News Shorts & Other Busyness

Travellers Abroad

Squall 9, Jan/Feb 1995, pg. 7.

There are indications that travellers are leaving this country to avoid prosecution under the Criminal Justice Act.

Steve Staines of Friends, Families and Travellers told SQUALL a lot of people have left over the last year. Although assessing the numbers and their reasons for leaving is difficult he believes that the figure is probably hundreds: “I’ve talked to a quite a lot of people who are saying we’re going to have to go abroad. That’s certainly a recurrent theme.”

The travellers’ destinations seem to be Ireland, Spain and Portugal. In Ireland there has already been an official response to more travellers than usual. One particular article in the Southern Star, in October, quoted a West Cork Councillor who expressed disquiet at the large numbers of ‘New Age Travellers’ moving to Ireland to “escape Draconian British Laws”. There have been calls for similar measures against travellers to be introduced in Ireland.

Steve Staines detects a steady trickle of travellers to continental Europe. He says some have travelled to Ireland and then, instead of returning to Britain, have taken a boat straight to France, Spain or Portugal.