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article written for Kaskade
March 1992 No 25
UNWRITTEN LAWS FOR OUTLAWS
This is a personal reaction to the request for Kaskade
to publish a Travel Guide for street performers. My busking experiences are
in the past, and these things change quite quickly - but I suspect that such a
list would be of limited use.
If you intend to work outside of theatres, contracts, agents, etc.,
you fall into an uncontrolled category - you have freedom, but relinquish
certain rights.
You are challenging both written laws - which have frozen many past
attitudes to travelling performers (and may be interpreted more or less
sympathetically by contemporary officers) -and also the unwritten ones - the
attitudes of the public, other people working on the street, etc.
In countries with less structured welfare systems, many poor people
'work' the streets in various ways. You may have to consider these people more
than the police - local performers who claim a performance pitch; street vendors
seeing you strip money from the crowd; even protection rackets, who assume
(rightly) that you may hand a certain amount over if threatened - it isn't only
the government that taxes you.
You have to deal with these people directly, without the protection
of the law. You certainly have human rights, although once out of your native
land they can be somewhat different from your expectations - but you are also
vulnerable to laws specifically enacted to keep the solid citizens of the
community satisfied.
There is usually no law against juggling in a public place if
you are not obviously dangerous (like juggling a machete, a torch and a bowling
ball on a six foot unicycle). Still, there are probably several laws that may
affect you, each designed to control different activities in the street.
For example, in the UK you could be arrested (or at least
cautioned and moved on) by reference to laws on "obstruction" - if the
crowd you draw blocks the footpath and people have to step into traffic to get
past; for "causing a public nuisance" (which necessitates the police
receiving a complaint from a member of the public, who may be a shopkeeper whose
window is blocked, or someone who doesn't like your amplified music);
"begging" is illegal in most places - there's nothing to prevent
people making a gift of money to you, but you must not ask. To illustrate this,
and the way laws may be interpreted, I offer this example.
A friend is a chalk artist [ed: Hadass
Tamir]. She leaves a box for people who
like her work to throw money into. Because she (unlike performers) has her
attention on the ground, she chalks "Thank-you" in the local language,
to save interrupting the flow of her work each time a coin lands in the box. One
time I saw a policewoman standing over her in Cardiff. I went over to negotiate
for her, thinking she was about to be moved on. "It's nice work, and people
like it," said the officer, "but she must not ask for money." I
protested that she just worked quietly and demanded nothing. "Yes, but that
word 'Thank-you' is asking people to put money in the box." I insisted that
it was just to thank them if they did. She was adamant, however, that she didn't
object to two square metres of pavement being covered in drawing, but that
offensive "begging" word had to be rubbed out. I scuffed it out with
my shoe and she went away, quite satisfied that the law was now being respected.
No wonder I don't really understand the law - when 'thank-you'
means 'please'! (And this was in my own country, in my native language.) It's an
example of a police response which was both sympathetic (not looking for
trouble) and yet pedantic (not simply turning a blind eye). Whether laws are
activated against you will often depend on your own attitudes to other people,
both in and out of uniform.
If you intend to travel by juggling, you could find yourself labelled
as a "vagrant". This is a wide-based definition used to
discourage travelling without visible means of support, or an address, etc., and
could be used against someone without the means to prove they are a
"tourist" and not working illegally. This is the definition of
"Rogues and Vagabonds" from the Vagrancy Act in 1713:
"All Fencers, Bearwards, common players of Interludes,
Minstrells, Juglers, all persons pretending to be Gipsies or Wand'ring in the
Habit or Form of counterfeit Egyptians or pretending to have skill in
Physiognomy, Palmestry or like crafty Science or pretending to sell Fortunes or
like phantastical imaginations or using any Subtle Craft or unlawful Game or
Plays..."
...and these people could be whipped, set to hard labour or
transported. It is probable that "Juglers" here means conjurors, but
you can see how this law might catch you in its net. In fact, the law which is
in use in England at the moment is the Vagrancy Act of 1824, originally
introduced to deal with the problem of rootless ex-soldiers discharged after the
Napoleonic Wars. It had fallen into disuse, but has recently been re-activated
to try to sweep homeless people from the streets of central London.
I noticed, in an interview you published, the casual use of
the phrase "jugglers are like gypsies." There is the romantic notion
of the free Bohemian life-style, the mysterious and magical image you may wish
to evoke in the public - the carefree gypsy. Unfortunately, most of the written
laws surrounding "gypsies" are extremely punitive.
The issue here is not whether you are a "Gypsy"
racially - this is an area as sensitive as discussing the distinctions between
Jews as a race and as a religious group - but whether you may be treated as one.
This is great if you meet people in their romantic mood: one face of the settled
population greets the entertainer, the wayward artist, romanticizing the life
outside the "normal" laws and ethics of society, the wild musicians
who captivated the cafe society, the hint of mystery and fortune telling and
unknown powers.
Yet it is worth remembering the other face, and the fact that the "gypsies", or more properly "Rom", have suffered terrible persecution in the course of their history.
"The Nazis had a law of
genocide against Jews and Gypsies for about eight years; we (in Britain) had one
for Gypsies for two and a half centuries; in the 15th and 16th centuries
hundreds of Gypsies were hanged in England solely on account of their race."
(Thomas Acton, "True Gypsies - Myth or Reality", New Society
6 June
1974).
This is tragic history, but it doesn't affect you, right? Wrong. Like "Bohemian", the term "Gypsy" is sufficiently vague to cover anyone who deviates from society's norm of fixed abode.
"For
several centuries the mere fact of being a "Bohemian" in France was
sufficient to be sent to the galleys.... Who exactly were the individuals
targeted by this expulsion policy? .... in five centuries that term was never
defined." (Jean-Pierre Liegois, Gypsies, 1986 -tr. from "Tsiganes", 1983)
I am not going to attempt to disperse the clouds of disinformation
surrounding the Rom. The lack of written records, and the complex multiplicity
underlying that one simple word "Gypsy" take us beyond this article. I
have found some material that suggests that the Rom may have brought juggling
from India to Europe - but that is the seed of another article.
Now that law-makers are cautious about being seen to enact
racist laws, and ethnic groups demand rights to continue with traditional modes
of life, it has become important to deny that there is one easily distinguished
group (who might have rights); so when Travellers actually try to park anywhere
they find that they tend to be lumped together by settled citizens and their
laws.
Here is a current British law, defining "Gypsies"
as "...persons of nomadic habit of life, whatever their race or origin, but
does not include members of an organised group of travelling showmen, or persons
engaged in travelling circuses, travelling together as such."
(UK Caravan
Sites Act of 1986, Section 16)
This is a huge, complicated and fascinating subject. Suffice
it to say that European countries have harsh laws aimed at Travellers of all
kinds. There has always been a mixture of people travelling - merchants,
refugees, disbanded armies, displaced people, economic migrants, pilgrims, etc -
and laws invented to control them. You don't have to be part of an ethnic
minority to find out that the resistance of populations to "gypsies"
hasn't changed much. New Age Travellers using their initiative to avoid
homelessness or poverty by adopting this lifestyle can still draw the negative
responses that "Gypsies" have often endured. "Why don't you get a
proper job?" is one of the mildest.
So the public may love you or hate you - either way, you are
an ambassador for all the other street-workers - ideally you offer a good show,
avoid offensive language, keep props and costumes as clean as possible, don't
endanger the public and leave no mess behind you. You may prefer to be more
challenging and "anarchic" (in the negative sense), but remember that
each time you do that you re-confirm to the powers-that-be that their laws are
valid, and you make it harder for the next performer. All street performing is
testing a frontier, and setting new limits.
Don't forget that a written guide not only means a lot of people
will seek out the same place at the same season (can you stand the competition?)
but that such lists may also be read by police departments, neo-fascist
vigilantes or outraged citizens. It might be useful to centralize information on
festivals that hire performers, but then you are effectively back into show-biz
and agents, etc.
There are good reasons why information about informal
performing is circulated by word of mouth - whether you think of that as some
sort of exclusive freemasonry or underground movement is up to you. So long as
"being able to do the cascade" is considered sufficient to be
recognized as part of "our tribe", then we need to be sure that people
respect some unwritten rules of behaviour, as well as act cautiously when
testing the laws of the land (and not provoke them into being revived and
enforced) - and discourage abuse of such information.
Toby Philpott ã 1992