a coach and white horses to be transported to the wedding. No $$$ were spared on these productions.
My son lives in S Carolina and has lived in FL. He’s told me about the Carolina Travellers. I’ve forgotten the name of the settlement, but they have a whole enclave there of beautiful, lavish houses. They travel all over the place doing bogus home repairs and then they use the proceeds to build themselves elegant homes. The family will build a new home for newlyweds as a gift. They are skilled craftsmen when they work on their own places, and they always have plenty of materials that are “left overs” from the jobs where they scammed people.
According to my son, they are Catholic and they have their own priests.
The “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” series was an eye-opening account of their customs. They did not delve into what the men did, or didn’t do, for a living; but in the UK the women did not work outside of their homes after they were married. Although they claimed to be strict Catholics, they dressed like prostitutes — even at their weddings. The brides worked at designing their wedding dresses all their lives, and they married young, as young as 15.
They often went to a popular horse fair (where the men bought and sold horses and ponies) to stroll around in provocative outfits and meet their husbands-to-be. The girls did not date without a chaperone. Some of them had ony seen their grooms twice, or three times before the wedding.
But, you should have seen the dresses — a lot of them had see-thru bodices! Not what you see in church here! And most of the skirts were gigantic — so huge that often the father of the bride could not walk down the aisle next to his daughter. And they would have to keep the location of the reception secret so that they didn’t get kicked out before the wedding day.
Many of them rented a coach and white horses to be transported to the wedding. No $$$ were spared on these productions.
Hee hee.
LLS
This is really, really, really difficult for a guy to deal with.
They got nowhere!
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