Gipsies Agree To Settle Down

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31588, 27 January 1968, Page 13

Gipsies Agree To Settle Down

(Special Cripdt. N.Z.PA) LONDON, Jan. 26. Britain’s Romany Gipsies, of whom there are still 32,000, may soon give up their nomadic existence. Their leaders have agreed to accept a nation-wide system of permanent caravan sites on which they can settle—a move they themselves have long strenuously opposed. Now, it seems, the end of the road has been reached. The commons and by-ways

have been made so unbearable for them that the lesscomplicated existence of settling in one place has become preferable. “We must have sites where we can live in peace, but we are afraid the gipsy, the fortune-telling and wooden caravans, are going to die," they say. Few tears are expected to be shed by Britons for the passing of the gipsies’ nomadic existence, for the romantic legend of the gipsy has long since worn extremely thin. Local authorities have frequently hounded the Romanies from camp sites and roadside halts because of the rubbish they leave behind.

Living on their wits, gipsy groups often bring to their encampments broken-down vehicles which they dismantle for saleable spare parts. And when they move on the remains are left behind, despoiling the countryside. Gipsies are often, and rarely wrongly, blamed for outbreaks of petty thieving and poaching that occur in areas in which they are camped.

Their frequently unkempt appearance has done nothing to ease the hostility farmers and country lovers feel towards them.

A number of local authorities have, qn health grounds, tried last year to help the gipsies by providing special cara-

van parks for them, but have found the Romanies generally antagonistic towards any form of control. Many attempts to extract payments for the use of the caravan sites have been met with abrupt refusals. Gipsy leaders often deplore the rather unsavoury reputation their people have among settled Britons.

Ernest Williams, pastor to the Romanies, declared at a gypsy leaders’ meeting this week: “Romanies have the highest moral code in the world.” He welcomed the decision of the leaders to help with the establishment of permanent camp sites. “We’re ready to settle,” he said.