The Government is promoting GRTHM in June.

Gypsy Travellers have been coming to Southwark for cen-turies. Often, they have been subjected to racism, abuse and discrimination.

Southwark has four official sites where Travellers can live and maintain social support with their extended fami-lies. Other Traveller families live in houses. Whichever they choose, they are still Travellers who have cultural identity based on a nomadic tradition. More recently, Roma families from eastern Europe have come to live in the borough.

For more information contact:

S TAG Southwark Travellers Action Grouptriciabphillips@peckhamsettlement.org.uk020 7639 1823

STESS Southwark Travellers Education Support Servicesdavid.cannon@southwark.gov.uk020 7525 2859

CIDU Community Involvment & Development Unit michael.cleere@southwark.gov.uk 020 7525 5645

GRTHM

TRAVELLERS

The term Traveller is used to cover a wide range of groups with a nomadic heritage. Some are recognised ethnic groups covered by Race Relations legislation: Roma, re-cently arrived from eastern Europe; English Gypsies; Travellers, including Scottish and Irish Travellers.

The term also covers groups that have a travelling lifestyle but who are not considered ethnic groups: fairground families, circus families, new (age) Travellers, bargees and other families living on boats.

My son’s children, two daughters, have never been to school. They have a private someone, because he didn’t want them knowing all about sex and things like that when they were just dear little tiny children, you know, he just didn’t want it. Some of the boys in there, although they were young, they were quite big boys, you know. We do know girls that have been attacked in school and he just wouldn’t. I said let ’em ’cause they’re sort of missing out and that, he said no, I won’t, because he’s old fash-ioned, he’s me oldest son, he’s old fashioned, he don’t want them to know anything about that. And they’ve never been. The boy went to school, but only until he was twelve, ’cause that’s when all the problems start as well, because a lot of them, they get called Gypsies and that by the older children, you know.

BABES KING

OppositeLiving room in her caravanPlates collection, living roomBathroom

This pageBabes in her living room

Travelling came from years ago in Ireland, the famine. And people were put out of their houses. And people took to the roads. Now, in them times, I’d be living here, my father and mother could be there, they could be put out. I couldn’t get them in. They had to get out of the coun-try, peoples took to the road. They had no money to buy houses or rent houses. You know what I mean. And they just travelled around.

MARTIN McDONAGH

OppositeMaking a bigger cartOutdoors studioIn the courtyard

This pageMartin holding a model cart

With Travellers – of course there’s good and bad in every-body, and it’s like the country people, it’s good and bad in everybody – but we weren’t getting judged as that. We were just bad. We were putting curses on people. Which is stupid. And of course, the country children were afraid to start mixing with the Traveller children.

I remember going back 10 years ago. And I was in a super-market and I remember them going on about Travellers and this that and the other. And I was there speaking to them. And, of course, I stood there listening to them, and I had my opinion and then I turned around and said ‘well, I’m a Traveller’. And they said ‘what?’, and I said ‘well, I’m a Traveller’. They said ‘but what do you mean Christina?’ and I said ‘you didn’t know that, but I am a Traveller’. ‘I live’, I said, ‘in Glengall road’. ‘What, you live…, you mean with all the…?’ and I said ‘but, I am a Traveller’. I said ‘what did you actually think we were?’ So, she went ‘I don’t know. I only know what I’ve read about the Travellers’. ‘No’, I said ‘we are human’. ‘You know’, I said, ‘we are not with two big horns and that. The devil or whatever’.

I’m very proud to be a Traveller. And I’m glad to be a Traveller. With being a Traveller you can go around if you were, say ran out of milk. You can just pop around and shout ‘have you got any extra milk?’ or whatever. Now, you couldn’t do that to your next door neighbour, could you? And also we’re very close as far as the chil-dren are concerned. If anybody needs a babysitter, we’ll all help each other. You know, that’s one thing with the Travellers, we all go round helping each other.

CHRISTINA McDONAGH

OppositeLiving room, main houseFront window of the main house

This pageChristina, STAG’s chair, working at home

To me being a Traveller means travelling to all different places, not just being in the one place all the time. And also having all your family around you, mainly the trav-elling community. And being able to go and see them whenever you have the chance, and they can come and see you whenever they have the chance as well.

Me personally, I don’t think I could ever live in a house or a flat, I’d find it all too… I imagine it’d be all too dif-ferent to how I’m used to, my freedom. If you want to go and see friends you can just walk down there to the next pitch and say hello or whatever, whereas when you’re in a house you’d have to walk all the way to where they’re liv-ing. I know it’s not that far, but for me to live in a house would be completely different to living in a caravan.

I’m a Roman Catholic, but I don’t go to church as often as I should. I believe in what God says, but then again, how can I put it, God says you shouldn’t smoke and you shouldn’t drink, but then again most Travellers still do, so I don’t drink and I don’t smoke, but as I said I’m not as religious as I should be. I don’t go to church very often, I’ll go once in a while and that.

BRIDGET McDONAGH

Opposite & this pageBridget at work in the All Nations nursery

I would love to travel now. I would, ’cause I miss it. When we used to be out I used to have the open fire outside. You’re not allowed an open fire here, police’d be down and have you. The open fire I miss, sitting around the open fire. Lovely, absolutely lovely, I miss all that. Yer, I miss all that, ’cause years ago when we were getting brought up we’d sit around the fire in the evening, we used to have games around the fire, and the fathers and mothers’d tell us stories. I know it was hard ’cause we lived on the side of the road, some people found it hard but the travelling families didn’t, it was lovely. The wintertime was hard, the summer time was lovely, the wintertime was hard.

When I moved over to England, we used to travel around, travel around. It was only when the children grew up and they wasn’t getting no education, so with meself with no education I knew I had to get education for them. I had to do it, I had to do it. Yes, and we were left in Peckham and we got the children into the school, that was one good thing. I wanted education for them.

We used to be over there at an unofficial place. And the council pulled us off and moved us here. It had no wa-ter, no running water on an unofficial site. You had to go to the garages and look for water. And you’d have to go down to the public toilets. And go and use the public showers, and then they gave us a tap down there at the inn, we had just one running tap for about 17 or 18 fam-ilies when we moved on here first.

KATHLEEN JOYCE

OppositeLeft side of the altar, bedroom, main caravanCrystal collection & Christ icon, living room

This pageKathleen & her crystal collection, living room

When I was growing up, they did nothing but talk talk talk. They did meetings with MPs, everyone, town hall, everything. To me, their voices, no Travellers’ voices were heard. No one wants to listen. Everything’s just pushed back all the time. Like there was a site built over there, and there wasn’t enough plots like for one site to be built for 50, 60 families. It’s impossible. How can you fit like 50, 60 families into one 16 plotted site?

STAG, they are actually trying to help. But then, what can they do? They’re sending emails, they’re sending every-thing, and absolutely no-one replies. Say I’m sending an email to them and they’ll tell me, ‘we’ll send it back to that person’, and they might send it here there and eve-rywhere. It’s impossible, it’s impossible.

KIZZY STOKES

OppositeKizzy’s niece, Mary, in the family caravanKizzy’s son, Timothy, in the courtyard

This pageKizzy outside her caravan

Well it’s ok on the site because you have a lot of room. You have a bit of comfort. You have good deal of freedom, and also my wife and my son are only up the road from me so I have my own children around me, so that’s one good thing. When I used to have a house, when you go into a house, once you shut the door that’s it, everything is blanked out isn’t it, but in a site you’re not. Because there’s always someone about, looking about you, you can walk out, the door is never shut, you understand me? It’s freedom.

Yer, all the family looks up to me because they know as well that the first thing I won’t do is I won’t send them in the wrong direction. I try to bring them away from harm more than anything. That’s the way I was brought up my-self. Harm never came to me, all my life I was healthy and never got into no trouble. I am 65 years and I was never in prison. So I’d like it if my family, as much as I can, to do the same thing, I’d like that.

It means an awful lot to me to be a Traveller. I’m very proud to be a Traveller. Some people would say, ‘look, why don’t you get a house, and settle down, become wealthy’. Would be no good to me, wealth would be no good to me if I couldn’t enjoy my life. I suppose money is very good and everything, and wealth is good as well but there are a lot of people that are wealthy and they’re not happy. So if you can live from day to day, and have enough from day to day, you’ll be ok. We’ll always have enough. If you have a place to sleep in, and if you have enough food and if you have enough to carry on, that should be enough for anybody.

We know how to live and we won’t die with the hunger. We’ll always have some place to sleep and we’ll always have some place to eat, and if one of us has it the whole of us have it. That’s the way it is, we’ll share.

MICHAEL O’BRIEN

OppositeMichael’s wife’s grave, Camberwell CemeteryCart parked behind main caravan

This pageMichael (photo by Jo Malone)

Get up, you clean the house, help cooking up, pick up child from school, clean after the dinner. And that’s it. But then on a Sunday you go out. Sunday we go off. We got the day for ourself. We meet up with the girls, my friends and go off. We go to the pictures or something. Traveller girls they meet from all over London and they go out together. I mainly socialize with Travellers from the sites. I was socializing with non Travellers only when I was going to school. I lived on a site once for about 4 or 6 months. That was a long time ago. When I was ten or eleven. I liked it because I was near people. More free-dom. Since then I was living in a house. Don’t know my neighbours. We lived here for about 8 years. We say hello when we walk past them. But there is no community.

I’ve only just started going out, cause I’m thirteen. But I go out with my cousin, which is now 18. But we are meet-ing up with people from all over.

KERRYANNE RYAN

OppositeCrystal lamp, living roomKerryanne in the living roomLiving room

This pageKeryanne in her mother’s bedroom

The difference between Irish Travellers and us is there is not such a strict thing, like for women especially, but that’s the main difference, when you walk in, there are a lot of subtle differences, but that’s the main difference living in it. I mean, I like the sense of community and I like the fact that you know the kids have always got someone to look after them and you can go and do what you want and you don’t have to ask someone else to look after your kids, the fact that they’re on the site and your kids they would be just looked after with all the other kids, that’s fantastic.

CHARLENE HEATHER

OppositeHazel Walker, Charlene’s motherKerrie Wilson, Charlene’s daughterShannon Thomson, Charlene’s daughter

This pageCharlene in her living room

We intended to include the full variety of Gypsy Roma Traveller communities living in Southwark. Gypsy Roma Traveller people have always been reluctant to identify themselves due to the hostility they have experienced for centuries. This has been a particular problem for Roma people who have more recently arrived from eastern Europe. Sadly, none of the many families we approached felt safe enough to be identified as Roma in this booklet. The following quotes are examples of their concerns.

16 Year old Roma girl: ‘My culture wouldn’t like me talk-ing about us’.

Mother of two: ‘If the school know we are Roma our chil-dren won’t get a place there’.

Male shopkeeper: ‘Our customers think we’re Asian, we like it that way. If they know we are Roma they will stop comin’.

Male car mechanic: ‘I can’t talk to you and let you take my photo, my boss doesn’t know I’m a Gypsy. I don’t want him to look at me in a different way’.

Grandmother: ‘I’m sorry I just can’t, my neighbours would know it was me’.

ROMA

Opposite & this pageIn a home of a Romanian family

CoverCrystal lamp in Christina’s home

Photography & InterviewsEva Sajovic

TranscriptsNia Murphy

DesignSakis Kyratzis