Travelling folk

Where evictions occur it is, arguably, proof of a local authority's failure to carry out its statutory duty. It may be that authorities which provide sufficient sites, (and to spare), find that they do not need designation. Gypsies have strong cultural and kinship ties with their continental counterparts who remember the dreadful Nazi programs of mass extermination throughout Europe between 1940 and 1945. Also the well intentioned, though hardly less heartbreaking, forced separation of gypsy children from their parents into religious orphanages from 1950 onwards in Switzerland in order to solve a perceived gypsy problem there. UK legislation is ephemeral by comparison but it is hardly surprising that gypsies regard all legislation concerning them as oppressive. Perhaps it is a measure of the success of our laws of control and protection that the problem, if it exists at all, is of such small nature.