Travellers

'I didn't start travelling to leave society as such ... I started travelling because I saw an alternative society that was better than the one that was offered me in town, and a family structure that was better than the one that I'd been brought up with.'

Carol Waller, traveller at the Sheepcote Valley site, oral history recording, OH000110

The 1980s saw the rise of what became known in the media as the New Age Travelling community. Often ideologically motivated, travellers were anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment, believing in a more simple and communal way of life outside of mainstream consumer society.

Part spiritual hippy and increasingly part Anarcho-Punk, travellers moved from festival to festival in the summer months, trying to live a more self-sufficient and environmentally friendly way of life. This was informed by anarchist and green politics and the squatter movement that had grown in popularity in the 1970s, and which was taken up by the Anarcho-Punk band Crass who become an important focus for younger would-be travellers in the early 1980s.


Jane and Corren on a Traveller site in Brighton	Di on a Traveller site

Converted buses, trucks and old caravans became the new homes for travellers. However, their unconventional way of life made them the focus for an increasingly hostile media, police force and Conservative government. This hostility culminated in the 'Battle of the Beanfield' in 1985, a confrontation between travellers and their vehicles trying to get to the Stonehenge Free Festival and an uncooperative police force.

The traveller outfit in Brighton Museum's Renegade collection has a strong punk influence, reflecting the interests of the wearer when she first started travelling in the mid 1980s.