When Glasgow showman Jimmy Stringfellow feels weary, he calls to mind his ancestors of centuries past. Traditionally, he says, as we stand in the family’s fairground yard where their chalet homes share space with old fairground rides, Showpeople would sometimes physically fight to secure their pitch at the fair. “And,” he says laughing, “they’ve been fighting ever since.”
This time he and his family are fighting not for their place at the fair, but their right for somewhere to call home.
In 2023 a proposed development on the site of their yard – part of the £25m regeneration plans of the city’s traditional shipbuilding neighbourhood of Govan – saw them facing eviction by Glasgow City Council.
Now they are taking their case to the Court of Session claiming the council’s eviction decision is discriminatory and in breach of human rights legislation. The family says it undermines their cultural heritage. “We should have the same protections as everyone else,” Stringfellow says. “Our entire way of life is under threat.”
Glasgow City Council, meanwhile, claims the family “occupying the site have no legal right to do so and do not pay rent”. Despite failing to find a suitable replacement yard for the family, they claim the eviction is being made “as a last resort”.
In days gone by families like this one – many with cultural roots stretching back centuries – travelled the country with their fairground rides in spring, summer and autumn and “wintered” in their showyard.
In more recent years this way of life has come under increasing threat, with Covid-19, the cost-of-living crisis and increased regulation putting many out of business. Most of Scotland’s remaining fairground yards are in Greater Glasgow and many of these families can trace their heritage back hundreds of years.
The Stringfellow family have lived in Govan’s Water Row, in a well-hidden yard that borders the River Clyde, for more than four decades. Before they moved their trailer homes and show rides onto the site, Stringfellow says they cleaned up the unused industrial land, removing asbestos and other waste.
They no longer travel but are based here permanently, They are an integral part of the community and the trailers have become chalets. But insecurity has always been part and parcel of life. There were leases. But there were also eviction letters which continue to dog them.
Stringfellow, now in his seventies and still dapper in a jacket flecked with the same bright blue as his feathered fedora, has batted them all off.
The latest one arrived in April 2023, four years after plans for a mix-use housing and retail development, which takes in the Stringfellow’s yard, had been lodged by Glasgow firm Collective Architecture on behalf of Govan Housing Association. They are part of the city’s development vision for the River Clyde “corridor”, aimed at making the districts alongside it “vibrant, inclusive, livable and well-connected”. Last month a foot and cycle bridge between Partick and Govan opened to great fanfare, joining the two neighbourhoods for the first time.
The council sees no place for the Showpeople in these plans, says Stringfellow.
But the family and its legal team – JustRight Scotland – insist the eviction would be discriminatory because of the family’s status as Showpeople for whom living on a show yard is part of their way of life. Lawyers also claim that it is a breach of the family’s right to a home under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
They claim the family’s rights have been overlooked in the regeneration process and the eviction order should be refused. Development of additional housing can be achieved without removing this Showpeople family from their home, JustRight argues. Landscaped greenspace is planned at the site of the yard.
If the plans are not modified, they point out, three generations of the Stringfellow family will be made homeless, likely resulting in separation and the loss of their ability to live according to their cultural heritage.
Jimmy Stringfellow’s daughter Chanel, now in her forties and living on the site with her own four-year-old daughter, can’t remember life before eviction notices. But this latest one has taken its toll, she says, impacting the family’s physical and mental health and testing their resilience.
Growing up she had family and friends all around her. “You’d go out in the morning, go to your aunties, play with your cousins – people would feed you as you went,” she explains. “My mum always knew I was on the yard and well taken care of. But most importantly the yard is my home and always has been.”
“It’s just heart-breaking,” says her mother, Diane. “For a while ago I was really bad. I couldn’t stop crying. I wasn’t getting dressed, and I felt like I was falling into a big black hole. We just don’t know what you’re going to do. A while ago we were frightened to go out, because we didn’t know if we’d come back and this would be here, or if they would take it away.
“She was ready to jump in the Clyde,” says Stringellow. “There’s no sense of security at all. And there’s no help from the authorities. They’ve never helped us and they are still not helping to this day. I’m a pensioner, I’m on pension credit, I’ve got asbestos in my lungs, thrombosis and they want to remove me and my family from my home.”
This battle is a historic one. The family’s legal team is also making the first use of Scotland’s United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child act in a civil case, arguing that the rights of the child living here have not been taken into account and that eviction would breach her right to a secure home. The act came into force in July this year.
JustRight Scotland is also planning to ask the court to rethink Scottish laws, arguing they fail to protect Showpeople and other travelling communities to the same level as residential tenants living in flats or houses. The yard is subject to commercial property laws which allow evictions to be made without the protections usually offered to tenants under Scottish housing law.
The family understands that there is a complicated balance to be struck here. They want the best for Govan and welcome new housing and development. But they don’t understand why they can’t remain part of the community.
On the day the Govan-Partick bridge opened Diane Stringfellow took her daughter out to hear the music. “It was a good day,” she says. “But…it was a complicated day. We have been here so long and they’re moving us as if we were something on the bottom of your shoe.”
To Chanel Stringfellow the bridge celebrations made her feel “like we were invisible.” She and the rest of her family claim they have not been kept informed on development – they claim there was no official notification and they were not kept updated or invited to consultation events about the plans. Supportive neighbours kept them updated, she says.
The council says “extensive community and stakeholder consultation” was carried out on the Water Row development.
But Chanel alleges the council has made life deliberately difficult on the yard. They have not provided pest control for issues with rats which, Chanel claims, has been caused by the work being done on the bridge. At one point, she says, bins were not picked up for three months by the council.
In response to these allegations the council provided contact details for pest control and refuse services.
“This case highlights a significant gap in Scots law, whereby those who reside in caravans or moveable chalets do not have the same protection against eviction as other residential local authority tenants,” Barbara Bolton, solicitor and partner at JustRight Scotland, says.
“Scottish Government purported policy is to improve the lives of Showpeople and other traveller communities, and yet they are denied the most fundamental of rights, security in their homes.
“Swift action ought to be taken to ensure that all local authority residential tenants have the same security of tenure in their homes, whether that be a bricks and mortar house or a chalet or caravan. To fail to do so is to discriminate against these communities on the basis of their cultural heritage and way of life.”
Andrew McAvoy, an architect and founder of Retool Architecture, who has advocated for the family since getting working with Stringfellow on Govan Fair heritage project in 2015, said he was “shocked” that Glasgow seemed unwilling to “uphold equally the rights of all members of society to reside at the heart of the community that raised them and to which they contribute everyday.” “Who needs or wants a shiny new city if that city displaces its own people?” he asks.
They are also being supported by Fair Scotland, a charity for Showpeople and their heritage, who claim the precarity that Showpeople across Scotland face is “unacceptable”.
“These yards are often brownsites that would be considered unsuitable for other types of housing,” says a spokesperson for the organisation. “Showpeople bring these back to life, providing homes and communities in areas that often need it the most. And yet this not only goes unrecognised, but is effectively scrubbed away when new development and infrastructure is finally secured for those areas.”
They are not asking for special treatment for Showpeople, they insist but that “a community that already faces significant barriers towards the continuation of their culture and way of life, and significant discrimination in many areas, be treated fairly, and transparently”.
“The woman or man sitting in a paybox of a ride or inviting you to hook a duck on any given fair has lion tamers and acrobats and jugglers in their family history,” they added. “The Scottish fairground is a culture, a knowledge base, a lifestyle, and a witness to how Scotland likes to play and unwind over the centuries. Though you might not always notice us, you’d miss us.”
But this fight looks likely to be lengthy.
A spokesperson for Glasgow City Council said: “The people occupying the site have no legal right to do so and do not pay rent.
“The council has – over a number of years – made exhaustive attempts to engage with them, without success. As a result, this action has been raised as a last resort. Given the matter is currently pending before the Court, it would be inappropriate to comment further.
JustRight Scotland said the family had paid rent in full for decades, “which the Council acknowledges in the court case” adding the Stringfellows claim the council no longer accepts payment because it wants to remove them from the land.
Get all our latest updates with the Ferret Underground, our free newsletter. Sign up for free stories every week, an invite to our exclusive Facebook group, and a monthly behind-the-scenes newsletter.
All pictures by Angela Catlin
This story was updated on 7 Jan to clarify the Stringfellow family’s position on paying rent.
