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The New Age Travellers are a group of people who often espouse New Age and/or hippie beliefs, and who travel between music festivals and fairs in the United Kingdom in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs. Their transport and homes consist of vans, lorries, buses and caravans converted into mobile homes. They also make use of improvised bender tents, tipis and yurts. New age travellers were largely a product of 1980s and early 1990s Britain,[1] but a small number continue to travel in the country today, and cultural groupings with similar composition have also manifested themselves in other countries, such as New Zealand.
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Background
The movement originated in the free festivals of the 1970s such as the Windsor Free Festival, the early Glastonbury Festivals, Elephant Fayres, and the huge Stonehenge Free Festivals in Great Britain. Later events included the Castlemorton Common Festival, a huge free and illegal event which attracted widespread media coverage and prompted government action. Some legal festivals, such as WOMAD, continue to be held in a variety of countries, including the UK.
Peace Convoy
In the UK during the 1980s, the Travellers' mobile homes - generally old vans, trucks and buses (including double deckers) - were driven in convoys. The movement had faced significant opposition by the British government and mainstream media, epitomised by the authorities' attempts to prevent camps at Stonehenge, and the resultant Battle of the Beanfield, in 1985 - the largest mass civil arrest in English history.
International manifestations
New Zealand
Housetruckers are individuals, families and groups who convert old trucks and school buses into mobile-homes and live in them, preferring an unattached and transient gypsy lifestyle to more conventional housing. These unique vehicles began appearing around New Zealand during the mid-1970s and even though there are fewer today they continue to adorn New Zealand roads.
An early manifestation of this culture was the Blerta (1970-1973) travelling circus of music, light theatre and art. This involved a well known New Zealand actor Bruno Lawrence and 30 or 40 hangers-on who travelled around the country in a clapped-out Bedford bus and sung, wrote and did hippie art. Most of the riders were radicals, hippies, groovers and free thinkers. They attracted a following and had a hit single with "Dance around the world" which was nominated for the Loxene Golden Disc in 1971, a local musical award at the time. After 1973 the Project ran out of steam, and Lawrence turned his hand back to acting in such movies as Smash Palace in 1981. [2]
Contemporary British travelling scene
Many people see the Castlemorton Common Festival in 1992, a week-long festival that attracted up to 30,000 travellers and ravers, as a significant turning point for New Age Travellers in Britain, as it directly resulted in the government granting new powers to police and local authorities under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to prevent such events in the future. The Criminal Justice Act included sections against disruptive trespass, squatting and unauthorised camping which made life increasingly difficult for travellers, and many left Britain for Ireland and Europe, particularly Spain.
However, thousands of people still live a traveller lifestyle in Britain.[citation needed] They are now normally known simply as Travellers. Few, if any, travellers live on the local authority sites reserved for Gypsies and Irish Travellers (although many travellers would qualify for Gypsy status under the current law), so instead stay on unauthorised sites throughout the countryside, particularly in Wales and the south-west of England, and in urban areas. London is home to a large number of traveller sites in places such as disused factory or warehouse yards, and there is often a crossover between travellers and squatters, with travellers parking up in yards attached to squatted buildings. Typical traveller sites might have anywhere from 5 to 30 vehicles on them, including trailers and caravans as well as buses, vans and horse boxes converted to live in. Although most travellers in Britain are British, there are also large numbers of European travellers in the UK.
As these unauthorised sites are evicted and travellers moved on frequently, accessing basic services such as health and dental care, refuse collection, benefits, and education for children can be problematic. Many traveller families home school their children.
Although travellers have only taken to the road since the 1960s, many traveller families are now in their third or fourth generation. Despite widespread popular assumptions about travellers living on state handouts, many do seasonal or temporary work, on farms and building sites or in factories and pubs for example. Others work as self-employed mechanics, electricians and plumbers, or make money selling scrap, or running stalls at markets and car boot sales. Festivals during the summer also present many opportunities for travellers to make money through offering entertainment, services and goods to festival goers. A high level of mutual aid, the sharing of childcare and vehicle maintenance and "skipping" (collecting food from local supermarket skips) within communities allow travellers to live on very low incomes.
The Traveller and Free Party scenes are often closely linked, and many travellers run or are involved with the sound systems that put on raves and squat parties.
See also
References
- ^ Lowe, R & Shaw, W. 1993 Travellers: Voices of the New Age Nomads. London: Fourth Estate. ISBN 978-1857021400
- ^ Nambassa: A New Direction, edited by Colin Broadley and Judith Jones, A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1979.ISBN 0589012169.
Bibliography and films
- Pierre Carles, Volem rien foutre al païs, (co-directed with Christophe Coello et Stéphane Goxe), 2006 (a French film documentary about various ways of living on very low income, as many travellers do).
Further reading and external links
Gardner, Peter. "Medieval Brigands, Pictures in a Year of the Hippy Convoy" Published 1987 by Redcliffe, Bristol. ISBN 0 948265 0 27
- Colville, Fergus. Timeshift: New Age Travellers BBC 4, August 2005
- Lodge Alan, A gallery of New Age Traveller images, mostly from the 80s and 90s Retrieved 2008-11-04
- Mr. Sharkey, Gypsy Faire "Many of these images [from New Zealand] come courtesy of Chris Fay, previous editor and publisher of Roadhome NZ"
- Staff, BBC 2003,, Inside Out, BBC, 20 January, 2003, "After being forced to camp illegally for years, Brighton Council are the first to introduce a legal site for New Age Travellers".
- Worthington, Andy (Jun 2005) The Battle of the Beanfield, Enabler Publications and Training Services, ISBN 0952331667 9780952331667
- Worthington, Andy (June 2004). Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion, Alternative Albion, ISBN 1872883761 9781872883762
- UK Hippy [1] and Tribal Living [2] counter-culture community websites.
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