Travellers

it is my view that the whole thing is incorrectly posited as upper middle-class dropouts, dossing away a few years before going to work in management. i know this is an easy characterization, but i don't believe it to be the case. but perhaps you will be able to prove me wrong with your experiences!

In Ireland the travelling community has strong historic roots and traditions. They would be similar in essence to the Romany communities in many ways. Like the Romany communities in most of Europe the government seeks to get them to settle in housing "for the good of the children" or to make them more manageable. There is a real intolerance towards them both in the media and society. For example "Knacker" is a term commonly used as an insult but originally was a slang word for traveller. See also "Tinker" become devalued and being turned into an insult where it used to describe how the communities used to come into villages etc and do odd jobs or repairs. "Itinerants" is also used incorrectly to describe them. They have homes, it’s just they move around.

Personally I do accept that travelling might not be to the benefit of the children's education but that with the tight knit nature of most of the communities the child shouldn't feel totally alienated in any new environment. Unfortunately, as I said above, the way they are perceived is as criminals and children will always repeat what they're (settled in this case) parents said leading to conflicts in the playground and the community.

One case recently (the McNally shooting) really showed the uglier side of how they as a community are perceived. A farmer shot a burglar, reloaded and shot him again as he was crawling away on the road. Admittedly the farmer was scared beyond all comprehension and the need to totally solve the problem (i.e. make sure the person couldn't harm him again. There had also been a small campaign of fear beforehand by the group which of course didn't help anyone) led to him reloading; or so it has been claimed. My point is that there was this groundswell of support (led by the more tabloid elements in our media including the Sun, Mirror and Herald) for McNally that was outraged with his ‘harsh’ sentence. It seemed to me that because the Travellers were perceived by tradition as criminals and crooks that there was a real lack of concern about the horrific violence of the murder. This was a man with 3 children who was murdered yet the media/public seemed to only be able to see him as a traveller living up to the more venal side of his nature. I was fairly disgusted by the whole thing so I apologise if anger has garbled any of the story or committed the ultimate sin of omission!

What is described above appears to be (I think) what was termed "New Agers" which was when some (I stress SOME) of the unemployed of Britain came over to Ireland where their welfare payments would cover more. They seemed to spend most of their time in the South and West working and travelling. I think that they were making the best of a bad deal or maybe pursuing a more simple existence near to home. I've never been in a settlement or had dealings with them but I've never heard anything too negative during summers in West Cork and things, apart of course from the usual "They're not much use really" which really isn’t fair as nowadays the whole organic trend in West Cork can be traced from this group and it's influence so there's that to be grateful for anyway!

yes, i my question was probably more in terms of "new age" travellers, but i wasn't sure if i liked that term, so just decided to leave it

thats interesting, about the move of many to rural ireland. it makes a certain sense, logistically, for that to happen, at least. its something which is much less...visible than it used to be here, but its always difficult to know, if thats because of the medias lack of interest in this today.

I really wanted to run off and join Spiral Tribe for about a week in 1992.

So did I. I read some magazine article about Pendragon soundsystem parties in the Wellsh mountains and thought this would be a good way for my life to go.

I'm glad I changed my mind.

Well I think it kind of petered out really. The areas they were going to started to really take off due to an improving national economy leading to the property they were squatting or settling on becoming desirable and suddenly the weekly cheques weren't going as far as they used to. Part of it could be growing a bit older and wanting to settle properly (I'm treating this group as being first generation travellers rather than from a traditional traelling background) so they remained in Ireland and became a part of the community like with the thing about organic produce I mentioned above.

Stevem you'd be a good hippy. It's the mutton chop sideburns :)

It all seemed to change when Labour came in? Like many things. Less of a media fixation. Maybe because there was a newfound optimism generally at that point which made people feel less alienated or 'out there'? The big enemy (Tory govt) had been toppled, but this in turn may have given some people less of a sense of meaning in what they were doing? Maybe the attention turned more to anti-capitalism and global issues rather than domestic (if not already)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Tribe - Holy shit! I want to join them NOW, not be at this desk!

By 97 Ireland was definitely well on its uppers. I couldn't rightly say why there was a switch in focus I think it could just be that there were other things to focus on as you say both for the media and the whole 'great new hope' for the disnfranchised.

On the NYC>Montreal train a few years ago, I shamelessly eavesdropped — a solo Australian guy struck up conversation with a couple behind me when he heard their Australian accents. Solo guy was in the middle of what he figured would be about 18 months travelling. He had worked the coldest months of winter tending bar at some resort town in Colorado, had been on the road in the US for a few weeks, and was now heading into Canada for travel and sightseeing before finding a job for a few weeks to replenish cash supplies. The couple were on their way to Canada after four months somewhere in South America -- Brazil, I think. They said they enjoyed it, but were glad to go somewhere where they didn't have to sleep with one eye open quite so much.

Eventually my friend Dave and I joined in the conversation, and all three of them were saying it was pretty common for Australians with families of enough means to travel for a year or two before they chain themselves to a desk or whatever.

I was pretty envious.

There are some travellers who are going to be moved on so they can build the Olympic stadium in Stratford. One of them was on telly saying that she'd lived there for 30 years, which really raises questions about whether she was a traveller at all...