“Can’t Mandy cure?!” Examining practices of cultural resistance within the Gypsy-Traveller community

Abstract

Gypsy-Travellers have faced centuries of persecution, and yet previous engagement has largely focused on responses through frameworks of resilience rather than resistance. This paper extends this, alongside scholarship on resistance, by analysing how everyday Gypsy-Traveller practices coalesce to constitute non-intentional acts of cultural resistance. To capture this, I propose the concept cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary. This builds on Bayat’s (2013) notion of the quiet encroachment of the ordinary and embeds Feld’s (1996) acoustemology within Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis to offer a more multidimensional and multisensory understanding of resistance, attending to visual, rhythmic, and sonic dimensions. It further contributes to ongoing discussions surrounding consciousness and intentionality within acts of resistance. Applying this to an analysis of the 2022 Appleby Horse Fair, I explore how non-political and non-intentional ordinary aspects of Gypsy-Traveller life coalesce into acts of cultural resistance.

Keywords

Gypsy-Traveller resistance rhythmanalysis acoustemology spectacular mundane sound

Introduction

Gypsies. Travellers. Roma. Indulge me and close your eyes. What imaginaries, what stereotypes emerge? Perhaps pockets full of stolen goods, violent bare-knuckled boxing matches, litter discarded on previously pristine landscapes, or mistreated animals and children roaming around haphazard trailers? Or perhaps I underestimated you.

Gypsy-Travellers are a minority ethnic group first documented within the United Kingdom (UK) in 1505 (James, 2007) and who have been, and continue to be, (mis)understood, (mis)represented, and marginalised as deviant, degenerative, and dangerous (Cresswell, 1996; Edensor, 2010). This paper challenges these derogatory stereotypes and assumptions, offering an insight into the rich and vibrant dimensions of Gypsy-Traveller life.

Defining Gypsy-Travellers is a politically laden project. As alluded to above, the word Gypsy is assumed to be a slur, with Traveller now acting as the most politically acceptable term (Drakakis-Smith, 2007). However, my adopted term Gypsy-Traveller draws on terminology used by members of the community, encompassing English, Scottish and Welsh Gypsies/Romanies who trace their origin to 15th Century India, Irish Travellers with ancestral roots in Ireland, and Roma who migrated to the UK from Europe after the end of the Cold War (Powell et al., 2024). I recognise that this categorisation, and referring to these groups as a community, homogenises a dispersed, internally divided, and feuding group. I do not aim to undermine this complexity, but to acknowledge a shared history of persecution, one which has curated an expansive yet collective culture, identity, and relationship with – or, as I will explore, resistance against – Gorgio¹ others.

Previous studies have offered glimpses into Gypsy-Traveller culture, emphasising, amongst other things, the importance of a nomadic lifestyle. Nomadism has been understood as inherent to Gypsy blood (Okely, 1983), an economic strategy (Acton, 1974), and a practice and imaginary which remains central to Gypsy-Traveller identity. Mobility is traditionally associated with horses, which were first used as pack animals before being used to pull bowtop wagons in the 1850s (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

A bowtop wagon, and the author’s dwelling throughout their research. Source: Author.

Although many Gypsy-Travellers transitioned towards modern caravans in the 1950s, horses remain central to Gypsy-Traveller life, acting as a means of transportation, a source of income, and symbols of identity and status. This is especially visible at horse fairs – vibrant cultural events where the dispersed Gypsy-Traveller population gathers for economic, personal, and cultural gain. Appleby Horse Fair (AHF) is the largest and most significant of these events, taking place annually in the first week of June in Appleby-in-Westmoreland, Cumbria. Over 10,000 Gypsy-Travellers attend, many of whom consider AHF one of few spaces where they truly belong.

However, the nomadic nature of Gypsy-Traveller life has also generated stereotypes which (mis)represent the community as delinquent and disorderly (Cresswell, 1996; Edensor, 2010). This has legitimised centuries of draconian legislation marginalising and delegitimising their lifeworld, traceable to the 1530 and 1554 Egyptians Act which criminalised, and later introduced the death penalty for, being a Gypsy. Subsequent acts have shifted towards more subtle forms of sedentarism and assimilation, such as the 1824 Vagrancy Act making it an offence to sleep rough, and the 1959 Highways Act preventing Gypsy-Travellers from stopping on highway verges or laybys².

More recently, the 20th Century witnessed a trio of Acts that profoundly impacted Gypsy-Traveller life. The 1960 Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act enhanced Local Authority (LA) powers to restrict Gypsy-Traveller encampments, and made it increasingly difficult for Gypsy-Travellers to develop private sites. The subsequent 1968 Caravan Sites Act was more benevolent, mandating LAs to provide adequate Gypsy-Traveller sites, although adequate remained undefined and removal powers were simultaneously enhanced. The 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act instigated a draconian reversal, removing the mandate to provide sites and further enhancing police powers to include fines, imprisonment, and vehicle confiscation. As a result, 76% of Gypsy-Travellers now live in brick-and-mortar accommodation (Powell et al., 2024) where they often experience physical and mental health issues (Armitage and Nellums, 2020) and discrimination in education (D’Arcy and Galloway, 2018), employment (Smith and Greenfields, 2015), and other aspects of their life.

This has escalated further with the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, Part 4 of which directly criminalises Gypsy-Traveller life by creating a new offence of intending to reside on land without occupier consent and:

• Intending to have at least one vehicle

• Causing, or being likely to cause, ‘significant damage or disruption’

• Failing ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’ to move³

This empowers the police to subjectively criminalise Gypsy-Travellers, with offenders facing a fine up to £2500 and/or imprisonment up to 3 months or the seizure of their vehicles.

Although there has been some interest in responses of Gypsy-Travellers to persecution, studies have focused largely on intentional acts of resilience and protest. This paper extends these understandings, alongside scholarship on resistance, by analysing how Gypsy-Travellers engage in non-intentional acts of cultural resistance – instances where everyday cultural practices coalesce to resist state persecution in more subtle and inadvertent ways.

I begin by introducing geographical understandings of resistance before questioning the extent that these conceptualisations can engage with the complexity of Gypsy-Traveller resistive practices. To address this shortcoming, I propose the concept cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary – a non-intentional, multisensory, and multidimensional understandings of cultural resistance. Following a methodological overview, I then ground this in an empirical journey to the most important event within the Gypsy-Traveller calendar: Appleby Horse Fair.

Literature review

Gypsy-Travellers are not passive victims; they have responded to state persecution in numerous ways. Acton (1974) categorised this through a four-part typology. This included cultural disintegration – the loss of traditional aspects of culture and identity, and passing – disguising one’s ethnicity to participate in Gorgio society. He further outlined the more positive conservative response – dichotomisation from mainstream society to maintain a distinct culture, and cultural adaptation – selectively mobilising external influences to enhance their lives. However, Acton’s (1974) typology focuses predominantly on resilience, marginalising how Gypsy-Travellers actively resist cultural persecution (Katz, 2001).

Theorising (Gypsy-Traveller) resistance

Resistance is an ambiguous and contested concept. Structural approaches, such as Marxist and feminist perspectives, understand resistance as a dualism – acts opposing the hegemony of the state or patriarchy respectively (Hughes, 2020). A radical approach extends this, focusing on acts seeking to overturn capitalism to create an egalitarian society, whereas anarchism challenges, yet does not seek to overturn, capitalism, focusing on everyday, non-violent acts offering alternative ways of life based on self-governance and autonomy (Springer, 2012). There is a further binary characterising the form that resistance takes. Certeau (1984) captures this through his distinction between strategies – aligning to Marxist representations of large-scale, spectacular acts, and tactics – aligning to feminist and anarchist conceptualisations of the power of everyday practices. Scott (1985, 1990) notably argued that these mundane acts coalesce into an infrapolitics that challenge policies threatening marginalised communities over time. However, Theodossopoulos (2014) criticises Scott for overestimating the agency of subaltern subjects who, he argues, remain subject to socio-political forces.

Gypsy-Traveller resistance has emerged through a multiplicity of forms. For example, Acton (1974) documented how the 1966 Gypsy Council organised marches and blockades, aligning to Marxist understandings of resistance. However, the nomadic nature and heterogeneity of the Gypsy-Traveller community has largely inhibited large-scale protest (Turner, 2000) with resistance being more strongly associated with acts of everyday subversion. For example, Okely (1983) documented how Gypsy-Traveller women play games with authorities and men use ‘tired’ horses to buy time and remain at sites. This highlights the need for a poststructuralist approach recognising resistance as splintered, multiple, and relational – embodying a diversity of forms (Sharp et al., 2000; Featherstone, 2009), and emerging from particular assemblages of spaces, people and objects (Hughes, 2020). For example, Karner (2004) draws on Foucault to recognise Gypsy-Traveller resistance as multi-dimensional, relational, and fluid, and Howarth (2019) identifies a Traveller Infrapolitics – a combination of strategies and tactics. Arampatzi’s (2017) work compliments this, moving beyond events, instances, and moments of protest, instead arguing for social movements to be understood as processes which bleed into the everyday following the defined and demarcated end of their enactment.

Taking this further, Leitner et al. (2008) call for a recognition of the entanglement of multiple spatialities within resistance movements. Skelton (2010) addresses this, with her P/politics moving beyond recognising the co-presence of ‘little p’ informal and mundane micro-politics and ‘big P’ formal and spectacular Politics, towards understanding them as intertwined. Scholars have increasingly sought to capture this entanglement. For example, Leitner et al. (2008) explored how the 2003 Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride was underpinned by everyday networks of support including the provision of food and shelter, and the sharing of stories. Pottinger’s (2017, 2020) work attends to the political dimensions of this interplay, conceptualising small acts of everyday resistance as quiet activism, a powerful form of speaking back which is subsumed under dominant visions of protest as spectacular.

Cultural resistance offers further insights. For example, Routledge (2003) explores how the Indian Narmada Bachao Andolan movement performed songs and poems in indigenous languages to resist the Narmada Valley Development Project. Highmore (2002) documented more subtle forms, exploring how mobile street vendors in 19th century London used a complex language of back-slang to avoid police persecution. Further, Abu-Lughod (1999) uncovered how Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin women in Egypt integrate ghinnawas – oral lyrical poetry – into everyday interactions to express discontent with patriarchal ideologies of honour and modesty. The materiality and visual symbolism of (cultural) resistance, including the power of disobedient objects (McDonagh, 2019) and protest stickers (Awcock, 2021) has also been well documented, recognised as creative interventions which politicise (urban) landscapes, (re)claiming public space and the right to the city.

Awcock (2020) takes this further, conceptualising resistance as emerging from an assemblage of cultural practices bound to the material environments, objects, human and non-human bodies through which they take place. This highlights the need for an understanding of place; as Pile and Keith (1997) argue, resistance emerges through particular geographies, and these geographies matter. Places are saturated with meaning and therefore political potential, often through their (re)appropriation and (re)configuration (Leitner et al., 2008; Sheller, 2018). However, the focus remains largely on urban places, and those associated with the politically powerful.

Some studies have documented acts of Gypsy-Traveller cultural resistance. For example, Acton (1974) explored how symbolic horse-drawn wagons led a procession protesting the 1963 Irish Government Report on the Commission of Itinerancy. More recently, Howarth (2022) argued that Drive2Survive, a Gypsy-Traveller activist group, performed the category of nomad through two peaceful, horse-led protests. However, practices of everyday Gypsy-Traveller cultural resistance, and – despite claims that Gypsy-Travellers, due to their nomadic nature, are placeless (Kabachnik, 2012) – the importance of place within these acts remain understudied. This paper offers an alternative understanding, grounded in an analysis of the assemblage of Gypsy-Traveller cultural objects, symbols, and practices, (rural) places, and the P/politics which are generated.

There is a further, often implicit, tension surrounding resistance scholarship: intentionality. For Scott (1985), intentionality is a prerequisite, manifesting in both overt and mundane forms, with the majority of the above accounts aligning to this view. However, McDowell et al. (2012) highlight how although traditional saris were worn by South Asia women as part of broader protests against poor industrial working conditions in Britain, for many this was a habitual, not intentional practice. Despite the symbolic power of this incidental act, Bayat (2013) argues that this romanticises subaltern agents, with almost any act now being considered resistive. His alternative – the quiet encroachment of the ordinary – captures how the unassuming and prolonged practices of millions of dispersed subaltern collectives in the Middle East coalesce and expand beyond their mundane roots to generate significant social, ideological, and legal changes. For example, he argues that deprived families in Cairo and Tehran illegally tap into urban services not to subvert hegemonic political structures but to improve their lives, inadvertently leading to broader change.

However, Bayat (2013) focuses on generalised, large-scale groups. Gypsy-Travellers are neither an ordinary nor large-scale presence within the UK; they are an extraordinary, marginalised ethnic minority. Further, they are not pursuing change; they are simply enacting their way of life. This in itself, I argue, resists state and societal persecution in more nuanced ways. This paper therefore extends Bayat’s (2013) work through a focus on the particular and the power of non-intentional cultural practices as a form of inadvertent resistance.

Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis offers productive insights to explore this. Lefebvre conceptualised space and time as a polyrhythmia – a multidimensional amalgamation of rhythms that form a harmonious eurhythmia predicated on capitalist spatio-temporal understandings of linear flows valorising speed and efficiency. Therefore, lifestyles characterised by unregulated mobility, a lack of property, and disengagement with the formal economy – such as that of Gypsy-Travellers – have been marginalised. However, Lefebvre also recognised these alternative rhythms as moments of transcendence – arrhythmias that resist hegemonic spatio-temporal orderings. Arrhythmias have been studied in relation to groups including homeless people (Hall, 2010), insomniacs (Meadows, 2010), cyclists (Spinney, 2009) and pedestrians (Hornsey, 2010). However, accounts remain largely grounded in urban spaces, and Gypsy-Travellers – to the best of my knowledge – have not been engaged with through this analytical approach.

Central is recognising the entanglement of mobility, time, and resistance. Cresswell (2010) notably argued for mobility to be understood as inherently political, and Sheller (2018) recognises control over (im)mobility as a deeply historical form of power. Her notion of mobility assemblages recognises how constellations of people, practices, and meanings control who, and what, can both move and stay still. Therefore, subversive mobilities are often foundational to protest and resistance, generating counter-politics of mobility and alternative kinopolitical imaginaries (Sheller, 2018). For example, Leitner et al. (2008) explored the 2003 Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, where nearly 1000 immigrant workers and activists undertook a one-week bus journey to Washington DC to protest injustices immigrant workers were experiencing. Further, Griffin (2024) argued for the 1981 People’s March for Jobs, an organised walk from Liverpool to London involving over 250 unemployed people, to be recognised as a mobile form of resistance. Shell (2015) attends to less spectacular and intentional forms, tracing ungovernable mobilities including subversive forms of animal movement such as camel trains.

Speed and rhythm are foundational to these counter-politics of mobility, where alternative, slow forms of movement generate a powerful politics of pace (Highmore, 2002) which decelerates capitalist circulation. Bowles (2016) exemplifies this through his study of London boaters who consider themselves as occupying a slow, unpredictable boat time which modifies, bends, and distorts the fast and highly choreographed temporality of the city – a political act of time tricking (Moroşanu and Ringel, 2016). Taking this further, Kabachnik (2009) proposes a cultural politics of mobility, recognising how marginalised groups mobilise cultural narratives to advocate for change, although this assumes these politics to be both large-scale and intentional. I therefore propose a further extension through an everyday cultural politics of mobility, capturing how the rhythms of everyday Gypsy-Traveller life resist state persecution in non-intentional, yet politically powerful ways.

This requires attending not only to the visual, but the multisensory dimensions of cultural rhythms, objects and practices. Lefebvre (2004) emphasised how sound is essential to eurhythmia, and the importance of attending to the sonic has increasingly been recognised. Schafer’s (1977) soundscape, where a demarcated sonic environment is measured to understand how sound influences people’s experiences of place, has been a commonly adopted approach. However, Feld (1996) argues that this confines sound to static environments, obscuring how the sonic is an irregular and unpredictable phenomenon of experience (Ingold, 2007). Instead, his acoustemology situates sound within the interplay of multiple senses, and highlights the importance of language, poetics, and voice, all of which are central to Gypsy-Traveller culture. Building on this, I draw on Scott’s (1985) infrapolitics, arguing that the everyday sounds of Gypsy-Traveller culture coalesce into an infrapolitics of sound with arrhythmic potential.

(Re)theorising (Gypsy-Traveller) resistance

Following this review, I propose an extension of Acton’s (1974) typology to include non-intentional cultural resistance as a response of the Gypsy-Traveller community to persecution. To address shortcomings in existing literature I build on Bayat’s (2013) quiet encroachment of the ordinary, drawing on and embedding Feld (1996) acoustemology within Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis to offer a more multidimensional and multisensory understanding of resistance. Specifically, I propose the concept of cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary: a non-intentional, multisensory, and multidimensional form of cultural resistance where everyday objects, practices, rhythms, and sounds coalesce to have Political potential. Cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary contain three parts. First is recognising the power of the visual in relation to cultural objects, practices, and performances. Second is attending to the importance of everyday rhythms, grounded in historicised cultural forms of mobility, the politics of pace, and the importance of particular spatio-temporalities. Third is recognising the importance of sound, language, poetics and voice embedded within these rhythms.

Throughout these pages, I argue that it is not the continuous everyday encroachment of the ordinary of a dispersed marginalised group, but the non-intentional cultural encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary. I apply this to the particular spatio-temporality of a non-political, yet politically powerful, cultural event for members of the Gypsy-Traveller community: Appleby Horse Fair, where these encroachments coalesce to have ideological and political influence.

Methodology

For this research, I curated a novel multisensory and more-than-human methodological framework which drew together multiple methods tailored to the cultural specificities and sensitivities of the Gypsy-Traveller lifeworld. The details of this framework are being compiled and elaborated in a separate paper, with this section offering a brief overview.

The foundation of this framework is an ethnographic approach, enhanced through Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis to enhance immersion into the lifeworld of one’s participants. Within this, I developed two further emphases. The first was a multisensory approach, attending especially to the sonic dimensions of my surroundings and integrating this within a recognition of rhythms as constituted through the interaction between multiple senses. The second was equine ethnography, a culturally specific and sensitive approach which centred horses throughout my research: riding, driving, and swimming with them in a variety of setting to facilitate access and immersion into Gypsy-Traveller life.

In practice, I conducted an 11-day multi-sited ethnography where I travelled to, and participated in, the 2022 AHF on foot, vehicle, horseback, and horse and cart with a dynamic group of Gypsy-Travellers. To supplement this, I conducted three qualitative interviews, one with a police officer at a local drop-in session, and two with Gypsy-Traveller activists using Microsoft Teams. Interviews lasted from 60 to 90 min and were transcribed by hand. Alongside this, I recorded 8 audio clips lasting from 8 s to 8 min 32 s, integrating these soundbites into my ethnographic fieldnotes to produce a multisensory account of AHF.

Access was facilitated through 13 years close interaction with the Gypsy-Traveller community through familial networks. This further enhanced my belief that countering the detached, objective, and inaccessible nature of academic writing has emotional, societal, and political potential. This paper therefore adopts a narrative style which animates my analysis, bringing to life AHF in a way which allows you to experience for yourself the rich and vibrant dimension of Gypsy-Traveller life.

And so, dear reader, join me as we embark on a cultural journey into the Gypsy-Traveller lifeworld.

Discussion

Performative and spectacular cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary: Appleby horse fair

Appleby-in-Westmoreland is a small, quiet Cumbrian town featuring quaint cobbled streets and picturesque views of the surrounding countryside. However, for 1 week each year it is transformed through the occurrence of AHF, a fleeting yet critically important event for the Gypsy-Traveller community, acting as a vibrant place of cultural enactment, expression, and celebration. Throughout these pages we will travel together through AHF exploring how, although this is not an explicitly or intentionally Political event, it is a powerful P/political spatio-temporality (Skelton, 2010). The coalescing of Gypsy-Traveller bodies, objects, and practices generates a non-intentional cultural encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary, (re)claiming space of, and for, Gypsy-Traveller life.

The flash

The sun shines down on rolling green hills, cows graze peacefully, birds chirp merrily and- horses race past, hooves clattering as they narrowly avoid tourists obstructing the road. “Watch your back!” men holler as whips crack and whistles pierce the air. Rules no longer seem to apply as the peace of the idyllic countryside is fractured by something fast, chaotic, unpredictable...beautiful.

For 51 weeks of the year, this is Long Marton Road. However, AHF transforms this space into the Gypsy-Traveller place of the Flash through the cultural practice of riding and driving horses at speed past spectators and prospective buyers. The assemblage of human and non-human bodies, objects, and their rhythms and sounds coalesce into a chaotic yet harmonious spectacle – a cultural encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary which (re)claims, (re)appropriates, and (re)configures this road. Although this could be argued to align to Marxist understandings of resistance, this is not an intentional Political performance. It emerges through the confluence of everyday Gypsy-Traveller practices which inadvertently coalesce to have broader ideological and Political influence, legitimising and celebrating Gypsy-Traveller life.

Visual symbols are critical. Stay close as we join the crowds gathering to glimpse traditional cobs with long manes, tails and feather⁴, and those which step and dance, lifting their feet high off the ground (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Horses being driven down the flash. Source: Author.

After watching for a while, we manoeuvre our way out of the throngs of spectators, harness up our horses and drive them to the Flash, urging them into a fast trot with a click of the tongue and a flick of the reins; we are not only observing, but actively participating within, and (re)producing, this cultural performance. As we drive, our driver stands up exemplifying his exceptional balance and skill as a horseman, drawing admiring looks from Gypsy-Traveller spectators and awe from other attendees. Although to many this was an intentional performance, he later explained that he did not stand to show off, but to enhance his vision and ability to navigate the multiple rhythms of the Flash. This reifies McDowell, Anitha and Pearson’s (2012) finding that symbolic cultural displays are often habitual; what appeared to be an extraordinary performance was an enactment of his Gypsy-Traveller ordinary which indirectly became infused with broader P/political meaning (Skelton, 2010).

Alongside visual symbols, the Flash is characterised by a Gypsy-Traveller everyday cultural politics of mobility, an inadvertent and cultural form of Griffin’s (2024) mobile protest. Horses are ordinary within Gypsy-Traveller life, and yet their presence throughout Long Marton Road is extraordinary, generating arrhythmic rhythms with subversive potential. In contrast to much existing scholarship focusing on how alternative rhythms cause urban life to slow down, the Flash is characterised by speed and adrenaline, accelerating the slow-paced rhythm of rural life. This politics of pace (Highmore, 2002) is further exemplified through the sonic; horse’s hooves strike tarmac, whips crack and harness jingles, harmonising with shouts of “Get on!”, “Oi oi!” and “Watch your back!” to form an infrapolitics of sound. To members of the Gypsy-Traveller community, these sounds are ordinary, and yet to outsiders they are extraordinary, carving out space where Gypsy-Traveller culture is not only seen, but heard and felt.

However, these unpredictable rhythms have been associated with danger, leading to calls for increased management and regulation, largely from non-community members who consider these rhythms abnormal. This obscures how Gypsy-Travellers, through intimate and generational knowledges, engage in an intricate rhythmic dance which “might not be safe, but if people just stand back works perfectly well and has for 500 years.”⁵ I therefore extend Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis, arguing that the spatio-temporality of the Flash is not simply an instance of arrhythmia, but of the cultural encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary eurhythmia where the rhythms of Appleby-in-Westmorland, for a time, align to Gypsy-Traveller, not local settled life.

Appleby-in-Westmorland town centre

This becomes increasingly evident as we drive towards the town centre. It is a rhythm that cannot, should not, and is not managed; it is ungovernable (Shell 2015). This doesn’t stop police attempts to do so, mobilising visual barriers including cones, alongside their own bodies and voices to govern Gypsy-Traveller attendees and their associated horse-drawn mobilities. However, these logics are incompatible with the rhythms of horse-drawn vehicles and Gypsy-Traveller life, paradoxically disrupting the Gypsy-Traveller eurhythmia and causing dangerous arrhythmic gridlocks. However, Gypsy-Traveller’s reject these spatial orderings, driving over pavements and grass verges in acts of overt, (extra)ordinary visual defiance, and subtly manoeuvring to incrementally overcome the gridlock. Within the spatio-temporality of AHF, it is not cars, but horse-drawn vehicles which have become the visual, rhythmic, and sonic norm through a cultural encroachment of the Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary.

We slow our horses to a walk and descend into Appleby-in-Westmorland which has been transformed from a sleepy Cumbrian town into a P/political Gypsy-Traveller place. As we bring our horses to a halt, a man effortlessly jumps onto a large red and white stallion, flashing him to the cheers of his comrades. This performative micro-spectacle generates a nested cultural encroachment of Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinaries. The visual symbolism of the desirable animal, simultaneous arrhythmic and eurhythmic potential, combined with the sonic infrapolitics of horseshoes striking the road, deep neighs, and cheers of spectators (re)claims and (re)defines Appleby-in-Westmoreland as a Gypsy-Traveller place, and a Politically powerful site of cultural expression, legitimisation, and continuity.

These disruptions occur not only through movement, but also stationarity (Sheller, 2018). Lining the streets, signs state: “PLEASE DO NOT TIE HORSES OR PONIES TO THIS FENCING,” one piece amongst many in the mobility assemblage seeking to govern AHF. However, countless horses are tied along these fences, a counter-visual practice which transforms them from neutral bodies into disobedient objects (McDonagh, 2019), or disobedient animals – legitimate actors in the cultural encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary, and the resistance of police regulations. However, although this at first appears to be a blatant, intentional act, for many Gypsy-Travellers it is simply instinctive or practical. Some Gypsy-Travellers are unable, or unwilling, to read these signs, and others may simply not notice or do not respect these outsider demands which disrupt their (extra)ordinary eurhythmia. Despite this, these subversive (extra)ordinary micro-performances coalesce to undermine, subvert, and resist hegemonic mobility assemblages in subtle, P/political ways.

The river Eden

We unharness our horses and jump onto their backs before descending the ramp to the River Eden, a deeply historicised cultural place for Gypsy-Travellers where the practice of washing out horses ready for sale dates back centuries. As we ride, we must attend not only to the rhythms of the horse beneath us, but to those of the river itself as we navigate the unpredictable current and rock-strewn bed before plunging into the icy depth to swim back towards the bank. Central is sound; we urge our horses on with an assuring stream of words, splash through the shallows, take sharp intakes of breath at the cold, and emerge to the whirring and clicking of camera shutters. Although these are practices considered ordinary to Gypsy-Travellers, the presence of 20,000 tourists and photographers armed with an array of technological devices transforms this into a spectacle, and a cultural encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary which legitimises, celebrates, and sustains Gypsy-Traveller culture and practices.

Old Hill

Let us now slow down. After the fast-paced, adrenaline-infused rhythms we have experienced so far, we slowly ride towards Old Hill where many Gypsy-Travellers stay for the duration of AHF. Marking each entrance stand two flags: the Union Jack side-by-side with the Romani flag – a powerful visual statement and creative intervention which politicises and (re)claims the culturally important spatio-temporality of AHF for Gypsy-Traveller peoples (Awcock, 2021). The ideological P/political potential of these flags bleeds beyond the confines of AHF, curating a Gypsy-Traveller banal nationalism (Billig, 1995) and sense of belonging which legitimises their right to exist not only at AHF, but within the UK as a whole. We pass and slowly ride through Old Hill, witnessing a multitude of everyday cultural practices. Men gather as horse dealing occurs, hand slapping signalling a price was agreed, boys break a horse in cart and harness, and older men sit or lean on sticks as they quietly watch the comings and goings of life within the Fair. In each instance, the visual, rhythmic, and sonic align to generate more subtle, nested cultural encroachments of Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinaries, where the seemingly mundane and ordinary acts of Gypsy-Traveller everyday life gain Political power by enacting, legitimising, and sustaining the Gypsy-Traveller lifeworld.

Our journey through AHF has explored how the cultural encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary emerges through a constellation of human and non-human bodies and objects, their rhythms and mobilities, and sonic attributes within the culturally saturated spatio-temporality of AHF. These P/political cultural practices entangle the (extra)ordinary and spectacular, with ordinary political acts coalescing to have extraordinary Political influence. This (re)claims, (re)appropriates, and (re)creates places which legitimise, celebrate and sustain Gypsy-Traveller culture, generating a non-intentional form of cultural resistance to ideological and political persecution.

Mundane and ordinary cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary: The journey

Wait. Hold your horses. Our journey is not over. The cultural encroachments of Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinaries are multiple, processual, and dynamic, coalescing before and bleeding beyond AHF itself (Arampatzi 2017). So, join me as we travel to and from AHF, a time where through “just living as [they] have always done” Gypsy-Travellers create, reproduce, and legitimise their lifeworld in more nuanced and subtle ways. Although neither Political, performative, or intentional, I argue that this journey should be recognised as a powerful mobile spatio-temporality of P/political cultural resistance (Griffin, 2024; Skelton, 2010). Aligning to Pottinger (2017, 2020), I understand these acts as a form of Gypsy-Traveller quiet activism where the ordinary aspects of Gypsy-Traveller culture gain Political power in ensuring the continuity of Gypsy-Traveller life.

Visual symbols

Carefully climb the wooden steps and open the canvas door to enter another world (see Figure 1). Allow your eyes to roam over the crackling stove, the barrel-shaped roof latticed with wooden beams, and the intricately carved benches, cupboards, and mirrors. Welcome to my bowtop wagon. Although over 2/3 of Gypsy-Travellers live in brick-and-mortar accommodation (Smith and Greenfields, 2015), many travel to AHF in the footsteps, and hoofbeats, of their ancestors in these wagons, stopping at generational ‘atchin tans’ (stopping places) along their route. The (extra)ordinariness of their procession through, and instances of stillness within, the Cumbrian countryside transforms them into disobedient objects (McDonagh, 2019), or cultural assemblages, which politicise and (re)claim these historical routes (Awcock, 2021) in more subtle and inadvertent ways than previously documented (Acton, 1974; Howarth, 2022). Although this shares aspects with Leitner, Sheppard and Sziarto’s (2008) analysis of the 2003 Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride and Griffin’s (2024) exploration of the 1981 People’s March for Jobs, this journey is not undertaken for an overt Political reason; it is a deeply historical annual mobility constellation which coalesces within and across years to have broader ideological and Political power.

However, the route to Appleby has been subject to increasingly draconian and intricate mobility assemblages (Sheller, 2018). Grass verges are often mowed to remove grass for horses to eat and lined with posts and signs declaring “No Stopping,” traditional stopping places are blocked by boulders or regulated with specific dates and times that people are permitted to stay there. And yet, as we travel through the landscape we see boulders moved, signs ignored or discarded, and posts burnt. This is not to actively undermine hegemonic political structures but to allow Gypsy-Travellers to enact their ancestral way of life from which a resistive cultural encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary emerges.

However, cultural mobilisation is a double-edged sword. As we pass through Kirkby Stephen, an important town on the route to AHF, we notice railings covered with colourful boards painted by local primary school children depicting quintessential images of Gypsy-Traveller life (see Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Boards in Kirkby Stephen painted by local primary school children. Source: Author.

As we pass through, your eyes are drawn to their colourful displays which seem to celebrate Gypsy-Traveller culture. However, although our horses and ourselves are tired, we do not stop. We can’t. These boards prevent Gypsy-Travellers from tying their horses along the street to resting them, or allow themselves to visit local establishments; a form of ethnic discrimination hidden behind the artwork of children. This is even more poorly disguised by the Fat Lamb Country Inn in Ravenstonedale which proudly displays a sign stating: “BAR CLOSED HOTEL GUESTS ONLY” despite another claiming that “Bikers are Welcome,” and the Black Swan who refused to serve our group drink or food when they realised that we were not ‘locals’. However, this paradoxically enhances Gypsy-Traveller cultural encounters; people instead gather around communal fires, sharing stories, memories, and updates. These ordinary acts of the everyday coalesce into an encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary, and a form of quiet activism (Pottinger, 2017, 2020) that resists cultural persecution in more subtle ways.

Rhythm and sound

Gypsy-Traveller life is characterised by alternative mobilities and rhythms, often grounded in slowness, fluidity, and flexibility, a contrast to clock-time preoccupations with speed, efficiency, and productivity (Lefebvre, 2004). These mobilities and rhythms have been persecuted as abnormal, uncontrollable, and deviant (Cresswell, 1996), and therefore subject to political suppression and persecution. However, the journey to AHF provides a fleeting spatio-temporality where these mobilities and rhythms are enacted in ungovernable ways (Shell, 2015), curating a cultural encroachment of a Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary which resists hegemonic rhythmic orders.

Although most Gypsy-Travellers now own motorised vehicles, many travel to AHF in horse-drawn wagons, and even those who do not travel via horse-drawn vehicle often travel in small increments between generational stopping places – a fundamentally slow form of mobility. Similar to Bowles' (2016) London boaters, time is treated, valued, and experienced differently. One elderly Gypsy man could not understand “why everyone is always in such a rush,” personally choosing to take “the long way round” in contrast to fixations on finding the shortest, fastest route. Days have no fixed structure; Gypsy-Travellers are “used to living a slightly more... free life y’know” with one Gypsy man stating that “time is not my master. I will not bow to time on this fair.” This is exemplified further at stopping places, where interactions often involve ‘ChitChat’ over a cup of tea and a biscuit. Sit down – “hobnob or digestive?”. Although hegemonic ideologies of clock-time consider these interactions trivial wastes of time, these gatherings are fundamental in allowing dispersed Gypsy-Travellers to rekindle old, and foster new, connections for personal, economic, and cultural benefits. By simply enacting their way of life, Gypsy-Travellers deploy a politics of pace (Highmore, 2002) and engage in the political act of time-tricking (Moroşanu and Ringel, 2016) which resists and offer alternatives to regulated clock-time in inadvertent yet powerful ways.

Sound, language, and poetics and voice (Feld, 1996) offer further insights into this Gypsy-Traveller eurhythmia. The sun is setting as we release our horses before heading back to our wagon, warming our hands over the crackling fire. Slowly, others join us, and we exchange nostalgic stories, memories, and life lessons. Following our evening of chatter, our request for our companion to “give us a song for good hospitality” is granted, leading to a beautiful and powerful performance of Carrickfergus, a well-known song within the Gypsy-Traveller community which I strongly encourage you to listen to. The performance of this song in the symbolic place of the wagon, with the background track of a crackling fire, rain on the roof and the gusting wind create a powerful and immersive cultural rhythm. This extends Routledge’s (2003) recognition of the power of performances of indigenous song within acts of resistance; this song was not performed for a Political purpose, but as an internal enactment of Gypsy-Traveller culture. However, within the spatio-temporality of AHF, and the bowtop wagon, this curated a form of non-intentional Gypsy-Traveller quiet activism, resisting persecution through more mundane and (extra)ordinary forms of cultural enactment and continuity.

Alongside song, language is integral to Gypsy-Traveller culture and identity whose history is largely oral, not written. One Gypsy man affirmed this, emphasising how using the Romani language mediates belonging and is used to subvert and criticise police regulation, aligning to Highmore’s (2002) analysis of costermonger backslang. The particular spatio-temporality of AHF is critical, curating a place where the Romani language can not only be used, but more importantly, understood. Therefore, by engaging in the ordinary act of speaking, Gypsy-Travellers inadvertently curate a cultural encroachment of their (extra)ordinary, contributing to the continuation of their culture through language.

The Romani language has been preserved through centuries of oral transmission including poetry, exemplified when our Gypsy companion spontaneously recites one such poem as we rest in the bowtop wagon:

Mandy jauled to puv Mandy’s grai

Down along the parney side

Mandy decked the musker

Lellin Mandy’s grai

Mandy delled the musker

Tween the parneyside

Dawty! Dawty! Can’t Mandy cure?

TRANSLATION

I took my horse to the grass

Along the riverside

I saw the policeman

Taking my horse

I hit the policeman

Between the eyes

Look here! Look here! Can’t I fight?

The entanglement of English and Romani words creates a poem that to non-Gypsy-Traveller ears seems unintelligible, yet to members of the Gypsy-Traveller community represents an oral preservation of their language, culture, and history. The poem holds wider significance, capturing the persecution faced by the Gypsy-Traveller community, with the policemen confiscating their property, and the resistive response, with the Gypsy man ‘dell[ing] the musker’ in retaliation. However, Gypsy-Travellers are no longer able to be overtly violent due to fears of arrest, imprisonment, and/or confiscation of belongings; Mandy can’t cure, at least not in overt ways. However, sharing these poems acts as a subversive practice resisting hegemonic discourses that delegitimise and criminalise Gypsy-Traveller life. This aligns to, yet extends, Abu-Lughod’s (1999) analysis of Awlad ‘ali Bedouin women, exemplifying how non-intentional poetry recitals still have significant discursive power in challenging, resisting, and offering alternatives, to political persecution.

Tensions and reflections

I acknowledge that this analysis has been overly harmonious and romantic. This not only risks me falling into Bayat (2013); Theodossopoulos (2014) concerns surrounding the overemphasis of the agency of subaltern subjects, but raises important questions surrounding the fractures, discontinuities, and tensions often embedded within, and emerging throughout, resistance movements.

It is important to not overly romanticise Gypsy-Traveller cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary. AHF is changing; many reminisce about how it used to last for a full week yet is now largely “over by the weekend” as increasing numbers of Gypsy-Travellers live in brick-and-mortar accommodation and are employed in structured work. The changing spatio-temporality of AHF could lead to important shifts within the resistive assemblages that I have outlined in this paper. For example, a decline in the number of Gypsy-Travellers who attend, and the length of time they immerse themselves within, and contribute to, the Fair could unsettle, fracture, and weaken the potential for Gypsy-Traveller cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary to emerge. Further, it is essential to not obscure the threats that Gypsy-Travellers have faced, and continue to face, from socio-political forces surrounding AHF, and throughout their lives. The police retain a high degree of power. Alongside acts of ignorance, subversion, and resistance, elevated cases of disciplinary action, fines, arrests, and confiscation of property are recorded surrounding AHF, raising questions surrounding the desire, or ability, of Gypsy-Travellers to engage in resistive practices.

Further, as highlighted in the introduction to this paper, Gypsy-Travellers are a dispersed, internally divided, and often-feuding group. Alongside acting as a place of cultural convergence, AFH also acts as a confluence of tensions, disputes, and feuds. What you perhaps didn’t notice as we travelled through the Fair was the sudden coalescing of hundreds of bodies around two young men, stripped to the waist as they prepared to box, or the smashed windows and charred trailer on Old Hill–signs of settling, or continuing, decadal feuds between families. And perhaps you were distracted by the biscuits when at one of our stopping places an elderly Gypsy woman talked about how we couldn’t have a fire that night as the “men from down the road” kept coming and using all our wood, labelling them ‘non- or wannabe Gypsies’ who were giving ‘our’ group a bad reputation. These instances of internal tension and violence could be considered as fracturing notions of community, solidarity, and cohesion through which Gypsy-Traveller cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary emerge.

However, AHF remains a powerful ideological and physical place within Gypsy-Traveller life. Changes are taking place, including heightened levels of structure, control, and persecution. And yet, these acts are adding to the cumulation of centuries of persecution experienced by Gypsy-Travellers, and in many cases is leading to enhanced levels of cohesion, solidarity, and resistance to these external threats. Further, although acts of feuding and violence are considered by many to be dangerous, delinquent, and divisive, these practices are foundational to, and generative of, Gypsy-Traveller life and culture (Howarth, 2024). For example, it was not only Gypsy-Travellers who gathered around those two young men; the police also sought to intervene. The crowd immediately dispersed; an unspoken agreement to relocate, reschedule, and continue this cultural practice away from the interfering eyes of ‘outsiders’ was implicitly agreed. This highlights how, despite internal tensions, when faced with something considered to be external, and a threat to, their shared culture and way of life, a sense of cohesion, solidarity, and community is generated. Through, not despite, these instances, the potential for cultural encroachments of the extraordinary continue to emerge.

“They’re trying to kill it. But this is our Fair. They’ll never stop us coming.”

The simultaneous sense of solidarity and defiance within this statement–a sentiment which often emerged throughout conversations at the Fair, by all groups included in my definition of Gypsy-Travellers–highlights the importance of AHF for Gypsy-Travellers, despite, or even because of, heightened persecution and internal division. Gypsy-Travellers have travelled to this Fair for centuries, and will continue to do so for centuries to come. They will gather to flash their horses, to wash them in the River Eden, to deal, to chat around firs, to catch up with family and friends… And through doing so, they will continue to enact their culture in ways which validate, celebrate, and reproduce their way of life within a socio-political system that seeks to erase them.

Conclusion

Since arriving in the UK in 1505, Gypsy-Travellers have experienced unrelenting ideological and political marginalisation and persecution seeking to control, regulate, and diminish their cultural way of life. The 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Acts is the latest, although likely not the last, piece of legislation criminalising Gypsy-Traveller life. However, Gypsy-Travellers are not passive victims; they are adaptive, innovative, and agentive actors who resist persecution in a multitude of ways.

Our journey throughout these pages offers two broad contributions. Theoretically, I built on and extended understandings of resistance. Previous understandings of Gypsy-Traveller resistance have largely focused on acts of resilience and tactical subversion, or large-scale and overt acts of protest. This dualistic approach has largely obscured the complex and nuanced multidimensional, entangled, and intersecting spatio-temporalities of Gypsy-Traveller resistance. Although some have sought to address this through a poststructuralist approach (e.g., Howarth, 2019; Karner, 2004), accounts remain grounded in singular understandings of spatiality, and focused on intentional acts of resistance.

To address these shortfalls, I propose the concept of cultural encroachments of the (extra)ordinary, capturing non-intentional, multidimensional, and multisensory forms of cultural resistance where everyday objects, practices, rhythms, and sounds inadvertently coalesce to have resistive potential. Specifically, this draws on and extends Bayat’s (2013) notion of quiet encroachments of the ordinary, where the collective acts of dispersed subaltern coalesce to have political influence. Enhancing this, I argue that Gypsy-Travellers are neither ordinary nor large-scale, but an extraordinary ethnic minority population within the UK, and so a group whose everyday ordinary practices, when enacted within particular spatio-temporalities, coalesce into (extra)ordinary acts of non-intentional cultural resistance. Alongside offering a more multidimensional understanding of resistance, this concept embeds Feld (1996) acoustemology within Lefebvre’s (2004) rhythmanalysis to offer a multisensory understanding of resistance. Specifically, I build on the recognised power of visual objects, practices, and performances, enhancing this with an appreciation of the power of everyday cultural politics of mobility (Cresswell, 2010; Kabachnik, 2009), the (ar)rhythmic rhythms they generate (Lefebvre, 2004), and the infrapolitical power of sound (Feld, 1996; Scott, 1985). This concept should not be restricted to the Gypsy-Traveller community; it can be used to explore acts of both intentional and non-intentional (cultural) resistance for other marginalised groups, especially those with alternative mobilities, rhythms, and with a cultural grounded in the importance of sound.

Second, these theoretical contributions led to novel empirical insights. Throughout our journey to, and participation in, AHF we observed this cultural spatio-temporality and amalgamation of human and non-human bodies, objects, and their rhythms and sounds from which performative and spectacular cultural encroachments of Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinaries emerge (Awcock, 2020; Hughes, 2020). As we experienced, these cultural encroachments grounded in the alternative visual symbols, mobilities, rhythms, and sounds of Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary life curated an ungovernable arrhythmic, or alternative eurhythmic, Gypsy-Traveller rhythm which unsettled, resisted, and reconfigured hegemonic spatio-temporal orderings seeking to govern Gypsy-Traveller life. Although not performed for explicitly Political purposes, these encroachments coalesced into an (extra)ordinary enactment, celebration, and legitimisation of Gypsy-Traveller life and culture, P/political acts which resist persecution by asserting the right of Gypsy-Travellers to exist not only within the (re)claimed, (re)appropriated, and (re)configured place of AHF, but the UK as a whole.

Alongside the spectacle of AHF, we also experienced more mundane cultural encroachments of the Gypsy-Traveller (extra)ordinary our journey to and from AHF. This is a deeply historical mobility practice, undertaken not to evoke a Political statement, but grounded in and constitutive of a mobile spatio-temporality in which Gypsy-Travellers live as they have for centuries, reconnecting with ancestral routes, stopping places, and equine-oriented practices. Throughout this journey, we witnessed the (extra)ordinary mobilities, rhythms, and sounds of Gypsy-Traveller life, grounded in slowness, flexibility, and fluidity; we aligned our pace to that of our equine companions, cooked over communal fires and shared stories, poetry, and songs at historical stopping places. I argue that these ordinary aspects of Gypsy-Traveller life should be understood as P/political acts (Skelton, 2010), and instances of a Gypsy-Traveller quiet activism (Pottinger 2017, 2020), where the banal, everyday, and ordinary practices of Gypsy-Traveller life continuously create, reproduce, and legitimise the Gypsy-Traveller lifeworld in a more mundane and subtle, yet still Politically powerful ways.

Ideological and political persecution against Gypsy-Traveller has not ended, and so this paper cannot, and should not, be concluded. These pages represent a single chapter in a novel, the story of which continues to unfold; for Gypsy-Travellers resistance remains embedded into every conscious and subconscious act. Through this journey, I hope that I have not only opened your eyes, ears, and other senses to alternative dimensions of the Gypsy-Traveller lifeworld, but also your mind and heart. For a moment, return to your initial presumptions when I asked you to conjure an image of a Gypsy, a Traveller, a Roma. Has anything changed?

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This paper would not have been possible without the Gypsy-Travellers who allowed me a glimpse into their lifeworld. I would particularly like to thank Michael, who offered me the chance and encouraged me to engage with Gypsy-Traveller culture throughout my life, and the members of our camp who always made sure I was safe and well. I admire and thank you all for your warmth and humour. And last, but most certainly not least, I would like to thank my equine research participants who grounded me and provided comfort throughout this research.

ORCID iD

Kelsey Monteith

Ethical considerations

This study was approved by the Oxford University Research Ethics Committee.

Consent to participate

For all individuals directly engaged with, informed consent was obtained verbally before participation.

Consent for publication

Informed consent to use individual data was obtained verbally before participation with the agreement to anonymise the contributors.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Kelsey Monteith is a PhD student at the University of Oxford who works with nomadic peoples, specifically Gypsies and Travellers in the United Kingdom. Her current research draws together cultural, legal, and political geographies to explore practices of Gypsy-Traveller home (un)making in relation to societal, legal, and political persecution.

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