A gipsy family is challenging eviction laws on human rights grounds after being thrown off a traveller’s site by other gipsies.

The Buckland family is moving their legal battle to Europe after exhuasting courts and appeals procedures in the UK.

The family were tossed off the Cae Girw gipsy camp ion Port Talbot, South Wales in 2006 after persistent antisocial behaviour that included a reign of terror over managers and 27 other families on the site that included threats with a gun.

Maria Buckland, 52, claims the Gipsy Council discriminated against her and her family and that the eviction prevented them from exercising their human right to live their own ‘family life’ without interference.

The Buckland’s have lost a string of court cases to prove their point – all funded at the taxpayer’s expense.

The Gipsy Council reckons to have spent around £40,000 fighting the case in court.

The European court action is under section 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which guarantees a right to family life and bans discrimination.

Courts in the UK have heard that  the Buckland family were part of a “culture of disrespect” and Mrs Buckland was “personally guilty of conduct amounting to a nuisance”.

Hughie Smith, president of the Gipsy Council, said: “It was a really bad family. They had no respect for anyone. You can’t have people running amok on a publicly-owned site and making life a misery for other tenants.

“We were concerned, as a gipsy organisation, about having to take action against people claiming to be gipsies, but we were left with no choice.

“We gave these people every opportunity to behave themselves for eight or nine months but they carried on doing their own thing. We issued them with them notice to quit, and although there’s 27 other families on that site no one would sign a complaint against the Bucklands because they were frightened of recriminations.”

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