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Open Letter Regarding the Bobbin Mill Encampment

Dear Colleagues:
 
This is an open letter sent from the UK Association of Gypsy Women to the Scottish Executive and Perth & Kinross Council to express our great concern with regard to the Gypsy/Travellers encampment at Bobbin Mill Pitlochry.

Bobbin Mill was the setting for the “Tinker Experiment Programme” which has lasted for 60 years. We feel it must surely make it the longest experiment in history and begs the question: when will it come to a satisfactory conclusion as far as satisfying the Perth & Kinross Council and the Scottish Executive is concerned!
 
Bobbin Mill residents are living in worse conditions today in the year of our Lord 2006 than they were when first put into the “Experimental” programme in 1947.

Miss Rosanna Mcphee is a board member/colleague of the UKAGW and she resides on Bobbin Mill and to our knowledge she has worked tirelessly to highlight the inhumane conditions that the residents had to endure and are still enduring.

Perth & Kinross Council will be well aware by now of the history of Bobbin Mill encampment. The very fact that it is well documented the families were used as a “Tinker Experiment” and the accommodation, if you can call it that, consisted of a 60ft x18ft wooden hut to be made into 4 dwellings. In addition the cheapest price was agreed to be used in the construction thereof.

Noted: at the time in documentation that this would be substandard housing and would not qualify to come under the building regulations of the time.
 
Growing families were forced out of the huts and into caravans, which the families were forced to provide themselves. Water, sanitation, electricity or indeed a road, which are fundamentally taken for granted and enjoyed by the wider Community was never deemed a necessity for the “Tinker Experiment” families of Bobbin Mill.

The families who have been used for the “Tinker Experiment” are the tenants of the local authority. We feel the local authority from that time, regardless of their name, have been negligent in their duty of care to say the very least towards the families in the “Tinker Experiment” programme.

Miss Rosanna McPhee and Mr Shamus McPhee have both received a notification of a warrant issued against them by Perth & Kinross Council for “Non payment of Council Tax”.   Mr & Miss McPhee have been unemployed for a number of years due to ill health brought on by the appalling living conditions they were forced to endure.

The McPhees have both stated they indeed filled in documentation to the effect they were both out of work and asked to claim the benefit for charges of rent.

We believe the documentation has been deemed to have been lost by the department concerned.
 
UKAGW would like to make a request to you, Ms Malone, as the Chief Executive to use your good offices to treat the matter of notification of warrants of non payment of council tax against Mr & Miss McPhee with the utmost urgency and have these warrants withdrawn.

We are utterly appalled that people were treated in such a disgraceful inhumane manner by their so called fellow man and are now being harassed and persecuted into paying for a service they have never received. We feel this most certainly adds insult to injury.
 
Mr McPhee Senior was a war hero of the Second World War serving under Lord Mountbattan in the Royal Navy. On his return his reward for serving his country , along with his family, was to be put into a “Tinker Experiment Programme” bordering on Third Reich Tactics.

The “Tinker Experiment” and the discrimination suffered is still being endured by these families in 2006. We feel, without prejudice, it is our duty to highlight and bring to world attention the treatment of Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland.
 
UKAGW have agreed on a fact-finding mission to Pitlochry with partners from the USA to make good a full report to be forwarded to Minister Ruth Kelly; Yvette Cooper Junior Minister, Local Government & Communities Office, UK Federation Romany Gypsies & Irish Travellers, United Nations New York, Partners in the Council of Europe, European Roma Traveller Forum Strasbourg, International Roma Women’s Network Strasbourg, Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions Geneva, European Union Monitoring Centre Vienna, Advocacy Project Washington DC USA.
 
The UKAGW petitions your support. Please e-mail your support to the addresses below.

Jack McConnell and Malcolm Chisholm

Bernadette Malone
 

Sincere thanks of appreciation, 

UK Association of Gypsy Women

The Advocacy Project
1326 14th Street NW
Washington DC 20005
phone: +1 202-332-3900
fax: +1 202-332-4600