Whether or not travellers want still to be travelling I do not know. I would guess they mostly do not, but, since the government some time ago removed the obligation (never fulfilled) on local authorities to provide pitches for travellers, it has not been practically possible within the law. In the semi-settled state that travellers now maybe prefer to exist, both encouraged by the seductions of our mainstream society and constrained by its regulations, they may be less acceptable to settled society than if they were still moving on.
I have no direct knowledge or experience of this realm of life: I might be as rabidly anti-traveller as some of the burgers of Basildon if they were camped outside my front door. What caught my eye was David Cameron's use of that word - as he expressed support in the Commons for the Basildon council's eviction plan, using a particularly notorious firm of bailiffs, courting the condemnation of the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the Commission for Racial Equality, and costing the tax-payer up to £18 million (couldn't one buy each family a nice terraced house for that sum, or the one square mile that it is estimated would accommodate all the travelling families in the UK? - call for a 'pathfinder' project here) - his use of that word - "fairness" (or rather "unfairness"):
“My honourable friend has persistently raised this case and this issue in the Commons. I know he speaks for many people about the sense of unfairness that one law applies to everybody else and, on too many occasions, another law applies to Travellers.”
So here again that idea of "fairness" is used to justify the imposition of suffering on some segment of our society. I have protested against the political mobilisation of this idea before. I agree that fairness is a wonderful thing, but have we not all, as parents, had, in the practical world as it is, to deal with the childish whine, "It's not fair!"? We must strive to treat people fairly, but sometimes generosity of spirit has to accept that the idea can be used to justify pettiness and selfishness.
As Anatole France put it, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." He could have said "fairness forbids".
It all depends how you look at it:
"But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house, Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen."
