Sites for travellers - cheaper than persecution

The current government campaigns against travellers have been likened to the Nazi persecution of gypsies during the second world war. Whilst the seventeenth century laws making it illegal to be a gypsy were repealed during the following century, the proposed new legislation is a major infringement of basic human rights.

'What perturbs me is that if 'hippies' can be sent packing, who is next? The gypsies? The Irish? The Asians? The West Indians?' asks Dennis Binns in 'How to de-commission a lifestyle'.

The Declaration of Human Rights states in article 13 that everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Yet the new police surveillance on vehicles and their drivers is in conflict with this.

The government makes much of caring for the dispossessed in former Yugoslavia, and of establishing safe havens for the Kurds, yet they are prepared to do nothing about the problems on their own doorstep.

So where are these travellers supposed to go? With laws impounding their homes, authorities dividing their families, and imprisonment for resisting arrest, the future seems bleak. But travellers do have their own solutions, if only the government would listen to them. Arrests, bed and breakfast accommodation, and finding permanent homes for maybe 5,000 individuals could cost the government £250,000 per week. It would be much cheaper and more practical to come to some arrangement about site provision.

There are many areas of potentially suitable land in Britain, which include:

- Green lanes and commons where travellers have traditionally stopped for centuries. Both can be used by small numbers without damage being done.
- Disused council land - areas either awaiting development, or just lying empty would be suitable.
- Ministry of Defence land - acres of green land, well away from houses and settled communities, which are reserved for occasional defence use. The areas with most potential are the hundreds of disused airfields abandoned after World War II, and much of Salisbury Plain.
- Sympathetic landowners - there have been several cases in which landowners have fought local authorities for the right of travellers to live on their land. Proposed legislation states that: 'It is a criminal offence to park any living vehicle on any land without the consent of the owner'. Yet even with this consent, the owner may be subject to fines up to £20,000 if there is no planning permission. Councils usually oppose such permission.