By Gavin Mackintosh-
A group of Gypsy’s have been driven away from a site where the Old White Bear pub in Tingley was previously situated.
This same group of traveling Gypsy’s outraged locals last August when they parked their caravans there at all the Glen Road recreational grounds used by Glen junior football team in Morley.
Leeds City Council acknowledged awareness of the gypsy generated camping site, and eventually ordered their evacuation from there.
Gypsies are travelers, who live a nomadic lifestyle, moving from place to place. They have a close knitted tradition with stringent rules that forbid them from dating outside gypsy circles, though this rule is implemented more against women.
A man at the site, who refused to disclose his name, told the eye of media.com ” clearly nobody is using this space and we are not causing any trouble here. I don’t see what the problem is”.
However, locals expressed discomfort about their presence and take over of the site, some expressing concern that Gypsy’s have a tendency to be violent, especially when drunk.
When the eye of media.com attempted to take pictures of some of the gypsy’s, we were aggressively confronted by some of the Gypsies, including a woman who pointed out that and told that her young son of about four years of age was present and would feature on our camera without her consent.
When we asked her to take her child into the caravan, she refused, and more males confronted us insisting that no pictures was taking of any of them.
We respectfully granted their wishes not to include them in any pictures, but asked why they were obstructing the young football team from using the pitch. ” There is no football team here now, is there”?One of them sharply responded.
The eye of media.com heard there have been confrontations between some of the gypsy members and some of the locals over their presence there in the past few days.
Gypsy travelers have a very macho culture, especially among their men, many of them participants of boxing and bare knuckle fighting, as well as unlicensed fights.
No actual fights are reported to have occurred during their stay in Leeds, and they have now moved to some other location.