EDICT DEFIED

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6955, 8 July 1929, Page 4

EDICT DEFIED

GIPSIES ON EPSOM DOWNS “OVER MY BODY” Gipsies defied the edict of the Epsom Grandstand Association refusing them permission to camp on Epsom Downs during the spring meeting last month. On the eve of the meeting the caravans began to arrive. The Grandstand Association guards, complete with badges, were in readiness with a powerful tractor. The gipsies drove straight on the green. The tractor promptly hitched them to a chain and hauled them off again. The gipsies drove on again. The tractor hauled them off. Then it grew dark, and the tractor retired, leaving four or five caravans to make a night of it as they liked. . One gipsy placed himself between the wheels, of his caravan. “Over my body first, whichever way you haul," he cried. The tractor driver was nonplussed. Hauling caravans off the grass may or may not be legal, but deliberately running over a human being is quite another matter. The tractor abandoned this particular job and wheeled off to the road. Then the gipsy had a brain wave. Ho dashed into the road. “Where’s your licence?”. he asked the tractor man. “Where’s your nameplate and number?” He . did not stop at asking questions. He promptly put the police on the track. They, too, wanted the same information. The tractor, it was alleged, is licensed for farm use only, and here it was travelling on the high road! Out came a policeman’s notebook. Licence. Nameplate and,number? . Alas for the tractor! , Particulars were taken and the tractor was ignominiously ordered home. Gipsies Bound Over There was great movement In the countryside then, and from all roads the caravans advanced to their camping grounds, and, under the eyes of the ground caretaker and the police, about 30 caravans settled down. Horses were loosed to graze, camp fires were lighted, and the camp looked as if it had been settled there for weeks. A sequel was a case which came before the Epsom Bench. Five gipsies pleaded “not guilty." After some argument, the chairman said the Bench had by a majority come to the conclusion that there must be a conviction. They were unanimously of the opinion that it was not a case for the infliction of a fine, and they proposed to bind the defendants over in the sum of £5 to be of good behaviour for a period of six months. The Bench desired him to express the hope that there might be some modus vivendi arrived at before the next race meeting. There would be no order as to C °Co S mmander 0. Locker-Lampson, M.P., writing to the "Daily Mail," said: “The gipsies have won the first round in the fight for freedom. They intend to win the rest. Meanwhile, it has become clear that if helpless gipsies are persecuted today, other enjoyers of immemorial rights on the Epsom Downs are in equal peril. “At an early opportunity it is the intention, therefore, of those who support the gipsies to test the general right of the Epsom authorities to enclose common land and exclude the public. “Also, I propose introducing a Bill in the House of Commons to amend tire 1925 Law of Property Act in as far as it permits the expropriation of the poorest, without redress.”-