Travelling People
A story: “…. It would be about 1950 when I was 10 or 11. The men were out delivering rag bills in the villages and a big black car pulled up and a feller in a suit got out. Everybody thought he was a gavver and kept away but he drew the women together and told them he was from the Government. He had papers in his hand and he said we were to stop travelling and move to a site.
The women said they had never heard of a site and would do no such thing. But the man said if we didn’t move onto this council site the children would be taken away into care to learn to read and write. There was uproar.
When the men came back there was talking and shouting into the night. They were mad and left the common straight off to get out of the way and hide themselves.
I remember my father tying sacking round the horses’ hooves so they would go quiet through the villages in the early hours and nobody would know we were passing and tell where we had gone. That was the first we knew of sites….”
So it goes on.
