New Age travellers

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"Crusties" redirects here. For eye crusties, see rheum.
This article is about the UK subculture. For the musical genre sometimes termed crusty, see crust punk. For the similar New Zealand subculture, see housetrucker.
New Age travellers / Crusties
Byway at Stancombe Farm - geograph.org.uk - 695281.jpg
Vehicles used by New Age travellers
Regions with significant populations
United Kingdom
Religions
New Age

New Age travellers, not completely synonymous with but otherwise shortened to New Travellers[1] (often referred to as "crusties"), are people in the United Kingdom generally espousing New Age beliefs along with the hippie culture of the 1960s (overlapping with Bohemianism), and who used to travel between free music festivals and fairs prior to crackdown in the 1990s, who now congregate in community with others who hold similar beliefs on various authorised and unauthorised sites.

A New Traveller's transport and home may consist of living in a van, "gypsy" Vardo wagon, lorry, bus, car, or caravan converted into a mobile home while also making use of an improvised bender tent, tipi, or yurt. "New Age" travellers largely originated in 1980s and early 1990s Britain,[2] when they were described as crusties because of the association with "encrusted dirt, dirt as a deliberate embrace of grotesquerie, a statement of resistance against society, proof of nomadic hardship."[3]

History[]

Origins[]

The movement originated in the free festivals of the 1960s and 1970s[4] such as the Windsor Free Festival, the early Glastonbury Festivals, Elephant Fayres, and the huge Stonehenge Free Festivals in Great Britain. However, there were longstanding precedents for travelling cultures in Great Britain, including travelling pilgrims, itinerant journeymen and traders, as well as Romani groups and others.[5] Later events included the Castlemorton Common Festival, a huge free and unlicensed event which attracted widespread media coverage and prompted government action. Some legal festivals, such as WOMAD, continue to take place in a variety of countries, including the UK.

Peace convoy[]

See also: Battle of the Beanfield

In the UK during the 1980s the travellers' mobile homes—generally old vans, trucks and buses (including double-deckers)—moved in convoys. One group of travellers came to be known as the Peace Convoy after visits to Peace camps associated with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).[4] The movement had faced significant opposition from the British government and from mainstream media, epitomised by the authorities' attempts to prevent the Stonehenge Free Festival, and the resultant Battle of the Beanfield in 1985—resulting in what was, according to the Guardian, one of the largest mass arrests of civilians since at least the Second World War,[6] possibly one of the biggest in English legal history.[7]

In 1986 and later years police again blocked travellers from "taking the Stones" on the Summer Solstice. This led Travelers to spend summers squatting by the hundreds on several sites adjacent to the A303 in Wiltshire.

Outside the UK[]

Following the crackdowns against aspects of New Age Traveller culture and the free festivals, some ceased travelling altogether and others headed to continental Europe to pursue continuance of the lifestyle.

A North American counterpart to the UK-based New Age Travellers and former free festivals, is the Rainbow Family which was formed around 1970 and which hosts annual Rainbow Gatherings.

Meanwhile, housetruckers in New Zealand have maintained an alternative, "hippie nomad" lifestyle.

References[]

  1. ^ https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_ESP_171_0073--on-the-road-new-travellers-and-their.htm
  2. ^ "New Age Travellers - a traveller lifestyle and subculture in Britain".
  3. ^ Fox, Dan (3 April 2018). "24-Hour Party People: How Britain's New Age Traveler movement defined a zeitgeist". World Policy Journal. 35 (1): 3–9. doi:10.1215/07402775-6894684. ISSN 1936-0924. S2CID 158322983.
  4. ^ a b "New Travellers, Old Story" (PDF). The Children's Society. Retrieved 1 November 2014.
  5. ^ Ivakhiv, Adrian (2001). Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona. Indiana University Press. p. 89. ISBN 0-253-33899-9.
  6. ^ https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2004/feb/22/features.magazine27 whilst other commentators see it as possibly one of the biggest in English legal history.
  7. ^ Stuart Maconie (2014). The People's Songs: The Story of Modern Britain in 50 Records. Ebury Press. pp. 356–. ISBN 978-0-09-193380-7.

Films[]

  • Pierre Carles, Volem rien foutre al païs, co-directed with Christophe Coello et Stéphane Goxe, 2006. A French documentary film about various ways of living on very low income, as many travellers do).
  • Martin Parry http://www.swindonviewpoint.com/video/outsiders. Documentary on the Beanfield and trials and tribulations of the Peace Convoy/New Age Travellers.
  • 23 Teknivals, directed by Zena Merton MA, 2006. A five-minute video montage of travellers' life on the road, free festivals and warehouse parties in Europe (Teknivals) and of the wake of a teenage English traveller, Sonny, in England that was attacked by riot police.

Further reading and external links[]

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