New age travellers
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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 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[citation needed], 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.
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[edit] Background
The movement originated in the free festivals of the 1970s such as the Windsor Park Free Festival, the early Glastonbury Festivals, Elephant Fayres, and the huge Stonehenge free festivals in Great Britain.
Later events included the Castlemorton Common Festival, a huge free and illegal event which attracted widespread media coverage and forced government action. Some legal festivals, such as WOMAD, continue to be held in a variety of countries, including the UK.
[edit] The Peace Convoy
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In the 1980s United Kingdom, the New Age Travellers' mobile homes - generally old vans, trucks and buses (including double deckers) - were driven in convoys, often without the necessary tax and insurance.[citation needed] The movement had faced significant opposition by the British government and mainstream media since the mid 1980s, epitomised by the authorities' attempts to prevent camps at Stonehenge, and the resultant Battle of the Beanfield, in 1985 - the largest mass civil arrest in English history.
[edit] New age travellers and the free festival movement
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The clash of lifestyles culminated in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 making trespass a criminal act, largely aimed at this group, and also traditional traveller groups like English Gypsies and Irish Travellers.
[edit] International manifestations
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In New Zealand there are fleets of unique handcrafted mobile-homes or house-truck rigs that are a permanent lifestyle to groups of families who travel together from city to city, and who assemble most weekends in different parks to hold craft markets from where they sell their wares. Small Cottage industry and handicraft is essentially the revenue earner for these gypsy peoples. Most mobile-homes are constructed from the chassis upwards using predominantly cheap recycled materials.
[edit] Contemporary British travelling scene
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.
As these unauthorised sites are evicted and travellers moved on frequently, accessing basic services such as health and dental care, refuse collection, benefits, and education for children can be problematic. Many traveller families home school their children.
Although travellers have only taken to the road since the 1960s, many traveller families are now in their third or fourth generation. Despite widespread popular assumptions about travellers being dole scroungers living on state handouts, many do seasonal or temporary work, on farms and building sites or in factories and pubs for example. Others work as self-employed mechanics, electricians and plumbers, or make money through selling scrap, or running stalls at markets and car boot sales. Festivals during the summer also present many opportunities for travellers to make money through offering entertainment, services and goods to festival goers. A high level of mutual aid, the sharing of childcare and vehicle maintenance and "skipping" (collecting food from local supermarket skips) within communities allow travellers to live on very low incomes.
The Traveller and Free Party scenes are often closely linked, and many travellers run or are involved with the sound systems that put on raves and squat parties.
