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The reaction by council officers, councillors and other public officials to the complaints made by the public, were of almost more concern. Councillors of all political parties could be unsympathetic or hostile. An example of a Westborough councillor’s attitude was his response to complaints by several residents. He raised the issue at a meeting with his fellow councillors and it became apparent that he was not aware that Travellers were covered by the Race Relations Act or indeed that he was saying anything untoward. In a subsequent letter to me he asked in what way the Race Relations Act was relevant to anything he had said, repeated the points made at the meeting and then continued:

We are in a pre-election period and Travellers are a vote loser for us…..rightly or wrongly it is clear that ... [Westborough] is a soft touch. Too often our parks and streets are littered with Travellers’ vans …….If a way could be found to charge these people for services provided, that would be something. But meanwhile they are simply a drain on our resources, not to mention their disgusting dogs and the delight some of them take in shitting in the bushes (Written communication: Nov. 13 2002).

The two families in question had very severe and on-going health problems – a burst fallopian tube and a child with very severe dental decay. The “drain on resources” is an issue frequently mentioned by both residents and councillors.

In Northshire, on the day before officers were to recommend a location for a Traveller site to a District Planning Committee a call for people to join a demonstration was posted on the web.

Thursday - Gypsy demo be there!

TONIGHT is your LAST chance to protest against plans for a travellers' site…The borough council is expecting so many hundreds of people, it has hired the Theatre.

It will be a meeting of the full council - the last such meeting before Cabinet decides a number of controversial issues.

The call was successful and 250 people demonstrated outside the meeting with anti- Traveller placards and slogans. The Conservative councillor, who was the Lead Cabinet Member, attracted boos and jeers from the angry audience when he said it was absolutely vital that a transit site was located somewhere in the town64_{. Faced with this pressure,}

councillors refused the planning application.

In one of the urban centres in Southshire officers put forward a proposal for two Traveller sites. The committee papers stated:

The objective is to provide well-regulated Travellers sites, no different from the vast majority of Travellers sites in the County and across the Country, which do not cause problems for the settled community. ...providing for Travellers sites is an essential part of addressing the question of Travellers, and this must assume that any site which the Council provides is well managed (Committee papers: 14 Dec. 2005).

The objections from residents were so strong that the councillors on the Planning

Committee rejected the application and it was widely thought that the suggestion to build two Travellers sites contributed to the defeat of the Labour administration at the local elections two years later.

An interesting example of subconscious, even unconscious racism, were the actions of a Labour councillor in Westborough who opposed the recommendation to provide a permanent site in his ward. A Party leaflet informed voters that “Councillor Mills led the challenge against the council’s decision to build a Traveller site on Adelaide Avenue”65_.

The statement was entirely accurate and could not be challenged under the Race

Relations Act, but it might have appeared supportive of the electors’ anti-Traveller views and in line with the more extremist sentiments in some newspapers. It could also possibly encourage demonstrations like those seen elsewhere. When this was pointed out to Councillor Mills, he was extremely angry at any possibility that he might be encouraging anti-Traveller or racist views. However, a leaflet he produced a few weeks late proclaimed

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Report in the local paper: Friday March 2 2007.

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“Victory” for residents. When challenged he was again furious. However the leaflet had been posted through the door of a Traveller activist who phoned the Leader of the Party, a supportive councillor, the support organisations and also emailed the Police and the DCLG. As a result, Councillor Mills and the two other ward councillors apologised. In both cases it seems the councillor did not recognise the potential racism. The incidents could be considered similar to those described by Coxhead inThe Last Bastion of Racism (2007:29) and relevant to Van Dijk’s (1999) theories when he states that:

It is the social discourse of denial [that]…is most influential… also most

damaging…..that persuasively helps construct the dominant consensus (Van Dijk, 1999:543).

Councillors representing wards where Traveller sites are located are in a difficult position if they wish to retain their seats at subsequent elections. Those in whose wards there are no unauthorised encampments might take a broader view. Though the majority of councillors in the three authorities were openly hostile, there were at least two in each authority in different political parties who were prepared to publicly support Gypsies and Travellers. A Conservative councillor in Southshire, appointed to the Cabinet in 2009, challenged his colleagues on their lack of progress regarding action towards increasing the number of pitches identified in the Accommodation Needs Assessment. In Northshire a Liberal

Democrat councillor on the forum is known to be passionate about equalities and leads the debate on Traveller sites, in Westborough a Labour councillor challenges evictions. In other authorities, where proposals to develop sites have been put to Council Planning Committees and have been rejected by a large majority, there has been at least one councillor who has spoken in support of the recommendations.

In Westborough a senior Conservative councillor, I interviewed in July 2009, had an impressive and detailed knowledge of Gypsies and Travellers. She said:

They need to be able to continue their lifestyle. When they’re born, that’s how they live. They live differently to us, very clean. If you took a present of some biscuits, they wouldn’t accept them as it’s not clean. If you go into a caravan it’s spotless, but they do leave rubbish.

There are different groups; they’re not all the same. There are the real ones. And then in Southern Ireland they call some of them “hedge crawlers”, also “Tinkers”. I’ve heard “hedge crawlers” in Kent too.

She explained that the decline in the traditional annual fruit picking in Kent had caused problems:

[You] get groups who tend to stay around sites – whereas others would travel through. They now stay longer. [They] used to go across Hampshire to Kent for the fruit picking and stop on the way and the majority would be down in Kent.

She also pointed out that in Ireland they have beautiful homes and then go travelling in the summer. She did not however have a “rose tinted” image of Gypsies and Travellers. When a large group of Irish Travellers were evicted from their unauthorised encampment she and a colleague followed them. They drove into a park and when they started circling a father and his son playing cricket, she phoned the police whose reaction surprised her:

It was quite frightening I phoned the police and they were really rude – “Oh someone else is dealing with this. We don’t need you to phone us.” I phoned a senior officer and complained that he was rude and said you ask the public to cooperate and then they get this response.

She also expressed concern about the way the issue was sometimes handled by council officers:

Officers don’t always get it right – don’t mean to be rude. Officers don’t know the culture. I don’t want planners to get hold of it yet. I am aware of what officers would like to do. You know they just get a large piece of paper (she demonstrated) and say we’ll have this here and this here.

She had visited permanent sites in other authorities and was advised that Gypsies and Travellers prefer small sites:

We could get it right if we listen, we could solve two problems – their life style and lessen problems for our residents. We must look at the location with regard to the lifestyle and what you put there.