Documentary slating Meriden Travellers scrubbed by the BBC
By MIKE DOHERTY
News reporter
Above: The BBC show Street Patrol angered both Travellers and other Meriden residents with its portrayal of the long-running dispute
THE Meriden Travellers and the Traveller Movement have won a complaint about a BBC documentary that contained a news clip about the infamous West Midlands Traveller site battle.
The short five minute clip was part of the programme ‘Street Patrol’ and “praised” the antics of the Meriden Residents Against Inappropriate Development (RAID), the local anti-site campaign group that famously set up a long-running unauthorised encampment outside the gates of the Traveller site.
The documentary featured Meriden RAID leader, David McGrath; a businessman who ran a consultancy service for other anti-traveller site campaigns, who was introduced as Meriden’s community leader. Another RAID campaigner claimed that Meriden did not really have much community until the Travellers arrived and the resulting protest campaign galvanised the residents into action. The documentary was also covered in the Solihull Observer under the headline “Praise for Gypsy campaigners”.
Yet both the Travellers - who were ordered to leave by a planning inspector after a four year legal battle- and many local residents from the village itself, were unhappy with how they were portrayed by the BBC documentary.
Senga Townsley, a Scottish Traveller who lived on the Traveller site owned by Romany Gypsy Noah Burton, said: “I am furious and hurt. None of us, RAID included, were saints and we all pushed each other’s buttons at times, but the way the BBC showed it was so one sided.” Ms Townsley also points out that they got on with many of the Meriden villagers.
The BBC eventually apologized and agreed to never re-broadcast the programme after first offering to re-edit the clip with input from the Travellers – an offer which they refused. “I’m not willing to put myself up as an Aunt Sally on a programme that says it shows how so-called community champions deal with anti-social outsiders,” said Ms Townsley.
“Dave McGrath was no community champion. The real community champions were the villagers who welcomed us after they had got to know us a bit,” she said.
“I’m glad the BBC saw sense and scrubbed the clip and I would like to thank them for that, at least. We just wish people would come and see us first, before writing or broadcasting stuff about us based on what Meriden RAID tell them.”