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Drive 2 Survive activists warn Priti Patel's crackdown threatens ancient way of life at Appleby Horse Fair

CAMPAIGNERS against laws which will effectively outlaw travelling communities took their struggle to the Appleby Horse Fair in Cumbria at the weekend.

The festival is the biggest annual gathering of travelling people in Europe, attracting around 10,000 Gypsies, Roma and Travellers and 30,000 visitors.

This year they included activists from the Drive 2 Survive campaign and Stand Up to Racism.

State persecution of travelling communities in the UK is expected to worsen if the government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill becomes law.

It will criminalise travellers for “trespass” and subject them to fines, imprisonment and confiscation of their homes and vehicles.

The travellers’ Drive 2 Survive campaign said the Bill was “the single biggest threat to the traditional way of life of Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers in our lifetime” and will “entirely eradicate nomadic life in Britain.”

A Drive 2 Survive statement said: “If we join together we can make Priti Patel and Boris Johnson think again about their intention to eradicate a way of life that is many hundreds of years old.”

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