BBC: New Age Travellers
Posted by Babu Rao on 01 Jun 2009 | Tagged as: Documentaries

The New age travellers or Peace Convoy were a group of people who often espoused New age and/or hippie beliefs, and who travelled between music festivals and fairs in the United Kingdom in order to live in a community with others who hold similar beliefs.Their transport and homes consisted of vans, lorries, buses and caravans converted into mobile homes.They also make use of improvised tents, tipis and yurts.
New age travellers were largely a product of 1980s and early 1990s Britain, but a small number continue to travel in the country today, and cultural groupings with similar composition have also manifested themselves in other countries, such as New Zealand.
Many people see the Castlemorton Common Festival in 1992, a week-long festival that attracted up to 30,000 travellers and ravers, as a significant turning point for New Age Travellers in Britain as it directly resulted in the government granting new powers to police and local authorities under the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to prevent such events in the future.The Criminal Justice Act included sections against disruptive trespass, squatting and unauthorised camping which made life increasingly difficult for travellers, and many left Britain for Ireland and Europe, particularly Spain.However, thousands of people still travel in Britain.They are now normally known simply as Travellers, or very occasionally, New Travellers.Few, if any, travellers live on the local authority sites reserved for Gypsies and Irish Travellers (although many travellers would qualify for Gypsy status under the current law), so instead stay on unauthorised sites throughout the countryside, particularly in Wales and the south-west of England, and in urban areas.
London is home to a large number of traveller sites in places such as disused factory or warehouse yards, and there is often a crossover between travellers and squatters, with travellers parking up in yards attached to squatted buildings.Typical traveller sites might have anywhere from 5 to 30 vehicles on them, including trailers and caravans as well as buses, vans and horse boxes converted to live in.Although most travellers in Britain are British, there are also large numbers of European travellers in the UK.
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