THE Oxford Mail does not have a political stance, and we would never knowingly discriminate against any group of people based on their background, ethnicity or heritage.

The only group of people we support and champion are you – the people of Oxfordshire.

That is why we wholeheartedly endorse the Home Secretary’s plan to create a new law which would enable police to prosecute anyone who sets up an unwanted encampment of any kind on public or private land.

As anyone who has lived in Oxfordshire for more than a year will know, our city and towns and villages across this county are absolutely fed up with large groups in caravans taking over our public spaces – parks, playing fields, car parks and village greens – making local people feel intimidated, refusing to leave when asked and then leaving these places in absolutely disgusting states.

Human faeces have been left one more than one occasion.

To be honest, we don’t know who the people were in any of these groups: no one from the Oxford Mail has spoken to any of the occupants of these caravans in recent years, and for the most part these people have not engaged with locals in the areas they visit anyway.

But frankly, we don't care who was in those caravans: on some occasions, they may have been people who describe their ethnicity as being of the traveller community, or of Irish or gypsie or Romany descent, but their ethnicity has nothing to do with it: there are thousands of people in those communities across this country who are well-behaved, law-abiding citizens, and this has nothing to do with them: this is about a tiny minority of people, whose background is irrelevant, who have treated the people of this county with utter disregard and contempt.

We hope that those communities can join us in saying it is time to put an end, once and for all, to this disgusting behaviour which gives certain groups a bad name.