English_books / Adv_eng

Home for Tony and his four- year-old daughter, Emma, is a tarpaulin tent, now packed into a Jaguar with chronic engine fatigue.

It, and possibly 99 other irregular mobile homes, were in the process of eviction from a Somerset farmer's land yesterday. Tony and Emma were resuming their barefoot journey through the byways of an England whose conventional society they reject. Society has returned the sentiment, in full measure, since they took to the road two years ago.

This mutual antipathy had its expression yesterday when the convoy's children, who have

shocked local people and been widely criticised, took the chance to throw a little mud (literally) at the local Tory MP, who came to inspect the site of their mass trespass. Mr Robert Boscawen, MP for Somerton and Frome, was not greatly put out.

Tony is not typical of the 300odd travellers whose sojourn in farmer Les Attwell's grass field at Lytes Cary near Somerton has been front page news this week.

This is because the typical traveller does not really exist. The convoy consists of disparate groups.

The age of the adults ranges from 16-60; backgrounds are

widely varied, from the painfully respectable to the more painfully deprived.

Tony, aged 23, was set on a life of utter normality in a North Wales town before he gave up his shoes and his trade as a time-served plumber.

"I saw what society was, just rubbish. You could say it's a paranoid view but I don't think so - George Orwell's 1984 has happened already," he said yesterday.

"This is my family. Where else can you go where there are 300 members of a family all in one place? It is a lot closer than it is in the city, where you never get close to anybody.

"In my bender I have probably got everything you have in your house; gas cooking, heating, even a kitchen table. I prefer it to living in a house. I believe in doing what I want to do.

"Put Emma with a kid in London who might be three or four times as old as her, and she's the same age as them. She learns

what she wants to learn, what she needs to learn.

"It is like a tribe, if you like. She can read and write. She has been on the road since she was two and she is healthier here than she was anywhere else.

"I don't wear shoes and she doesn't either. One day there was snow and I took about four

New Cambridge Advanced English

steps outside and bloody felt it. She was out there, sitting in the snow and making a snowman.

She doesn't feel it.

"I think we are people who have seen society for what it is. It takes a lot of courage to make that move, to give up everything you know. It takes about three days to adjust."

Operation

Overkill

Nothing better illustrates the bizarre pointlessness of the current persecution of the Peace Convoy than the sight of dozens of police marching dozens of hippies along the A31 in the drizzle yesterday after the Stoney Cross campsite was broken up at first light. Sure, the Convoy members are not all sweetness and light, free love and lentils. Sure, they leave a lot of litter and they drink too much. Sure, they have messed up some fields and a disused airfield and blocked some roads for a while. But that hardly makes the Convoy the public enemy that it has now become, commanding headlines, parliamentary statements and emergency ministerial committees.

It doesn't make Stoney Cross "the world's most famous blot on the landscape," as one tabloid had it yesterday. And it doesn't justify the absurd waste of police time and public money (500 police officers on overtime at four o'clock in the morning don't come cheap) that was involved in ludicrous Operation Daybreak launched yesterday.

Nothing that the police either did or said yesterday was remotely proportionate to the problem posed by the Peace Convoy. First, there was no need to go in at 4am, rather than in mid-morning. It wasn't as though the hippies were planning on going anywhere; on the contrary. Second, there was no need to have so many officers, drawn from four different forces. The country is supposed to be short of police in the war against crime. The Convoy has consistently acquiesced when it has been evicted in the past and there was no reason to suppose that this time would be any different; nor was it. Third, it is clear that the main object of the operation was to separate the hippies from their vehicles, thus in the words of the Hampshire chief constable "neutralising" and "decommissioning" the Convoy. Fine - but then what? People don't just disappear, however much you may want them to. Given the importance of the summer solstice to this particular group, it is obvious that they will soon be back in some way. Does that mean that hundreds of police are to spend the next fortnight marching around the lanes of southern England in case someone makes a fraudulent social security claim or someone else steals

some firewood? Chief Constable Duke talked yesterday as though he had solved the problem. Alas, he has merely displaced it.

Sooner or later, someone is going to have to be a bit sensible. The Peace Convoy is an environmental problem, it is true, but is it really as great an eyesore or disruption as all the Ministry of Defence's convoys, ranges and no-go areas? Has the Peace Convoy destroyed rural England on a scale to match the grain baron farmers? Are all the road traffic, drugs and criminal damage offences that have piled up around the Convoy really so overwhelmingly serious that everyday crime prevention across large tracts of the south-west needs to be suspended to deal with it? If there was one person in Whitehall with a fraction of the public spirit of the Cornish landowner who has now offered asylum to some of the Convoy, then the whole problem could have been solved weeks ago by the provision of a site. Instead Government seems much happier aimlessly stoking up a mood of intolerant over-reaction which does no credit to anybody and which ensures that the trouble and expense of this whole pathetic business is perpetuated far longer than it ever needed to be.

Why the police officers of Stoney Cross deserve bouquets from the convoy

IN THE interests of accuracy about our operation at Stoney Cross, I feel bound to take what is for me a most unusual step in writing to you.

The previous violence of the convoy when its members drove heavy goods vehicles and coaches at police officers endeavouring to enforce the law, when vehicles from the convoy were driven forcefully at police road blocks, have in the past led to scenes that I would certainly not like to see repeated.

It was for those reasons that such a large number of officers was drawn together so early in the morning, to ensure a peaceful containment of die site without risk of further violence which would have required a police response. That no injuries or damage occurred during the taking

of the site is clear justification for that decision.

Recognising that at the end of the operation a large number of people, including children, would be effectively displaced, it was police officers who took the initiative to draw together the relevant groups of the social services in order that those caring agencies, including police, could play their part in taking care of members of

the convoy.

Police officers laid on coaches to provide transport to the social services; police officers offered and provided refreshment to members of the convoy; police officers persuaded members of the convoy to take the obvious advantage of the caring agencies.

Police did not march dozens of "hippies" along the A31; the "hippies" themselves decided to set off in that direction without any consultation with or direction from the police. The police officers went with them to ensure their safety and that of other road users.

As to your frivolous comment (Leader, June 10) about fraudulent social security claims and the theft of firewood, I am sure you realise that the unlawful behaviour of the convoy is far greater than this.

Yes, of course the convoy is a social and environmental problem, as well as a legal one. For my part I have no hesitation in applying the law to ensure the safety and protection not only of the public but also of the convoy members themselves.

As for the order of the High Court, are you really suggesting that it should be ignored, or would you expect me to sit back and contemplate another series of offences and disruption for other communities? I am confident that the firm, caring operation by the police, coupled with its shared and

overdy caring aspect, was justified and proper.

John Duke, (Chief Constable).

Hampshire Constabulary, Winchester.

hard drugs can never be totally eradicated, there are a number of steps that should be taken to reduce their use. these steps must be taken at once - before it is too late.

, national governments throughout the world must control the use

and supply of drugs within their borders. international organisations

must coordinate individual states' policies. States which 'supply* drugs may be pursuing contradictory policies to states that 'consume' them and time and effort is frequently wasted.

Choose ONE of the photos above and, using the notes you made in A2, write TWO articles (each about 120 words) about it:

1An account by a person who was there, describing what happened and how you felt.

2A letter to the editor of a local newspaper, giving your views on what should be done to prevent this kind of thing happening again.

In an account, you can show what the people involved said, and how they felt, if you include direct speech.

"Each new speaker's words should begin on a new line."

13I didn't realise that I had my jumper on

14The laundry business was a

15A reference book has its contents in the

16We all felt sick as the train moved from

17When I challenged him, he

18What was I talking about before I got

to

for the gang's criminal activities. and an index in the to

down and changed his mind, tracked?