Grattan puxon biography

Grattan Puxon has been an activist and campaigner for the rights of the Gypsy Roma Traveller (GRT) community for over 50 years.
With sixty years behind him as an activist in the global Romani movement, Grattan Puxon continues to advocate for the collective rights of the Roma Nation.
Grattan Puxon is a British fighter for Roma rights and a journalist by profession.

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Free Born Traveller

Steve arrived in Dublin on the run from the British Army. It is a turbulent time. An IRA splinter group is letting off bombs during a ceasefire, while the country's travellers are massing on illegal encampments at Cherry Orchard near Palmerstown.Based on actual events during the 1960s, this remarkable story - about a young English couple who take up with the tinkers of Ireland, get mixed up in IRA politics and find themselves persona non grata with the Irish State - can now finally be told. Handicapped Denise starts a makeshift school for the travellers, only to see it burned down by Dublin Corporation. A series of brutal evictions follow, causing the death of an infant. The travellers make their final stand at Cherry Orchard. The school is rebuilt and Larry Ward, the King of the Tinkers, joins the camp in time for the showdown. For Steve and Denise imprisonment, betrayal and fear await.

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GLOBAL INDIAN

With sixty years behind him as an activist in the global Romani movement, Grattan Puxon

continues to advocate for the collective rights of the Roma Nation. Scattered and diverse, Roma

have a presence in a diaspora that stretches over four continents. Puxon has been involved

in the politics of this emerging nation since 1962; in 1966 he founded the Gypsy Council

in Britain, 1971 organised with the others the 1st Word Romani Congress in London,

which adopted the Romani nation flag embossed with a red ashok chakra, signalling a link with

India, the ancient homeland. He was elected general-secretary.

He is the co-author of the first stand work on the Nazi genocide against the Romani people [Heinemann 1972] and a novel entitled Freeborn Traveller, and many pamphlets and articles. More

recently, Puxon has chaired the Democratic Transition a project that provides an electronic voting system for Roma throughout the Diaspora. The 50-year Jubilee of the first Congress was reached last year and was marked by the holding of the online Jubilee Congress, hosted from Berli

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Grattan Puxon is a British fighter for Roma rights and a journalist by profession. After refusing conscription into the army from his native England, he fled to Ireland where he met the Irish Travellers and joined their nomadic way of life. He returned to England in 1966 and the same year was one of the founders of the British Romany Council in Kent, where he was the first secretary. Under Puxon’s leadership, the Council launched a campaign of passive resistance against the violent evictions of Roma caravans from public plots, which attracted great media interest. The campaign put pressure to enact the Caravan Sites Act (1968), which obliged municipal councils in England to provide caravan sites for the Roma. Throughout his career, Puxon fought against evictions in Roma settlements, offered support and guidance to those affected by them. In addition, he helped asylum seekers from the Roma community.

Puxon was involved in international movements that contributed to the rights of Roma communities. He participated in organizing the First World Romani Congress in London in