ODPM Committee visit to Appleby Horse
Fair, 7 June 2004
INTERVIEW WITH GORDON BOSWELL
ANDREW BENNETT: But David [Committee Adviser]
seemed to think that you knew a lot more about the private sites.
My impression is that, the legislation
that has come through since the 1960s, when local authorities
had to provide sites, isn't working. And the question now is what
to do about it? Now, one solution would be to force more local
authorities to come up with sites. But, as I understand it, one
of the more interesting developments is that various people, like
yourself, have been looking to provide private sites and that
in many ways, private sites fit into the community easier than
local authority ones.
GORDON BOSWELL: Yes. My site has planning permission
for 20 caravans—20 trailers, as we say—and I'm in
a fortunate position by . . . I charge them rent, and they can
come and they go. People think travellers have got a problem when
on the road, that they have nowhere to stop. The proper travelling
people—the proper Gypsy people, the Romany people—that
community hasn't got the problem that people think they've got.
And the simple reason is I've got a private Gypsy site for my
own friends and relations. Before they come to me, they'll ring
me up and say, "Have you got room for two or three trailers?"
And we'll say, "Yes" or "no". "Well,
as soon as someone moves, give me a ring". Now, we've got
all these mobile phones about and it's easy to keep in touch.
And when we have a space they will come on. And when they leave
my place, they won't just pull willy-nilly anywhere, not knowing
where they're going to stop; there's another person somewhere,
like me, that has got a private site, they will go on to him.
These are the people that you never hear of because they go from
A to B and they know where they're going. They haven't got a problem.
ANDREW BENNETT: But are there are enough
of those sort of sites?
GORDON BOSWELL: There isn't enough of them sites.
We've got this big problem that's going on now at Cottenham there.
That is, in my opinion, too big. It shouldn't—they shouldn't
hear me say it, but they shouldn't be allowed to be as big as
that. There is no need for it to be as big as that.
GORDON BOSWELL: Now, we find that three parts
of the time there's a little bit against these Romany and Gypsy
people that if they buy a piece of land then they want to pull
just their own half a dozen trailers on it. They get refused the
permission straight away. It's a "no" whether it's in
an area that someone could get it passed or not. They seem to
be refused straight away.
So, the only way they seem to fight for it is
by pulling a few trailers on and hopefully we can get it passed
later when the local council know that we're not bad people, we're
all right. We can keep it nice and tidy and clean and then put
in planning permission and they can see what we're doing. That
is how I done mine. I put in plans for mine for a start and they
wouldn't give permission—no way, whatsoever. I run a Romany
museum in Spalding. I went to my local council to say that I was
going to start a museum up and they said before it went to planning,
that we wouldn't get planning permission because we'd encourage
the wrong type of people to the area. So, they said "no"
before it got to planning.
So, I actually done it after about two years
thinking about it without permission because that was something
in my head telling me. When I opened it and they came down to
see it—the local tourist people they said it's a marvellous
thing for the area. You know, it will—it will do the area
good. It will bring the tourists here; it will help a lot. The
tourist man said, "Of course, I suppose you've had a professional
set it out?" I said, "The professional—I'm the
professional, as I tried to tell you two years ago what I wanted
to do". But they thought I was going to make a new age traveller
village in the area.
Then it got in the paper, "Romany Man Opens
a Romany Museum" and then I got television coverage for it—the
two channels—and the next thing, I heard from the council,
"You haven't got planning permission for it". But the
tourist people give me a good write to say what a good thing it
would be for the area and at the end of the day they said, "If
you put plans in we'll pass them for you". So, that's how
I got mine. But, they didn't even want that.
BILL O'BRIEN: How firm was the planning
authority against your illegal site? Did they give you notices?
GORDON BOSWELL: No, they didn't. They just
come down and said that you haven't got planning. You'll have
to do all this, that and the other. I then got an architect come
and draw the plans up, all the sites and where the caravans was
going and toilets and things like that. But after two goes at
it, I did get it passed. Because I think in that time they realised
that I was the right type of people that was on there. And I did
everything with toilets and water and things like that and they
seemed to be happy with it. But before the council passed it,
they would only give me five years' licence for it. So, even now,
it's only on a five years' licence because at the end of the day,
I think they've got something under their belt or under their
cap so that they can refuse it if anything goes wrong with us.
But this is what we have to put up with. So,
all I'm saying, the people—the Gypsy people that you never
hear of, there's a lot of them about and I honestly believe that
if these small sites of up to 10 trailers were given permission
on a five years' licence, well if they don't do the job properly,
well, it can be refused later.
That would help the situation a lot all the
way round but you're still going to have that type of people that
is in needs—they need a local council site.
BILL O'BRIEN: Where do you draw the line
between need and demand?
GORDON BOSWELL: Well, I think really, there
is a need and demand. There is. Because a lot of Gypsy sites are
private Gypsy-owned Gypsy sites, but I shouldn't think there's
one case that's had a straight through planning permission—put
plans in and that's it. It's been a fight for these people, like,
all the time. And I think that you—I don't know if you say
local government or councils or whatever, has got to look at it
in a different light. I'm not saying being taken over by 50 trailers
on one site, things like that. I'm not saying that. But look at
it in a different light and just give it a try. Let them—you
know, you don't give them their licence until they've got these
toilets and all things like that.
ANDREW BENNETT: But what's the economics
of it? I mean, is it feasible to make a site for five or for 10
trailers?
GORDON BOSWELL: Well, yes. If you make it a
site for five trailers, that would be just a family, with me it
would be probably two of my children and myself and my wife and
some grandkids. So, you could probably have a small site that
they've got for five people.
ANDREW BENNETT: And it's not too expensive
to buy the land in some parts of the country and it's not too
expensive to put the facilities in for that sort of size?
GORDON BOSWELL: For that sort of size. But I
think between five and up to 15 sort of thing. That's my own opinion
and it's up to yourselves after that—up to the people after
that if they want. But if someone puts a site in and wants to
make a 50-trailer site, well that's more of a big business isn't
it? But still, even a 50-trailer site run by the right people
will have no problem because that man will only have the right
people on.
I remember in 1968 the Act come out that anyone
with no fixed address was classed as a Gypsy. That was in 1968.
That put the arm around a lot of people that had nothing at all
to do with Gypsy people.
So, then . . .
ANDREW BENNETT: Well, wait a minute. Can
you give a definition then of what is a Gypsy person?
GORDON BOSWELL: Well, it's very, very difficult.
I would have thought—there's only 25% of proper Gypsy people
here at Appleby. The others are hangers on, want to bes. And these
are the people that are coming on your Gypsy sites of today because
everyone was classed as a Gypsy and anyone who had no fixed address
was classed as a Gypsy.
So, they had a trailer caravan; they was on
the road. The Government then could usher, rush them on or push
them on, to a council site. And then you found these council sites
hasn't really doing the job properly, then you find that the proper
travelling people, the genuine ones, won't pull on them sites
because of so much rub—people who was there that shouldn't
be there.
CLIVE BETTS: Is that because those people
didn't look after the sites properly or their behaviour wasn't
acceptable?
GORDON BOSWELL: Well, the behaviour, they're
throwing rubbish about and things like—then—look at
this site here [at Appleby]. I got this field 18 years ago. I
used to come up here with horses and wagons. The lady just bought
this field and I asked if I could put three horses in this field
and she said, "Yes". It had nothing to do with Appleby
Fair. And then she said, "The next year, if you want, you
can bring your caravans in". So, we come in here. We've been
here, as a family, ever since.
All these in here [pointing] are my brothers
and sisters and nieces and nephews.
CLIVE BETTS: You say who comes in and stays.
GORDON BOSWELL: And I say who comes in because
the lady's happy with us to be in here sort of thing.
And this is the type of site that you could
get all over quite comfortable. All over, with this amount of
trailers on. I think there's 17 on here, you might say, "there's
only need for five because that's my immediate family. But make
it for 15, because there will be some people, cousins for example,
that come on and move about and come and go and things like that".
But there's no problem. These people here won't just move from
A to B without knowing where they're going. Some people on there
will go to any old site—pull out on any side of the road
and things like that.
CLIVE BETTS: So, the "true" Gypsy
families then, I mean, they will move around these private sites
which are owned by friends, family who they know—
GORDON BOSWELL: Exactly.
CLIVE BETTS: —and have got connections
with?
GORDON BOSWELL: Exactly.
CLIVE BETTS: And so the people who haven't
got those traditional Gypsy connections, I mean, they're the ones
who end up on council sites, are they?
GORDON BOSWELL: Exactly.
CLIVE BETTS: Or probably in the middle of
nowhere—
GORDON BOSWELL: Yes.
CLIVE BETTS: —camping on some land
illegally?
GORDON BOSWELL: And that's where you get problems
from. From over the water—I won't say where they come from—from
over the water not very far away, you've got a big problem with
that type of person at the moment. Very, very big problem in England.
And that is what's happened with this Cottenham site. The English
Gypsy developed it, started it and got pushed out by these people
that's come in and it's taken it—and now they're saying,
"Let's have the English Gypsy back here again. They wasn't
as bad as what we've got now".
CLIVE BETTS: Is there a friction then?
GORDON BOSWELL: A friction? A very, very big
friction. We wouldn't have it anywhere near them or with them
so there is a friction, yes. Because the people from over the
water, very fightable, very excitable. They'll do anything, they'll
. . . Oh, you know, we pay the lady who owns this field some rent.
They would come in and push us out and wouldn't pay the lady rent,
sort of thing. This is what you've got.
And you'll—you as a Committee, you have
got a problem with trailer sites but you've got a bigger problem
from these people from over the water that's in England now and
still coming.
ANDREW BENNETT: But why are they coming?
GORDON BOSWELL: Because they've been pushed
out of their own country for the simple reason for what they're
doing in this country.
ANDREW BENNETT: So, are they pushed out
because there's no work for them over there or is it they're pushed
out because of the lack of sites?
GORDON BOSWELL: It's because of lack of sites
and they've heard about England, like the other immigrants who's
heard about England. They've heard about England and they're coming
over here. It's a freer country than where they've come from and
I think it's getting to a stage—in like it was in the foreign
countries, it was illegal to travel, as far back as in the 1930s.
And they took—the Hungarian Gypsies and people like that,
had their wagons and horses taken off them and were put in houses—the
foreign Gypsy people. And they said it was illegal to travel.
ANDREW BENNETT: It isn't illegal to travel
in Ireland now, is it?
GORDON BOSWELL: It's not illegal to travel
but I think David [Committee adviser] knows more about this than
I do. I'd like you to explain it while I've said my little bit.
It would just carry it through. Just tell them why in a few words.
DAVID SMITH: In Ireland, there's been far
more site provision and facility provision of one sort or another
including housing. But legislation—as legislation must—is
not only an incentive but it's also got to be a disincentive for
the thing it's trying to remedy. So, what has happened is that
sort of it has been generally agreed that sort of the site provision
has run its course in Ireland satisfactorily in terms of numbers
of provision. But these groups are now being pressurised.
Now, there is a suggestion in the Irish press
that the Criminal Assets Bureau are starting to take a very considerable
interest in some Irish Travellers, a couple of families in particular.
Those families have networks that go right across Europe, way
over into the Czech Republic and that. And their sources of wealth
have never been properly investigated and certainly their ability
to pay tax has been pretty minimal. Now, the Irish government
is looking closely at that and they are removing themselves into
England to avoid scrutiny. That is one of the things that's going
on at the moment.
CLIVE BETTS: We can follow that up in Dublin
obviously.
ANDREW BENNETT: Yes. This is going back—can
you tell us a bit about your particular way of life. Do you move
around to sites where you know people?
GORDON BOSWELL: I've got a house—I live
in a house, right? I live in a house, quite a big house. I've
got a museum and I've got a business. I do horse and carriage
weddings; I do funerals with horses and things like that. I also
have a Gypsy site for my own friends and relations. I've got daughters
who've married out and still travel in caravans. They go away,
come back and things like that. And I do as well. But these latter
years, I've been more settled in travelling. Until this year,
I come up every year to Appleby with two horses and that wagon
[points at traditional Gypsy caravan] with me and—and my
wife. This year I haven't brought the horses for the first time
for about 18 years. So, yes, I live two lives. I live your life
and I live my own life.
CLIVE BETTS: Is that true for quite a lot
of people then?
GORDON BOSWELL: Yes, exactly. There's a lot
of true traveller Gypsy or Romany people, if you can put them
together, that are out there that you couldn't pick out—you
wouldn't know they were travellers. They're in businesses. They've
got carpet shops, they've got various other business and things
like that that you never hear of. Because it's like the Pakistani
people that come into England, you get some—some of them
that just want to sponge on the government, you've got others
who will go to work and you've got others who'll work 24 hours
a day and have a corner shop and make themselves wealthy. So,
we've got the same with they Gypsy people. We've got some that
will work seven days a week and put all hours in that God send
and make themselves comfortable. And some that doesn't want to
do that sort of thing, you know?
There are categories in all walks of life. We
can't be all put together, which I'm afraid, for years and years
since time began, we've all been tarred with the same brush.
For instance, where you live—well, I don't
know where you live but if you live in some nice houses and you've
got some nice friends and—around you, one of their boys,
their sons, burgled or he got caught taking drugs or selling drugs,
you would be saying, "Oh, I feel sorry for Mrs so and so.
You wouldn't think their son would do that". That's how you
would all feel. And the community wouldn't say that all that area
where you all live is all drug dealers. They wouldn't say that.
One of ours does something like that and we're all classed exactly
the same. And for why it is, I do not know. It's been like it
for generations. One does something wrong, "All them Gypsies
are all thieves".
I say to people—and I'm saying to
you today, go back home, switch your television on and listen
to the news. Read your newspapers and go through it all and according
to how the public look at the Gypsy people, all these rapes, murders,
stabbings should be all Gypsy people doing it. But who is doing
it? They're not Gypsy people. The word Gypsy/Romany comes up very,
very little, more often than not, and we're all classed thieves
and murderers and vagabonds. It's happening today.
I've been refused—myself and my wife—only
the other year, pulled into a pub when we were going home from
Appleby and they refused me entry, "We don't have your sort
in here". That is still happening today.
I went to buy a piece of land two years ago.
I bought it off someone who was in difficulty with his bank. It
was only six acres. I bought it off him, we walked on it on the
Saturday evening and I said, "Monday morning, we'll come
and sort solicitors out". He met me at his house at 10.00
am, before I got to the door, he was out at the gate and said,
"I can't sell you the house—the land". I said,
"Well, what's gone wrong?" He said, "My wife doesn't
want the Gypsies to have it". This is what I get all the
time and why should it be? Because there's a lot of us is like
me and like these people here and we're all getting tarred with
the same brush. And when people say to you—to me, "What
do I think of the new age travellers?" Because again, we're
all clumped as new age travellers and Gypsies together. And I
say to these people, "I'm pleased you've asked me that question
because I'm pleased to say they're more your relations than they
are mine because they haven't got that much Gypsy blood in their
veins. No way whatsoever". But we're all classed the same.
CLIVE BETTS: Can you—can you measure
Gypsy blood then?
GORDON BOSWELL: Yeah, of course you can.
Of course you can measure Gypsy blood. The old Romany people are
Romanichals, as it was known years ago, but since we've had these
people come over from foreign countries, they've—we—they've
brought another word into use, "roamer". We've never
used "roamer" in England until the Gypsy people from
abroad came. We're not all roamers together. We're Romanichals
or Romany people or Gypsy people. But roamer has come as a new—another
new word.
I've got nothing against the people that's coming
into England—them type of people—but I just like to
keep things on a level, going with the flow sort of thing.
But as to measure blood—as to measure
blood, we can measure blood because I can go back to my three
times great grandfather, quite comfortable, as old Romanichal
people and there—a lot of other people can't. These people,
they come to me—they come to—"I'm a—I'm
a Romany". Well, I say, "Who was your father? Who's
your grandfather?" They don't even know who their grandfather
was so how can you measure blood with them people? Actually, I'm
getting on my high horse now but . . .
BILL O'BRIEN: Gordon, what's the purpose
of your presence here this—for this fair?
GORDON BOSWELL: I've come here . . . I'm 64,
I'll soon be 65, and I've come here—I shouldn't think I've
missed five years out of the whole of me life. I've come here
when it was on the road. I've come with horses, with me mothers
and fathers and we always come here. Nowadays its more like a
Sunday market for a week. Years ago, it was Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday. It's like a ghost town today because they've pulled
it forward to the weekend. And my father was the instigator of
the Appleby Fair being saved. In 1964 before the bypass was put
through Appleby, they wanted to stop the fair because it was dangerous
on the road that all these lorries was coming up this hill through
Appleby—and they bypassed it. They wanted to stop it because
it was a danger.
It was a big fair in this—in them days.
But as people were arriving the police were
stopping them before they got into Appleby and saying, "The
fair is stopped. It is finished". So, they was all turning
away back and they used to go back to Scots Corner to gather on
there because they didn't know where else to go. They went back
there and then me father came up and they said, "Gordon .
. ." his name was Gordon, "It's no use going into Appleby,
the fair is cancelled. They're turning everyone away". And
he said then, "They can't cancel Appleby Fair. It's impossible
for them to cancel it. It is a chartered fair and they can't stop
a chartered fair". And the reason is, it's like a chartered
market in any town with stalls. If no stall turns up on that market
day, the council then has got the right to cancel it because the
charter has been broken. And that is what the Council and the
police here wanted to do, not to have any horses or wagons in
the fair and then they'd have the right to cancel it.
My father come up and told them that they couldn't
do this and it carried on. They had to take notice because they
thought it had got sorted out, but someone there stood up to them.
Then between 1964 and 1965, the two fairs—my
father done a lot of toing and froing from—to the council
and then they come up with a compromise that the horse fair was
done on the road. The horses up and down on the road and the trailers
and caravans and horses and wagons were all on the hill over there
[indicating]. So, it was changed around. The horses used to be
grazing on there and the trailers were all up and down the road
and that's it.
So, it was my father in 1964 that saved Appleby
Fair. And sometimes, you'll hear the—you'll see the sign
Appleby New Fair because it was the New Fair from 1965. Until
1965 there wasn't water in the fair for horses or people and we
used to buy water from that little house [indicating]—at
the bottom of the hill—it was a little dairy—and I
queued up as a child for one of these water cans and paid threepence
in old money for a can of water until 1965 when they put water
in the fair and water troughs for the horses, sort of thing.
And that is why horses still go down to the
river, you see, to wash. They think it's to wash, it is to wash,
but originally, there was no water in the fair. You couldn't come
up here with buckets of water so they took all the horses down
to the river to drink. That's where the tradition come about.
But until that time, that was it. So—and now—and it's
grown now as big as it is. Where other old horse fairs has died
out, Appleby has grown. I'd sooner see it like it is today than
dying out completely like a lot of the other old fairs.
ANDREW BENNETT: The horses—are they
disappearing slowly?
GORDON BOSWELL: No, they've come back strongly.
Strong. The Gypsy horse has always been the black and white horse
and that was all the trade there were for black and white horses.
But people, they're still keeping tradition on and one way of
keeping tradition on is keeping the black and white horse or breeding
black and white horses.
CLIVE BETTS: Is there any economic purpose
to having the horses or is it?
GORDON BOSWELL: There is now, the black and
white Gypsy horse going to America. We have never a breed registered
in this country but America has registered the black and white
Gypsy horse in America. And there's a lady here today, she's bought
about 30 out the fair over the weekend to go back to America because
America is intrigued with them. They have not got anything like
it, sort of thing.
BILL O'BRIEN: But until that started to
happen then it's really just been a tradition you're keeping on?
I mean, they don't work anymore or?
GORDON BOSWELL: Yes. It's true that—no,
they don't work anymore. They just have them to—as a—as
a sport, as a hobby and things . . .
ANDREW BENNETT: There's still a fair number
of trotting races, aren't there now?
GORDON BOSWELL: We was all into the heavy
black and white horse. Now, the younger generation have got to
that stage where they've bred another type of horse we call it
a road horse, used for races. Now, you've got the purebred trotting
horse—again, probably an American horse or a German horse—that
will do 30-odd miles an hour in these Appleby trots here if it's
all set up properly, but it's not just for Gypsy people, but for
everyone to go and see. Recently people have put that horse to
another coloured horse and now they've got a coloured trotter.
For these past five years we've seen coloured trotting horses,
thoroughbreds.
Up to five years ago no one wanted a black and
white horse. No Gypsy person wanted a black and white horse. Didn't
want to be associated with Gypsies. But now, for some unknown
reason, it is the in thing. And if you look now, in all these
fields, all the non Gypsy people have got black and white horses
and ride them.
A month ago, in one of the Sunday's paper, the
Queen and some of her family were riding black and white horses.
Did you see that?
ANDREW BENNETT: What about living in houses,
do many?
GORDON BOSWELL: Well, go back 100 years.
Some people couldn't handle the way of life or they married out
to a non-Gypsy lady or a lady might have married out and they
got in houses. So, that part of the Gypsy community, to a certain
extent, got lost.
But still now there are people who are renting
houses or even buying houses that come out travelling in the summer
time in trailers like this and go back in the wintertime. So,
there's a lot of them people that you don't know is about because
they haven't given you a problem.
But your biggest problem is, at the present
time, them people from over the water that's in England. And David
has put it in a nutshell, I think, why they're here. And you thought
you had a problem with the English Gypsy but nowhere near as what
you've got or going to have.
ANDREW BENNETT: Well, in a constituency
like mine, people identify Gypsies as Irish tinkers or diddicoys.
So, they make—
GORDON BOSWELL: Who taught you the word
"diddicoy"? The word "diddicoy"—or here,
they call them pikers. And I'll tell you how it came about.
The Gypsies and the Romanys came into England
together about 1500. And they didn't even want them in then. But
anyhow, they're here. And then, gradually, there was people about
the country travelling about and no problem as such. They thought
they were a problem but there was no such. People started to marry
in to the Gypsy people or gypsy people marry out, and then they
come and—and these others come and copied and took the life,
then the public—such as yourselves—and other people
that were—realised they've got a different type of person
about England than we used to and we've got a different—then
they—they don't seem to be like the old Romanys and the
old Gypsies, they're different. And they realised it was people
who was marrying in or joining them and it was the public that
give the word "diddicoy", not us. It's nothing to do
with us. It's just like, where did the new age traveller come
from? The people—the public give them the word "new
age traveller". Nothing at all to do with us and this is
what happened. I don't—for what—for what good it's
done you—done me, I don't know but there it is.
ANDREW BENNETT: Thank you very much indeed.
CLIVE BETTS: Fascinating. Thank you.
BILL O'BRIEN: That's very good of you, Gordon.
Thanks.
GORDON BOSWELL: Very nice to see you.
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