all the fun of the fair

I’ll be trundling up the M6 today to spend the weekend at Appleby Horse Fair. Thousands of Gypsies and Travellers are going to be joining me in this quaint village in Cumbria, northern England, where they will spend the next four days trading horses and catching up with friends and family. It’s a rather special event which has been happening for more than 300 years now, and I’d recommend anyone with an open mind and an interest to check it out sometime.

Travelling people are one of the most maligned and misunderstood communities in the UK and their rights are routinely trampled. Only last week the new Tory/Lib Dem coalition government cut all funding earmarked for the creation of legal sites, cracked down on retrospective planning applications – until now a last resort for travellers who are routinely refused permission to build – and created the new criminal offence of ‘intentional trespass.’ The result will be to outlaw a section of the population which already suffers from high levels of homelessness and poor life chances.

(The pic above is of a fight I chanced upon last year. It might look brutal but it was later explained to me by friends that bare-knuckle fighting plays an important role within Gypsy culture and is the traditonal way any arguments between men are resolved. The men standing close by are there to ensure fair play and after it’s over the opponents shake hands, forget it and carry on as normal. A few other pics from last year can be seen here. )