Tape 146, 

Mikeen McCarthy 28,10,84

Contents

Comparison of old and new way of travelling life.

No time for conversation today.

Travellers had time for one another.

Paddy Doran in Prison.

No welcome in Gorgies houses today.

Relations with police and councils.

Relationships with Gorgies deteriorated but is now improving.

Discrimination in pubs; "No Travellers," signs

Relationships with police in old days marvellous.

Aunt died in Glin, Limerick, funeral paid for by Gorgies.

No Travellers in pubs.

Travellers begging.

Rules of hawking.

Changes in work.

Youngsters loss of skills.

Modern trades.

Selling at markets.

Travellers in houses, England and Ireland.

Old trades.

Being in house "like being in prison”

Living in houses way of getting children educated.

Importance of literacy.

Deterioration of education among Travellers

Travellers being moved on, then and now.

Eviction and confirmation.

Eviction and education.

“We should all get together like the coal-miners “.

Identification with the miners.

Travellers, health care and unemployment.

"Only thing we can't do is settle down".

Relationships between national groups of Travellers.

Talk of organisation, “London Roadside Travellers Group";

Relationship between young and old.

Future of travelling life.

Travellers absorbed into Gorgie life.

J C       How do you think that Travelling life on the road today…… how do you think that travelling on the road compares nowadays to the way it was when you were young; is it better or what?

M Mc  It’s better, but the Travellers is not as loyal to one another as they used to be.  Well, they’re all trying to…… in my eyes now like, they’re all kind of settling down, more or less settling down like the settling down community; it’s changing every day.  Put it for the time of the tents and the wagons like.  Well, there’s a man come along with a tent now, to make a tent like, they’d make a laughing stock of him, you know.  Like they all have motor caravans now and trailers, lorries, they’re all on different occupations.  If you tell them now today, the young breed today that you were a tinsmith in your time, they wouldn’t have a clue what you’re talking about, they’d ask you what way; they wouldn’t have a clue, they’ve never seen nothing like that done.  If you tell them about being a horse dealer, they imagine anybody could do that, buy a horse and sell one; they imagine there’s no skill to it; they know nothing about a horse, they wouldn’t know how to catch one, they’d be afraid of him.  Me now, guys, we often say down there and we talking how hard we worked when we young, making three legged tables and four legged tables for a half a crown each, two shillings each, they’d be getting a laugh of us, you know.  Or we start telling about dealing about feathers, which we all do, the old guys do; they haven’t a clue what we’re on about, they haven’t a clue, they wouldn’t know anything like that.  And then we were talking about the horse-drawn wagons, and they’d say, “How did you ever fit inside in them”, d’you know.  They’d be asking what length they were and the width of them, and we’d be telling them they were nine, ten feet long.  They can’t make….. they say, “Two kids; wouldn’t have enough for two kids in that”, you know.  Little they know that there was often ten or twelve kids reared inside in them.  And we’d be telling them how you’d make the beds; they wouldn’t have a clue like, d’you know.  You’d often have the young lads there and they’d be telling other young lads, oh, my father was telling me about making tinware and dealing in donkeys and dealing in goats; they’d be having a joke between theirself about it.  Well, they were better days, happier times; there was no discrimination that time with the Gorgies and the Travellers, nothing like that.  They were all the one; ‘tis different today; the Travellers today; they’ve no time for settled down community; they no time for a chat and a conversation in a pub, thing like that; they’re all about games, playing pool and all this; that’s their life like.  Well ‘tis a better life for them.  What I’m on about is the Travellers was loyaler people to one another, they had time for one another.  What we do now is travel in family groups.  Well long ago you see a feller come along with his horse and caravan, you’d make him pull in; you’d force him, “Pull in, pull in and join the company”.  Today you don’t want that.   

J C       So you think it’s made that much difference; the Travellers themselves have changed?

M Mc  Oh yeah, oh yes. We gets the aged men there, but that’s what we says to ourself.  We might be wrong.  We say there’s no Travellers now, only the aged fellers, that’s all, the young race don’t know nothing about it, nothing at all.

J C       You see the difference with the young people.  How are the old people; have they changed?

M Mc  No, not the old guys.  There’d be six or ten of us now together, old guys, if there was……. There could be two of us old guys now; there’s older men than me; and we could sit inside in a pub from eleven in the morning until twelve at night and we could still keep conversations on all day long; talk about the days we had, we could just keep talking all day long.  Today you chat to a young man; one minute; “Oh hello, goodbye”, he’s gone.  There’s me and old Mickey now, Delaney, or Paddy Doran; well, the cracks and the things that did happen to us; there was a few….. a lot of young fellers there and they were listening and they laughs at the jokes like, as much to say, “Did it happen at all”.  (Laughter)  Paddy Doran was telling me, when he was in prison in Maryborough; and I’m sure that he’ve the only privileges that a prisoner ever had; he’d his own newspapers coming in first, he’d five bottles of Guinness a day.  He took up tinsmithing inside in the prison and he started making ventilators and all this in the prison, for the prison, and they even give him his wages as a working man.  Five bottles of Guinness a day, twenty cigarettes a day and his newspapers in.  And he used have to write in the newspaper then; the next man it was going on to; and another prisoner might wind up with it a week later; passing on all around the prison.

J C       How do they cope then, the older people; how do you reckon….. just imagine that your father was alive today; how would he sort of….. what would he think of the way things are now?

M Mc  Oh, I would say if you called him out of the grave and tell him what’s going on now he’d say, “Let me back in where I came from”, ‘cause he wouldn’t believe it.  Well, they’re on tarmac now, concrete, they’re on different occupations; they won’t go out there canvassing without they having a collar and tie on and a row of writing pens in their top pocket as much to say they’re educated, sure, they can’t write their name, that’s only all bluff.  (Laughter)    The Travellers long ago, when the Gorgie, we call settled down community, when they see the Travelling Man with his horse and wagon and his donkeys, his ponies, whatever he’d have, well he could stay in the one neighbourhood for a month, two months if he want, ‘cause he’d be working for all the farmers round, tinware, dealing in donkeys; he’d a contact and people knew him like, and trusted him.  We travelled in one part of Kerry now, from the day I was born till the day I got married, the one neighbourhood, we never left it.  Well if one of my sons went back now travelling today, he’d do all that in a week, he was gone, he wouldn’t even know where he’d be going; he wouldn’t know the name of a town or village or nothing.

J C       How did the relationship with Gorgies change then

M Mc  Well, ‘tis as I say, it’s the times again, ‘cause long ago, when you’d have just all the common old houses, no tarpaulin or nothing on the floors; now they’ve all carpets now and they’ve a car outside the door; I doubt if you’d go on today with maybe three or four kids and sleep in one of their houses now like, they wouldn’t have it.  Then long ago you could go into any house, farmers, anywhere; they’d even have the tick of feathers or the tick of straw waiting on the Traveller to come to sleep on the floor or maybe in a room; they’d have it specially waiting for the Traveller.  They wouldn’t….. well, the Travellers don’t need them things now, I doubt, if they wanted them, I don’t think they’d have it anyway.   There is no change in the Gorgies and the Travellers, much, because if you’re in a pub or you go to houses, it’s up to yourself to have a conversation with them.  An awful lot of Travellers spend an awful lot of time with Gorgie people, settle into their ways, you know.  Every day, when they’re in a pub they’re drinking together, playing cards together, something like that, you know.  Well, that’s a lot of the Travellers, but no ‘em all I would say.  Well all the Gorgies isn’t the same either; some of them don’t like the Travellers, and the people that don’t like them, they write all about them, never met one and never had ten minutes conversation with them.

J C       Has it changed with the authorities as well, with the police, or is that the same as it always was? 

M Mc  Oh no; it’s changed now with the police.  I remember the police not a hundred years ago, only there a few year back, and they could just come along and rip up your trailer and come in and gut it and throw the kids out of the beds and all this.  come in and no bother, bring out your batons and `then ruin a good caravan or an expensive trailer, you know; take the Travellers in and hold them all night for nothing, and maybe hold them for two or three days.  They can’t do them things now, no way they can do them.  And the council was as bad, come along there with the tractors and towed their expensive caravans, wouldn’t give them time to drop the jacks, and tear them out, and the law was there, you couldn’t do a bit, the law was there.  Said anything wrong, you were locked up; no way of suing them back, which we have the power now, we can sue them.

J C       How long has that been, how long is it since you were talking about, you said it’s not a hundred years, how long would you reckon?

M Mc  It’s only there three, four years ago.

P Mc   And you’re talking about this country?

M Mc  This country and Ireland.

P Mc   And Ireland?

M Mc  And Ireland, and Ireland was the same, but they can’t do them things any more now.  But see, ‘tis getting strong ‘cause we have strong groups now, we’ve plenty of support now, plenty of it, you see; they can’t treat us like dogs any more; I’m not saying all Gorgies, I’m only saying some.  You were like castaways; they could just come on and do what they want, you know, they wasn’t like police or councils, they were like gangsters, and the council wouldn’t come without the police, you see.  The police was as bad.  They just can’t come on now and hook up a tractor on to your trailer and pull on to the road; them days is gone.

J C       But compare that then Mikey….. what you’re talking about is only a few years ago when they did that; now how does that compare to say, thirty years ago?

M Mc  There wasn’t anything like that thirty years ago, no; it all changed within, I’m going back twenty years ago, they were bad enough in this country, and Ireland they were as bad.  But it seemed it happened overnight they didn’t want the Travellers round the place, things like that, you know; didn’t want sites.  We picked out thirteen sites in Cork City, that’s nineteen sixty seven, and every one of them kicked up, not one, the residents wouldn’t have it.  Which is if that was today they’d have to have it because they treat it as discrimination now, d’you see.  Such as the pubs now, no Travellers.  Well, if we want we could sue that pub and sue the brewery, if we want, but I didn’t go that far yet; some day I might when I get the time.  (Laughter)  Sue one and that’s the lot isn’t, that’ll stand for all got bitten.

J C       That would do it, yeah.

M Mc  Well, they’re the same in Dublin, they’re taking up now in Dublin, the same thing.  You go back to Ireland, any part of Ireland now, you could dress like a lord, collar and tie on, any way, go into a pub now, the minute they find out you’re a Traveller, no way, they won’t serve you.  Well that is discrimination in my eyes; I think they’re taking up in Dublin now.  But I’ll probably take it up her too one of the days, I’ll do some pub like, one’ll do.  Once you get the frighteners on one, the rest……   I don’t mind who they bars, I said to them, “Bar me, or bar any Travelling Man, but not to have it up in the window”.  “Cause as it happened here now in a certain pub, there was a thousand cars an hour passing there, and that thousand cars could see that up, “No Travellers served here”.  Which is as other pubs we’re using for twenty years that know us.  If the boys has no money they can borrow their money inside there off of the landlord and go back in and pay them; they know us; and deal with the one pub for twenty years.

J C       What was your father’s relationship with say the police or the authorities; or men of your father’s generation?

M Mc  Oh marvellous, marvellous; they were just all the one.  You weren’t called a tinker or a gypsy or a Pikey or Diddycoi, anything like that; ‘twas just Mick or Tom or John, whoever he’d be.  The Gorgie’s ‘d tell you now, “John Delaney last week, he was here for a week, and there was Mick McCarthy round and there was Tom Coffey”, there wasn’t class, there was just…… although they were Travelling Men they were like the local people.   If there was a funeral on with the Gorgies, they’d go to that; a wake on, they’d go to that.  They’d come to ours, all them Gorgies; people belonging to us died there was thousands of Gorgies, thousands; they even paid for the funerals, that they knew them.  My aunt died in a place called Glin, County Limerick; Travellers couldn’t pay a shilling in, even to the bell was paid for, the ringing of the bell, everything paid for, thousands.  There was twenty Gorgies to every Traveller, twenty to every Traveller; came miles, came thirty, forty miles to the funeral.  They were so well known like; they were like a part of the parish.

J C       When was that; your aunt’s funeral?

M Mc  About twenty years ago.  My father was the same; my mother was the same when she died back there.  All the town was at her funeral, yeah.  ‘Twas the bishop said mass for her.  I couldn’t get to pay the funeral bill; the man didn’t want to take it off of me.  Taxis; I said, “It’s her own money; I want to pay for it”.  “Go on away; I don’t want it, it’s all right”.   When it came to the headstone, putting up the headstone there, I had to persuade the man to take the money, you know.  Well there was an old guy, Mackie Shay, God have mercy on him, he’s dead now; and he buried all the Travellers and he’d walk three mile in front of the hearse, and he marching there with his hard hat on him; not a shilling.  If they wanted to pay they could pay him a pound a week, a pound a month, if they wanted to pay.  He used pay for everything, yeah.   

J C       When did it change, for instance, something specific like signs up in pubs, “No Travellers”?

M Mc  That’s only about seven, eight years, yeah, about that, before that you could drink in any pub you want, walk into any pub you want, any amount of Travellers; they were even fond of the Travellers, mad to see them coming in because they used spend plenty of money.  Discrimination happened and I don’t know what happened. I don’t know where was the first pub I saw it in, “No Travellers”, we didn’t understand it.  But it’s the same today like, there is pubs, as I say, we uses with the last twenty years, same governors and all this; in fact, for my opinion now, I’d sooner drink in a Cockney pub that an Irish pub, although I’m well got in Irish pubs.   But I’d always sooner the Cockney pub, London pub, London landlords.  If they see too many Travellers come in they don’t like it.   Some Travellers is nasty all right, but sure, you’ve some of the Gorgies nasty too.  (Laughter)

J C       One of the things we’ve noticed in Ireland that we’ve never seen over here, and I don’t think we’ve ever really come to terms with is….. what we see over there in a place like Dublin is Travellers begging, Travelling Women begging; has that always gone on?

M Mc  That always went on; well, they can earn a very good living on it, a very good living, because long ago, begging now like, or singing in the streets long ago like, you’d have a great day to earn a pound, but you see, nobody’ll throw you in a penny now, or tuppence, ‘tis either two bob or twenty pence, something like that, you know; so you’d be amazed at the living they can get at that.  That’s an awful great place, Dublin; there was a lady picked up here the other day, a site here in West End, and she was begging, herself and her two children, and when she was got there was a hundred and fifty pound in her hand, her bag.

J C       A Travelling Woman?

M Mc  Yeah; she was fined.  That’s what she earned that day she said.  But she said, “I only had a half a day; if I had a big day”, she said, “I’d have more”.

J C       I think, you know, you said, I think….. is there any difference….. you were talking about singing in the streets; that’s different, to me, to standing there with a box and doing nothing.  That’s always happened has it, just asking for…..?

M Mc  Yeah`; well providing you are selling something you could never be had for begging, but the penalty was if you were caught begging that time you’d get a month in prison.  By just singing in the streets you were earning a living.  If you only had camphor balls, flowers, anything, you could be still begging at the one time.  ‘Tisn’t a few flowers that the women’d have, or the few camphor balls; she’d be begging at the one time; there was no policeman could do anything about that then, she was selling.

J C       Didn’t you have to have a traders licence in the old days?

M Mc  Yeah, but not for flowers now, not for tinware providing that the tinware, you’d no shop rivets, you’d have to make your own rivets.  There was a skill; there was a trick in everything.  The flowers; if the wire was around, they could do you for the wire.  But ‘twas only four pound for a peddler’s licence anyway.  And then, if you had a horse and car ‘twas four pound, and if you had the motor car you paid twenty.   Tarpaulin now, you had to have a license for that; mats, no, nothing on mats providing that they were rope, all that, d’you know.

J c        Work, compared to the old days, you know, you’ve talked to us about the type of jobs you do; work seems to have changed a lot.

M Mc  Oh, it’s all changed, different.  See, go back fifteen, sixteen years ago; your tarmac was two pound a ton, now, if you want to buy tarmac, it’s forty pound a ton, so it’s a luxury now to have a tarmac job done like.   But the people have the money; in fact we were earning more money that time because if you got thirty pound a day that time, or twenty like, ‘tis a lot of money, you’d never spend it, compare with a hundred today like; you wouldn’t think a whole lot of a hundred today; I don’t earn anything like that now, I’m semi-retired, but I sees my boys there now, and more Travellers, they’ve very expensive caravans, very expensive lorries, expensive cars, the dearest they can get; they’re earning the money but, d’you know, they’re gone settled down like, they’re gone different; whether it is the money made them that way or not I don’t know.  There’s a lot of the old guys, they’ve plenty of money but they never changed.

J C       In terms of work, is it harder to get work now or is it easier.

M Mc  ‘Tis harder because oyu have to charge a fantastic price now to do a job.  Well before, you could do a job for twenty quid; well, any house‘d have twenty quid or thirty; but you’re talking about a job today, you wouldn’t, you can’t do a job now for thirty or forty or fifty quid, a hundred quid, has to be big money ‘cause they can’t work any less because it’s the price of the materials and the price of the workmen and all that.  But ‘tis only all big….. it’s rich people’s work now today you have to do.  I don’t do it but the boys; it’s all big factories, the men that have the money.  Ah, to do a small drive now, you couldn’t do it.

J C       Just suppose, you know, we asked you before about what would happen if your father was alive today, how he’d react; suppose the opposite happened, suppose you could sort of send some of the young fellers back, say thirty years; how do you think they would cope with the way it was then?

M Mc  They’d survive all right, but that’d be thirty years ago, but they wouldn’t do the things that we were doing thirty years ago, they wouldn’t do them today, they wouldn’t be able to do them, they wouldn’t know how to do them, they’d die with the hunger, (Laughter) ‘cause they wouldn’t be able to beg a cup of tea in a house like.  Such as the young boys now today, leave them off in Ireland, they’ve no money, what are they going to do; they can’t make a house.  If I was behind and I broke, I’d sing in the street now today, I’d get money.  But they wouldn’t, they’d just….. because they wouldn’t go into a house.  If I wanted my dinner I’d go into a house and beg it; they wouldn’t do that.  I’m sure if they were dying with the hunger, if a woman called them in they wouldn’t eat at the table, they’d be ashamed, they’d just starve.  They’re used to this, they have their own way of living now like, they get faster money I suppose; no, they’d die with the hunger. 

P M     What sort of work do they do today, I mean, they don’t have the skills so what sort of work do they do, just driving?

M Mc  Well concrete, tarmacing, scrap iron, rubbish moving, they’ve all their own trades; there’s various trades.  We used do markets now, me and my boys, all that, my sister Peggy, none of them does it now even to  (?????) don’t do it.

J C       What do you mean by markets?

M Mc  Going to all the markets selling stuff, selling second hand stuff, Portabello, Brick Lane, all those markets; you wouldn’t see any of the young boys doing that now, they wouldn’t do it.  They imaging there’s other people making a laugh of them.  Times is changing.

J C       Living in houses Mikey, has that always gone on with Travellers, Travellers sort of moving into houses, or is it more now than it was then?

M Mc  Oh, ‘tis more now, but not in England, no; the Travellers just can’t cope with a house in England, they can in Ireland, ‘cause they lived in them areas in Ireland all their life; no, not in England.  There’s Travellers gone into houses there in England now and they have to come out of them again, they can’t them.  See, they miss the company is one thing, then, when they’re in a house then, they’re driven….. started making alchohols out of a lot of them, houses because they’re never out of the pub except they be going out working.  As I say about this man here in the back now; a fantastic house now and he won’t stay in it, has to leave it again.  We had five houses ourself, me and Nonie, we had to leave them all, just could not cope.

INTERRUPTION

M Mc  John there now; how would he survive now without doing his own work; if I asked him to sing in the streets. (Laughter)  Maybe two of us’d get together one time and we’d cut a load of table legs, then we’d have wallpaper, we’d have all the heads of the tables made; but two of us ‘d keep working maybe for a week; cleaning all those legs of tables, skinning them and we’d have our nails, we’d have everything ready and put them on a boat; go into Valencia Island and Dursey Island or Achill Sound and we’d make all them tables in there, put them all together then inside; ‘cause you wouldn’t get the wood in the inside to make them.  There we’d be in the one place making them, people’d come we’d never heard, buying them and telling us what they wanted and all that; we might be in there for a week.  Then on tarpaulin, tinsmithing was the same thing; we’d start on an island for a week and maybe two weeks.

J C       You say… you’ve told us in the past, you used to settle into a house, your father, during the winter, didn’t you?

M Mc  Yeah.

J C       Was that common?

M Mc  Yeah; well my father’d get a house anywhere he wanted; well, all the old people could; as I say, there was no discrimination; my father used be in houses every winter in any town he wanted, any house he wanted.

P Mc   You had to rent it for the winter?

M Mc  Yeah, the people….. he’d just walk into a town; any house there he could rent.  “Oh, go up to so-and-so, go up to so-and-so”; any Travelling Man, not alone my father.  The little town back where we came from; Cahersiveen, must be twenty families of Travellers there, living there, all mixtures, there’s still the roots of them still there, they’re still living there, a lot of them.  Well all their families then came away to England.

J C       The ones that have moved into houses, have they lost contact with the Travellers on the road or do they still keep contact?

M Mc  No, when they are about to lose it they comes out travelling again because Travellers don’t visit people that’s in houses, they don’t visit other Travellers.  Travellers in the houses then, they come back out again travelling; travelling’ll never leave their blood I think, there’ll always be Travellers no matter where.  Well that goes for English Travelling People as well, they won’t live in no house, they couldn’t do it.  Well, we’re used to game birds, dogs, all that; sure, you can’t keep anything like that, you see, in a house.  I’d lovely chickens here now; couple of fighting cocks; I had to get rid of them all; they had the neighbours all woke, “Woo woo woo”, roaring every morning.  (Laughter)

J C       How do you feel when you’re in a house Mikey, when you’re living in a house; can you describe it?

M Mc  It’s like a prison Jimmy, like a prison to us, same way.  You know, I lived in a house for five months, that was the longest; I couldn’t wait to get March, to get out of it, and lovely house, and I was five years waiting on it, I lived in it five months.  (Laughter)  There’s something different; it’s like being in a prison to the Travelling Man, I suppose same as a cage and a bird, isn’t it, the same thing.  Yes, I bought my own house in Cork first of all, done it all up; I left that in the depth of winter, went out to the caravan.

J C       Did you…. how did your father feel in a house?

M Mc  With him, ‘twas different; he was interested in getting us to school, and then he was….. well, all the old Travellers was the same way; they’d pull in, get their kids to school, the majority of Travellers my age, they’re all educated; well, they’re not very well educated, but they all can read and write and all that, you know; but the younger race today can’t read nor write; they never got a chance to put them to school, they’d move on, move on, move on all the time.  But in them times ‘twas different then, my father and all the old men, they had their own trades, they could live in a town for the rest of their life, we were all professional tinsmiths and they’d work for farmers as well if they had to do it.  They would go on fishing villages, they were a judge of fish, all that, you know, they were just like any ordinary settled down people.  But the majority of the young race today can’t read nor write; all the old guys of my age now, fifties and that, every one of them, most of them can read and write ‘cause their fathers and mothers put them to school.

J C       Do you think it’s important now to read and write?

M Mc It is, it is very important. Tisn’t a whole lot I have now but tis very very handy to me. Cause I often sees travellers there inside now they’d a (………….) they’d a bloody old forms to sign, if they want a letter wrote they come to me, to write their letter for em, or they goes to somebody else. They gone round the pub where’s this address, all this they can’t read it their self. Well everybody know your business then.  A person come into me to write a letter home(t) well I know what he’s saying an everybody else is saying like. It’s a pity really, often ses it now to me, their very wealthy boys now, I’ll tell you, a lot of em, but they ses to me I’d give it all to be able to read and write, d’y know. When they go in there they’d be a job an the man want an estimation an he want it in writing they have to go on to some place get it wrote.

J C What were you saying Mikey?

M  Mc They never got a chance in England to put em to school. Today now like we’d say, the younger kids, we’d say now like my children their all able to read an write. The younger fella but the fellas about thirty they can’t. You’d go out here now we’d say an we(…………………..) great supporters, education authority, they sends around buses, for the kids. They put em on to the local schools, all the womens gone tired of it now. The local school you have to move on agin an you take em out agin, start all over agin the next school, so they don’t bother now agin.

P Mac So when you were at school, I mean, do you always stop in Cahirciveen?

M Mc An Dingle an Trallee  everywhere, he’d make sure we all go to school for the winter.

P Mac You went to different schools, Just for the winter, for how many years did you go to school?

M Mc Oh about ten years I’d say. You’d go into a school now I’d say, suppose we went to Dingle now like, then my  father might pull on to Cahirciveen, then they’d tell the school master in Cahirciveen that you were going to school in Dingle and he’d write back there and find out where you were educated and all that crack. All trevellers (……………) it was often twenty of us going to the one school travelling people of my age like. Then you’d get to know the gorgies now, fellas I went to school with now their police their solicitors, their school masters, footballers an all that, you’d meet em all, they never classed you as a traveller still, the young lads are different.

J C When do you think the changes started the real changes started to happen. Was it a gradual thing or was it sudden Mikey?

M Mc In this pulling out job now an this clearing out business an all that. Well now our father he (………) tis still going on but its more of a civilised way. They give the eviction forms now then you have the date of court, then you go to court an you get an extra month things like that. We’re organised now see there’s a spokesman now nearly with all travellers, but long ago, twenty years ago there was non of that, just come on, seven o’clock in the morning, tractors an all just tow you out to the road like dogs. As I said now there’s still evictions going on but at least you know when you are going and you know the date. Then if you want to stop another two three weeks you go to the bailiff have a chat with them, all right they’ll say we wont go out there for another couple of  weeks. You go from courts to the bailiff then you’d tell the bailiff what day your coming up like, you’d want to (…………..) an appointment, they’d tell you then, your extra week an we can hold it up, two weeks. I’ve seen it in Ireland, my kids were communion and confirmation, another seven days to go, that’s the time I won that one. They came on and they knew that all our kids, not mine alone, everybody’s about twenty caravans, twenty families an all for communion or confirmation and seven eight days to go. An they wanted us to pull out an not  to give the children the communion or confirmation things, they  wanted us to get out of the local schools. At that time I was going to hold a big protest march through Cork City, I give em till three o’clock to make up their mind, so they backed away, that finished that there. (……………..) in Dublin, well he same thing  could have happened here, that’s what I’m on to the travellers about, we all get together like the coal miners an walk right to the House of Parliament and bring maybe half a dozen lorries and trailers with us, and that’s the way it has to be. Well I’m warned already I told that in the House of  Commons, they getting something done quickly is going to go out of hand, an tis going to go out of hand, an that’s what were going to do, some day its going to be done. When the coal miners fights for, it’s the same thing in there their fighting for their home, what good is their home without their job. I give em all the support I could, I wish I could. That’s what the travellers should  do as well. I told the House of Commons these things I disn’t gave a bluff it isn’t, its going to happen some day, sees I, its going to go out of hand.

J C Is there anything that you could put your finger on and say well you know, things change then if that hadn’t have happened we’d be the same as we were?

M Mc Tisn’t their self it’s the government the part their involvements and all those big names. Tis those fellas that make it go out of hand they kept moving us, which is the happy leave em were they were (…………….) Four or five families they do where they are an they get something sorted out. Tis working this way now, there’s one family up here now, there about five families up there, well that’s one lot there, all the one family. They’d bin there sort something out for them. When the traveller man is settling down getting settled into a community the peoples getting to know em they’ll get to know the people, move on agin. So that’s why we knows nobody and nobody knows us. When we pull into a strange area, ah a shower of gypsies pulling in agin, tinkers, didikies what they say. Which is very very lone here now in Hackney an me an Nonie go down there an I never say went to a pub .Well were not gypsies or tinkers or anything, its hello Tom, or Mick or John, you name up a game of pool an do you know, people get to know us. An those are the people that talks to us an we talks to them.

P Mac When(……………) has it changed, sort of for the better or the worst, like health care, I mean today now all the babies are born in hospitals, what happened twenty years ago?

M Mc  There was a lot of babies born in caravans but they sent for the mid nurse an all that. There was, today now like there still, they gets all the rights we have the doctors and the nurses now from the health departments. They come here anytime we want, (…………….) they still come checking the kids. Now you’ve the education authority they send down school buses they’re after supplying buses an school teachers. Now you go to unemployment, the dole, that’s there you have to have that, that’s their whim, all the support from all that side. There’s somebody holding the key to the door we’ve got all them things those are the things mostly wanted. All we want now is a place to settle down, if you see we can’t do that, they wont allow us too. We’d make our own sites if they left us just say pull in there have that, we’d turn around sites we’d make em.

J C We’ve talked about how the authorities, you know, how people have changed towards you has anything happened to the travellers themselves that have changed them, do you think, any one thing, or was that gradual?

M Mc The English travellers and the Irish travellers and the Scots and the Welsh they were all the one here, fifteen twenty years ago, less than that ten years ago. Now when they started building sites now they started putting all the English travellers into em, left out the Irish, because that’s ruined bitterness agin us why they have sites and we havn’t. Twas the gypsy councils that done that, not the settled down community, the gypsy councils that done that. They were running it Ron McGill national gypsy council, Southern gypsy council. So when I rose this group of our own now the London Roadside Travelling Group we changed all that. It’s different now because when there a site get build in Hackney now I get em that, I be picking the names, an I’ll be fair about it, there be seven Irish and seven English coming there. Mixing the Scots and Welsh if they feel like it. That’s we’ll do with this one in Bow, if which that ed be done years ago there be no disgrace between the English and Irish. There still in now like well people like their sites an when he got in there and I didn’t an all this. But now they realise now their self that they lost friends and twas their own fault, an their not blaming their self their blaming the gypsy council. There’s a lot of em after leaving the sites, English travellers. Funny enough the English travelling people there the people that never travelled with the Irish anyway, people just settled down an that’s the gypsy councils that’s running em, they never travel with the Irish travellers. We’ve a very strong group now, its building up every day, there’s hundreds and hundreds in our group, plenty of supporters.

J C In more general terms you know we were talking earlier an you saying that in a pub for instance, somebody ed come up an say hello to you then they’d be gone, an can’t hold conversations for a long time. What do you  think cause that, made that change?

M Mc Well that ed be the young and the old that’s the difference there, where they are gorgie or traveller man just settle down have a good conversation. The two of em ed get together and have the one conversation like, but the younger race have no time because they wouldn’t know even know what they were speaking about like they’ve no interest(t). Tis the younger race I’m on about, the middle age lads and the younger race. These are my own sons same way as (…………)

J C What do you thinks the future for travellers now?

M Mc I’d like to know, I sure would like to know, what way is it going to be in twenty years time, will there be any travellers.

J C Can you ever see a time when there wont be no travellers?

M Mc There’ll be travellers but they’ll be changed, they’ll be different, in twenty years time they’ll be way different. Even well into the gorgie like their different as well, well we’re living in a different world, I be talking about thirty years ago like, they’ll come along they’ll be talking about. I’ve got an old photo there I showed you now there like see all them now there all middle age men or women, there all changed, daughters an their sons as mad into settle down people. Some of em have shops an some of their sons now. We probably never again see em because they went abroad. An you could be talking about it for another hundred years one of us is now the chief of police in New York d’ye see, there’s police down in Peterborough, Warrington, you’ll never agin see those people, d’y see. I’ve hundreds of cousins out here I never see, but I suppose I never will, they came here to this country fifty years ago, sixty years ago, never went back. Well every other travellers the same, there was a priest, a priest now he’s cousins into the Gallaghers, he’s after finding em, an he’s a priest, now they can’t get rid of him, he’s after finding em. (laughs) Twas an nun found em for him, he’s a Gallagher. See that’s how people goes like. Some,if you have a bad name all right, you’ve a travelling man in a certain house, if you have a bad name well he don’t want to know you which is say  your mixing with the gorgies, well he’s one ed come along and chat to you then an he’s one of ten(…………….) The young fellas here in London finished it now. There’s thousands of travellers in London, there’s every part of Great Britain there’s thousands of travellers every part (…………). Every pub you go into to your bound to find a traveller settled down, settled down twenty thirty years ago, he’s going to come over chat to you, (………..) something like that. Micheal meets em all different places (laughs).