unexpectedly. The typical response by local residents was to demand their eviction. When plans to build an official site for them were proposed, residents protested and were supported by their elected representatives. Many legislators believed that the only way to truly end the Gypsy or Traveller “problem” was for them to settle and integrate into society. “Make them settle down for good and live like the rest of us,” declared a Tory councilor. “Why should they be any different?” His views were widely shared. Our goal as anthropologists was to learn what Gypsies needed and wanted as well as the problems local authorities faced, and to provide the DOE with as fair and unbiased an overview of the issues as we could. We were also tasked with making recommendations.
THE RESEARCH PROJECT
George and I arrived in Leicester, a city in the British Midlands, by train on July 7, 1980, after a flight from New York to London the previous day. This was where our research colleague, David Smith, taught and lived. David had been involved in earlier research on Gypsies and Travellers, had proposed the current project in 1978, and had been working with the DOE and Welsh Home Office to lay the groundwork.7 This included obtaining our work permits, which required making the case for why we should be hired as the project’s researchers rather than two U.K. residents. Our prior work with Irish Travellers gave us the necessary credentials.
It was great to be met by David at the train station and immediately be taken to a furnished apartment on Leicester Polytechnic’s lovely Scraptoft campus.8 The project’s office was located in a converted eighteenth-century manor house, on whose estate grounds the campus had been built. It was a large and airy room on the second floor that overlooked formal gardens with a beautifully ornate iron fence and gate. With David’s help we quickly settled in.
During the first week we obtained university library cards and explored the campus—its library, Senior Commons’ room where we could take tea with other faculty twice a day, gym, tennis courts, pottery studio—and tranquil environs. We took the bus into downtown Leicester and were suitably impressed with its timbered Elizabethan buildings and thirteenth-century Guild Hall as well as its clean streets and human scale. We opened a bank account, browsed in a bookstore, and picked up maps at the tourism office. We located a lending library and, observing an entire wall of books in Punjabi, were visually made aware of the city’s multiculturalism.
The next day, David gave us a tour of the surrounding countryside. We were fascinated by his Renaissance breadth of knowledge; he seemed to know everything from the roosting habits of local sparrows to the minutiae of Tudor architecture. Stopping at a quaint village pub for a pint and a Ploughman’s lunch (bread, cheese, and pickle), we spent the entire afternoon talking about the research. We were happy to learn that our schedule as the project’s principal researchers was flexible but disappointed that our planned ethnographic fieldwork had been scaled back. The DOE’s steering committee—comprised of DOE officials, two members of the National Gypsy Council (NGC), and representatives from several local authorities—wanted a survey and were interested only in information that directly related to the central concerns of the project: the migration patterns and accommodation needs of the most nomadic Gypsies and Travellers.
Only statistics, David said, were likely to convince them of the validity of whatever recommendations we might make. We decided to use an interview-based survey with a number of opened-questions as our major research tool and to aim for a sample of one hundred families. While discussing what to ask, it emerged that three generations earlier, David’s ancestors—Smiths and Taylors—had been Gypsy horse dealers who had become grooms and then lost their Gypsy identity. David did not identify as a Gypsy but had many contacts in the Gypsy and Traveller communities based on his work as an educator, local historian, and accomplished wagon and cart painter.
A few days later, we drove to Manchester to meet Huey Smith, a Gypsy leader and head of the NGC, who was on the project’s steering committee.9 The normal two-and-a-half-hour trip to Manchester with David talking the entire way and driving 90 mph couldn’t go quickly enough for us. David warned us to anticipate a confrontation with Huey since Gypsy affairs were highly politicized and given Huey’s personality. Instead, Huey turned out to be very cordial and took us to a department-store cafeteria for lunch where he refrained from asking us a single question about our backgrounds, work, or intentions. Afterward, we returned to his small office which was located on the grounds of a public school.Its walls were covered with maps of England, Scotland, Wales, and London with pins marking Gypsy sites; its floor crowded with stacks of NGC publications. Huey then laid out the history of Gypsy politics and regaled us with stories of the NGC’s battles with other groups he claimed were organized and run by “intellectuals” who used Gypsies as front men. He also revealed the grudges he held against various scholars whom he accused of stealing government money that had been earmarked for Gypsies. Hours later, on the way home, David told us about some Gypsies’ accusations about Huey’s own nefarious financial doings. We listened as attentively as we could, but having to absorb so much new information was exhausting.
Only a week after arriving we were in the car again, this time driving to South Hampton, again at breakneck speed, for a week-long conference on Traveller education. Most of the ninety-five attendees were teachers or government officials, but a few Gypsy representatives were there. It was a great opportunity to make contacts and to learn more about the issues facing Travellers in England and Wales. Listening to talks and discussions about Gypsies for eight to ten hours a day, even though the focus was on education, provided us with a wealth of background information that would otherwise have taken weeks, if not months, to acquire. Most presenters were articulate, if not erudite. But the conference also underscored what a sensitive political issue Gypsies and Travellers were in the United Kingdom and impressed upon us the need to be careful about whom we listened to. We also received a warning from one participant that our findings might not be published or distributed as we might expect. Nevertheless, the more we learned, the more engaged in the project we became.
The conference had its lighter moments too. Most presenters injected humorous anecdotes into their talks, which were greeted with uninhibited laughter from the audience. The personable headmaster of a local school volunteered to drive us to visit a nearby Gypsy site. On the way there, he further contradicted just about every stereotype we held about the reserved and “proper” Brit by revealing his salary, the difficulty he had having sex with his wife while caravanning with friends, and even that his hemorrhoids had forced him to give up sailing.
On the drive back to Leicester, the three of us decided that George and I should spend some time in Ireland, interviewing Travellers about their migration patterns and economic activities in England. We reasoned that since Irish Travellers were the objects of so much animus in the United Kingdom, they might be more forthcoming at “home.” So in mid-August we took the ferry from Holyhead, Wales, to Dun Laoghaire, Ireland—the main route Travellers used to cross the Irish Sea into the United Kingdom. With the help of Mervyn Ennis, a social worker we knew, we were able to interview forty households about their migration to and travel within the United Kingdom. We also talked to social workers, government officials, and ferry and port personnel on both sides of the channel..
We returned to Leicester in mid-September and began making weekly research trips to different parts of the country in search of Gypsy encampments. Unlike most anthropological research, we spent a lot of time on the road, looking for groups of Gypsies and Travellers. It was easy to locate official sites, but our primary interest was in the mobile population. We often learned of an encampment only to arrive there to find that families had moved on or been evicted. Initially, we stayed in hotels, but the smell of cigarette smoke (smoking was then permitted in hotel rooms) soon prompted us to look elsewhere, and we began staying in smoke-free youth hostels instead. Leicester proved to be a good base from which to operate since it is located in the middle of the country. Our goal was to administer our survey in as many parts of England and Wales as possible, also talking informally to families about their travel patterns and evictions, their thoughts about official sites, and related topics. On these trips, we also interviewed the local authorities who dealt with Gypsies
