Jeremy Sandford FanClub Archives ~ www.JeremySandford.org.uk

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The life a Traveller leads is an up and down life. There are some good jolly times with the police and Travellers. I remember one policeman near Bristol, he would come up to the fire and he would sing folk songs for us, and we would sing a few songs for him. He was a great man and he was very fond of me.

Myself and him, when he would be off duty, would go to a pub and drink like fish till closing time. Then sometimes I would go to his house and both himself and his wife would treat me like a gentleman and I must say his wife was a pure picture. She was a fine, good-looking woman, God bless her and save her.

One day, I think it was a Sunday, the policeman pulled up and asked me would I go over to his house with him, he said he had a surprise for me. I did, I went with him. As we pulled up at the house I could hear the banjos, guitars and fiddles playing ‘The Beggar Man’, and fair play they could play.

When we went into the house there was a small open-top oak barrel on the middle of the floor. The barrel was full to the neck with real good rough cider.

I know, before I left the party, most of the cider was inside me. There was a young girl there, she was a really good singer. She sang ‘The Rocks of Baun’, and fair play she sang it well.

Then I remember one time in Manchester, I was after drinking very heavily during the winter and I was nearly on the rocks, and my lorry was not taxed. I had about £4 in my pocket and I was hawking a range of houses for scrap. I was getting a good bit of scrap in the houses, when I looked and I saw a policeman at the lorry.

I don’t think he looked at the window-screen of the lorry, but I did not go back to the lorry, as I thought he was going to summons me for no road-fund licence. He walked away from the lorry and as soon as he did, I went back to the lorry and drove it on.

He followed me up streets and down streets in his car, so I pulled up. ‘Well,’ said he, getting out of his car, ‘I have been following you for over an hour.’

‘What for, sir?’ I said.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘my father has a lot of scrap and he wants to get rid of it; you can go to this address, tell him I sent you.’

I went to the address the policeman gave me and I got £22 worth of scrap from his father and a good dinner as well. I did not pay his father any money for the scrap, but I shifted the fill of the lorry of old bricks and rubble, in lieu of money, or as the Traveller says, for other services rendered ...

Then with the brutality the police used towards the Travellers it makes one think if those detonators were planted on the site by the authorities, and if there was any truth in this!

What is the Irish government, the British Government and the UN Commission on Human Rights going to do about these things?

The police were summoning the Travellers and trying to move their caravans off the magistrates’ car park.

This is the truth at last, because there never was a policeman who can tell the truth.

Once, when I was tried, the judge said to me as he sentenced me, ‘Mr Connors, the police must be protected from men like you.’ This was the time when I had been protecting my wife and children from police officers who attacked us in the middle of the night. One of the policemen who attacked my family was on trial in the same court. I saw him in the police cells. He was charged with sexually assaulting an innocent child, for which he was fined a small fine.

I have respect for policemen who respect their uniform, and I think everyone has. But I cannot respect a man that nearly kills my little son through prejudice and kicks my wife unconscious a few hours before her child is born, and breaks my caravan and beats me stupid.

As my father would say, the worst mistakes are made in bed; how right he is, but prejudice is not a mistake, it is an evil.

On 4 June 1969, I was escorted from Birmingham prison to London where I met Marc Sand, the Secretary of the Social Commission of the Council of Europe, and another member of the Social Commission, Mr Wiklund, a Swedish MP, and many others.

On 5 May 1969, I sent a forty-one page statement to the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg and on 16 May 1969 I received a reply from Strasbourg. They wanted details of all the cases of brutal treatment that the travelling people had suffered in Britain, as they wanted this information to use at the Oslo Conference in July.

The police were summoning the Travellers and trying to move their caravans off the magistrates’ car park.

This is the truth at last, because there never was a policeman who can tell the truth.

Once, when I was tried, the judge said to me as he sentenced me, ‘Mr Connors, the police must be protected from men like you.’ This was the time when I had been protecting my wife and children from police officers who attacked us in the middle of the night. One of the policemen who attacked my family was on trial in the same court. I saw him in the police cells. He was charged with sexually assaulting an innocent child, for which he was fined a small fine.

I have respect for policemen who respect their uniform, and I think everyone has. But I cannot respect a man that nearly kills my little son through prejudice and kicks my wife unconscious a few hours before her child is born, and breaks my caravan and beats me stupid.

As my father would say, the worst mistakes are made in bed; how right he is, but prejudice is not a mistake, it is an evil.

On 4 June 1969, I was escorted from Birmingham prison to London where I met Marc Sand, the Secretary of the Social Commission of the Council of Europe, and another member of the Social Commission, Mr Wiklund, a Swedish MP, and many others.

On 5 May 1969, I sent a forty-one page statement to the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg and on 16 May 1969 I received a reply from Strasbourg. They wanted details of all the cases of brutal treatment that the travelling people had suffered in Britain, as they wanted this information to use at the Oslo Conference in July.

The police were summoning the Travellers and trying to move their caravans off the magistrates’ car park.

This is the truth at last, because there never was a policeman who can tell the truth.

Once, when I was tried, the judge said to me as he sentenced me, ‘Mr Connors, the police must be protected from men like you.’ This was the time when I had been protecting my wife and children from police officers who attacked us in the middle of the night. One of the policemen who attacked my family was on trial in the same court. I saw him in the police cells. He was charged with sexually assaulting an innocent child, for which he was fined a small fine.

I have respect for policemen who respect their uniform, and I think everyone has. But I cannot respect a man that nearly kills my little son through prejudice and kicks my wife unconscious a few hours before her child is born, and breaks my caravan and beats me stupid.

As my father would say, the worst mistakes are made in bed; how right he is, but prejudice is not a mistake, it is an evil.

On 4 June 1969, I was escorted from Birmingham prison to London where I met Marc Sand, the Secretary of the Social Commission of the Council of Europe, and another member of the Social Commission, Mr Wiklund, a Swedish MP, and many others.

On 5 May 1969, I sent a forty-one page statement to the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg and on 16 May 1969 I received a reply from Strasbourg. They wanted details of all the cases of brutal treatment that the travelling people had suffered in Britain, as they wanted this information to use at the Oslo Conference in July. The police were summoning the Travellers and trying to move their caravans off the magistrates’ car park.

This is the truth at last, because there never was a policeman who can tell the truth.

Once, when I was tried, the judge said to me as he sentenced me, ‘Mr Connors, the police must be protected from men like you.’ This was the time when I had been protecting my wife and children from police officers who attacked us in the middle of the night. One of the policemen who attacked my family was on trial in the same court. I saw him in the police cells. He was charged with sexually assaulting an innocent child, for which he was fined a small fine.

I have respect for policemen who respect their uniform, and I think everyone has. But I cannot respect a man that nearly kills my little son through prejudice and kicks my wife unconscious a few hours before her child is born, and breaks my caravan and beats me stupid.

As my father would say, the worst mistakes are made in bed; how right he is, but prejudice is not a mistake, it is an evil.

On 4 June 1969, I was escorted from Birmingham prison to London where I met Marc Sand, the Secretary of the Social Commission of the Council of Europe, and another member of the Social Commission, Mr Wiklund, a Swedish MP, and many others.

On 5 May 1969, I sent a forty-one page statement to the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg and on 16 May 1969 I received a reply from Strasbourg. They wanted details of all the cases of brutal treatment that the travelling people had suffered in Britain, as they wanted this information to use at the Oslo Conference in July. The police were summoning the Travellers and trying to move their caravans off the magistrates’ car park.

This is the truth at last, because there never was a policeman who can tell the truth.

Once, when I was tried, the judge said to me as he sentenced me, ‘Mr Connors, the police must be protected from men like you.’ This was the time when I had been protecting my wife and children from police officers who attacked us in the middle of the night. One of the policemen who attacked my family was on trial in the same court. I saw him in the police cells. He was charged with sexually assaulting an innocent child, for which he was fined a small fine.

I have respect for policemen who respect their uniform, and I think everyone has. But I cannot respect a man that nearly kills my little son through prejudice and kicks my wife unconscious a few hours before her child is born, and breaks my caravan and beats me stupid.

As my father would say, the worst mistakes are made in bed; how right he is, but prejudice is not a mistake, it is an evil.

On 4 June 1969, I was escorted from Birmingham prison to London where I met Marc Sand, the Secretary of the Social Commission of the Council of Europe, and another member of the Social Commission, Mr Wiklund, a Swedish MP, and many others.

On 5 May 1969, I sent a forty-one page statement to the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg and on 16 May 1969 I received a reply from Strasbourg. They wanted details of all the cases of brutal treatment that the travelling people had suffered in Britain, as they wanted this information to use at the Oslo Conference in July. The police were summoning the Travellers and trying to move their caravans off the magistrates’ car park.

This is the truth at last, because there never was a policeman who can tell the truth.

Once, when I was tried, the judge said to me as he sentenced me, ‘Mr Connors, the police must be protected from men like you.’ This was the time when I had been protecting my wife and children from police officers who attacked us in the middle of the night. One of the policemen who attacked my family was on trial in the same court. I saw him in the police cells. He was charged with sexually assaulting an innocent child, for which he was fined a small fine.

I have respect for policemen who respect their uniform, and I think everyone has. But I cannot respect a man that nearly kills my little son through prejudice and kicks my wife unconscious a few hours before her child is born, and breaks my caravan and beats me stupid.

As my father would say, the worst mistakes are made in bed; how right he is, but prejudice is not a mistake, it is an evil.

On 4 June 1969, I was escorted from Birmingham prison to London where I met Marc Sand, the Secretary of the Social Commission of the Council of Europe, and another member of the Social Commission, Mr Wiklund, a Swedish MP, and many others.

The police were summoning the Travellers and trying to move their caravans off the magistrates’ car park.

This is the truth at last, because there never was a policeman who can tell the truth.

Once, when I was tried, the judge said to me as he sentenced me, ‘Mr Connors, the police must be protected from men like you.’ This was the time when I had been protecting my wife and children from police officers who attacked us in the middle of the night. One of the policemen who attacked my family was on trial in the same court. I saw him in the police cells. He was charged with sexually assaulting an innocent child, for which he was fined a small fine.

I have respect for policemen who respect their uniform, and I think everyone has. But I cannot respect a man that nearly kills my little son through prejudice and kicks my wife unconscious a few hours before her child is born, and breaks my caravan and beats me stupid.

As my father would say, the worst mistakes are made in bed; how right he is, but prejudice is not a mistake, it is an evil.

On 4 June 1969, I was escorted from Birmingham prison to London where I met Marc Sand, the Secretary of the Social Commission of the Council of Europe, and another member of the Social Commission, Mr Wiklund, a Swedish MP, and many others.

On 5 May 1969, I sent a forty-one page statement to the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg and on 16 May 1969 I received a reply from Strasbourg. They wanted details of all the cases of brutal treatment that the travelling people had suffered in Britain, as they wanted this information to use at the Oslo Conference in July.

The sweet echoing voice of a loving mother pleasing the child and pleasing herself and the nature all around her. One favourite song of the travelling people is a mother’s lament; it is a cradle song, it has a very low air and it is a song about a child that was taken away by the bad fairies, and the mother died broken-hearted when she saw her child after two long years floating down the stream with the floods. When a travelling woman would come to that part of the song the tears would fall down along her red cheeks and on to the face of her own child in her arms, while a feeling of nature would crawl up the listener’s spine ...

I believe the reason why a Traveller is persecuted so much of the time by the police and local authorities is because the Traveller is full of nature and tradition. Tradition is a Traveller’s way of life. Nature is himself. He has great time for people that have time for him. A settled community person who respects a Traveller, the Traveller respects him, and the Traveller will wish them all good luck in the world. But if a settled community person, such as the police, local authorities or a bad farmer do harm to the travelling community, then the Traveller will curse that person and strongly invoke that that curse will meet that person.

I have had personal experience of a broken-hearted travelling person’s curse; it is the only weapon they have against their harasser.

The Travellers that the boy and girl run to would make sure that that boy and girl had kept apart till they got married. But I suppose the damage would be already done on the run, or on some lonesome road or haystack or barn. Nobody can stop nature, I suppose, and that would be it.

Ninety-nine percent of all travelling girls are virgins till marriage, they do not believe in intercourse before marriage.

Jeremy Sandford FanClub Archives
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