TRAVELLER CAFÉ AND FILM NITE
FRIDAY 25TH OF MARCH 7PM
78 Gower st (new social centre) near Euston or Tottenham Court rd



TRAVELLER ACTION NETWORK

Aims to stand in solidarity with the Gypsy and Traveller communities
when
they are facing racist oppression. This can include helping to fight
evictions, campaigning against the councils and bailiffs who evict
sites,
highlighting racist attacks by police, individuals and various layers
of
government.

Gypsies and Travellers are one of Britain’s oldest minority
communities.
However, they are the most marginalised people in the country, with the
highest infant mortality rates and the lowest literacy rates. The
travelling lifestyle has been pretty much destroyed by oppressive
legislation such as the Criminal Justice Bill 1994 which enables
authorities to move people on as soon as they stop. Twenty years ago
the
Thatcher government removed the duty of local authorities to provide
sites
for Travellers and told the community to buy their own land. However
90%
of Gypsy and Traveller planning applications are refused. Therefore
most
sites, after a legal process, are evicted. Often the land is
repossessed
to cover the costs of eviction, and the families have to start from
scratch and buy new land, only to be evicted again. The result is to
force
more and more people into houses, where they are separated from their
communities, lose their way of life and are unable to practise trades.

The other side of the story is often told by newspapers such as The
Sun,
Daily Mail etc. The Sun recently mirrored the Mails’ ongoing campaign
with
one of its own, calling ‘Stamp on the camps’. Gypsies and Travellers
are
portrayed as dirty, noisy, law breaking ‘nuisance neighbours’. That is
the
general racist stereotype, one which should sound disturbingly familiar
to
attacks on other ‘outsider’ groups of people.

To get in touch with the campaign email:  info@travellersupport.org.uk
And visit www.travellersupport.org.uk