Introduction to the
History of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain and the Regional
Divisions.
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straight to regional divisions
 The
formation of the United Kingdom showman and Van Dwellers' Protection
Association in 1889 was and still is the decisive and important
event in the history of travelling showpeople as a community. Until
1907 the Guild was highly centralised, with a 28-strong Executive
Committee and an almost equal number of vice-presidents and other
offices. In that year it was decided to divide the Executive Committee
into seven divisional committees, each having responsibility for
a particular region. In 1917 the Showmen's Guild of Great Britain,
as it became known, was recognised as the trade association of the
travelling funfair business and acquired the right to stand as representatives
for the business at both local and national levels; a position it
still occupies to this day.
As the original title suggest the early Van Dwellers' Association
was founded to protect and safeguard the interests of travelling
showpeople. Although claims for earlier organisations can be found
in the pages of the World's Fair and other publications,
these were usually temperance or charitable foundations more concerned
with the moral and spiritual salvation of the showpeople than their
everyday business and way of life! The incentive for the start of
the van dwellers association was the proposed legislation by George
Smith, a self styled expert and evangelist from Coalsville. He believed
that his mission was to reform and educate all members of the itinerant
community in the United Kingdom, whom he referred to as:
Dregs of society, that will one day put a stop to the work of
civilisation, and bring to an end the advance in arts, science,
law and commerce that have been making such rapid strides in the
country.
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Between 1884 and 1891 George Smith attempted to legislate the movements
of all travelling people. After successfully restricting the movements
of bargees in 1884 he then turned his attention to other travelling
groups in the United Kingdom with the introduction of the Moveable
Dwellings Bill in 1888. The basic tenets of this Bill included the
registration of all moveable dwellings, the compulsory school attendance
of all Gypsy and van dwellers' children and the introduction of
a series of regulations concerning the number of people permitted
in a given living space. However, the main recommendation was the
power to grant the local council the authority for an officer of
the law to enter a van with a warrant, in order to inspect the dwelling
for sanitation, health and moral irregularities. These proposals
caused widespread anger throughout the travelling fraternity. When
George Smith attended Birmingham Onion Fair he was chased through
the streets of the city and after venturing onto the fairgrounds
in Leicester and Northampton he was given police protection from
the threat of attacks.
Aware of how this would affect the fairground business, in 1889
the leading showmen of the day were contacted through the pages
of The Era and asked to attend a meeting to be held at the
Black Lion Hotel in Salford. As a result of this and subsequent
gatherings, the Van Dwellers' Protection Association was formed.
Therefore, the original aims of the forerunner to the present day
Guild was to protect and safeguard the interests of the fairground
fraternity.
By 1894 the Moveable Dwellings Bill was finally defeated and the
travelling showpeople had won a notable victory. However, after
the initial triumph over George Smith, the old organisation went
into decline, with membership falling every year. One of the early
problems the Association faced was the fact that only a small percentage
of the potential members were joining, but the majority were reaping
the benefits of the success achieved by the minority. This had to
be changed and through effective organisation and the introduction
of regional sections the early founders of the Guild gradually introduced
a set of guidelines which would eventually form the basis of the
rules and conditions found in the Showmen's Year Books. Throughout
the past hundred years the Showmen's Guild has effectively
been carrying on the mandate set by the founders in 1889: to separate
showpeople from Traveller-Gypsies, and to defend the homes, liberties
and way of life of the showpeople of Great Britain. The present
day Guild not only represents 95% of the community at both national
and local levels, but it also operates a code of conduct within
the fairground community. Commenting on the success of the organisation
in 1957 The Times wrote:
As a professional body and Employers' Trade Union the Showmen
of Britain must rank as one of the best governed and most co-operative
in the Kingdom.
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Over the century the Guild has opposed restrictive legislations
which would adversely affect travelling showpeople. During the first
sixty years of its existence the Guild defeated over 268 Private
Bills, included exemption clauses in over a thousand Bills of the
same category and has since continued to build on these achievements.
It has fought for the inclusion of exemption clauses for its members
in legislations ranging from the Middlesex County Council Act, Road
Traffic Act, Public Health Act, Betting and Gaming Act, Caravan
Sites and Development Act, Vehicles Excise Act and the Town and
Country Act to name but a few. The Guild has become the watchdog
for the industry as a whole, the means by which the society is organised
and the public face of the community. However, an organisation
is only as strong as its members and there has been several occasions
during its history that the Guild has had to rebuke the members
for apathy, non attendance of meetings and non compliance of Guild
rulings. In The History of the Showmen's Guild of Great Britain,
Thomas Murphy writes:
It should always be remembered that the work of the Guild is
in the nature of a defensive war. We must be constantly on the alert
because there is no prospect of either peace or an armistice. As
fast as we overcome one set of difficulties, others arise, and so
it will go.
In 1960 Frederick Roope, the then General Secretary of the Guild
commented that the personal problems of the members, the affect
of new legislation and new competition on the business had resulted
in the responsibilities of the Guild becoming more and more complicated.
Nevertheless he wrote that:
We believe we have something worth carrying on, and we are determined
to carry it on.
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The modern day Guild is divided into ten regional sections with
a regional committee and secretary in each area of the country.
The sectional divisions follow the exhibition patterns of the nineteenth
century and are based on the routes followed by the travelling showpeople
during their run of fairs. These divisions are the ones that have
been utilised to designate the ten regions within this location
search field and each individual country in the United Kingdom can
be found within these ten categories by referring to the following
list:
(Click on the region name to search that region for images.)
No
1 Section: Northern: Northumberland,
Durham, Tyne and Wear and that part of North Yorkshire defined by
a line drawn from Hawes to Staines and which shall include Leyburn,
Richmond and Northallerton.
No 2 Section: Lancashire: Lancashire,
Cheshire, Montgomeryshire, Flintshire, Denbigshire, Merionethshire,
Caernarvonshire, Anglesey.
No 3 Section: Yorkshire: Yorkshire
(except that part of North Yorkshire included in the No 1 Section)
and that part of Lincolnshire north of a line drawn so as to include
Ganisborough, Corrington, Caenby Corner, Glentham, West Rasen, Market
Rasen, North Willingham, Ludford, Magna Elkington, Louth, Legbourn,
Withern, Maltby-le-Marsh and Mablethorpe.
No 4 Section: Midlands: The historical
counties of Staffordshire, Leicershire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire
and Shropshire.
No 5 Section: Eastern: Norfolk,
Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Rutland, Huntingdonshire,
Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire.
No 6 Section: London and the
Home Counties: London, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Essex,
Middlesex, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire.
No 7 Section: Western: Gloucestershire,
Wiltshire, Somerset, Dorsetshire, Hampshire, Devonshire, Cornwall,
Avon and the Isle of Wight.
No 8 Section: Notts &Derby:Derbyshire,
Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire(except that part included in the
No. 3 Section.
No 9 Section: South Wales: Dyfed,
Mid Glamorgan, South Glamorgan, West Glamorgan, Gwent, Powys and
the area of the County of Worcester and Hereford within the former
boundary of the County of Hereford and the six counties of Northern
Ireland,
No 10 Section: Scottish: Scotland,
Cumberland and Westmorland
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