Putting me into care didn't stop me being gypsy

At three years old, she vaguely recalls, she was plucked from the warmth of the family bed by an anonymous figure in uniform.

After that she never saw the brother who had been lying beside her again. Or her mother. Or her father.

The frightened toddler was taken to a bland, white-washed care home - one of eight she would be bundled into over the next decade - where she was ordered to forget her roots. "You'll never get anywhere as a tink," they sneered.

But Liz has never brushed aside the tents and caravans, the boozy get-togethers or the carefree gypsy lifestyle she was born into. Even after people spat their slurs in her direction, calling her a "tink", "gypo" or "beggar".

"I've got gypsy blood in me, I'll always be a traveller," she says defiantly.

Today, for the time being, Liz is happily settled in Musselburgh with her young granddaughter Megan. Unlike some of the "stars" of the Channel 4 documentary Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, Megan doesn't spend her days coated in blusher and writhing around like Shakira. Nor is the 13-year-old preparing to get married at sweet 16. There is no caravan, no tiara-clad bouffant, no cream puff wedding dress - not a hint of the eccentric lifestyle portrayed on the high profile TV show. A picture on a side table shows a natural, beaming girl in her school uniform.

But Liz's experiences have been far from the norm. She is a traveller, but a rather more tragic one.

The night she was removed from her home, a gypsy campsite in Aberdeenshire, was meant to sever her links to the culture she was born into.

For years she clung to the vain hope that she would be reunited with her family, but when she turned 13 she decided to become a traveller on her own terms. "You follow your roots, it's the gypsy way," she says.

The 53-year-old recalls: "For years I didn't tell anybody I was a tink, not until my early twenties. Care workers drummed it in that it was something to be ashamed of, but they would be racist. I remember once I didn't go to school and somebody said, 'It doesn't matter 'cos you're just a tink'. One time a gypsy woman came to the care home to sell pegs and she was chased away. People don't treat us like humans. They see us as gypsies, not people.

"After years of mental and physical abuse at the care homes I was put in, I ran away. I was only 13 but I went all over the place, mostly squatting in houses and picking up cash-in-hand jobs along the way. I did everything from selling magazines to putting up deck chairs in St James's Park.

"When I was older, whenever I applied for a job, I'd always write 'Scottish gypsy traveller' under the ethnicity section. People didn't react very well, I think the only job I got that required an application was as a carer with the Church of Scotland. I don't care, I'm proud of that title."

After only a few months, Liz's first travelling experience ground to a halt when one of the people she was slumming with died after choking on his own vomit.

London social workers were shocked to find a dishevelled 13-year-old, but Liz claims the care home she had bolted from in Aberdeenshire didn't want to take her back. She admits to being a bit "naughty" and being expelled from school for drinking cider in a haystack.

Astonishingly, it led her to be taken to live in Craiginches Prison for two months because there was nowhere else for her to go.

After that, she was sent to a nunnery, where she once again ran away after fighting with another girl. "I was meant to be the Virgin Mary in the school play, but I thought this Glasgow lass was taking the p*** out of me, so we got in a fight. They said we couldn't do the play because the Virgin Mary had a black eye, and they sent me to my room. So I jumped out the window."

Since then, Liz admits she found it difficult to stay anywhere for longer than 18 months, until she met her second husband, Jimmy. They moved to Edinburgh in 1992. She doesn't have much to say about her first marriage; divorce, she admits, is frowned upon within the gypsy culture. "I was stuck in a bad marriage for years," she says, before trailing off.

Today Liz speaks openly on behalf of the travelling community. In Autumn last year she was heavily involved in a campaign that sought to gain an apology from the Scottish Government for the "ethnic cleansing" the gypsy culture experienced in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It is believed that hundreds of children were removed from their parents during the same period as Liz and put into care homes.

Last week she joined Amnesty International and a large group of travellers in a rally to highlight the discrimination and abuse they have experienced across Scotland.

Visiting various consulates across Edinburgh and Alex Salmond's office, the crew dropped off letters asking to put a stop to racism and to be given equal access to employment, health and education. Amnesty has been challenging Scottish local authorities on their service provision to travellers, and the charity claims that the group is one of the most marginalised in the country.

Liz says: "In the late 1950s and early 1960s they wanted to eradicate the gypsy culture. Lots of us were taken away - me, my sister, my brother, my cousins. I don't think that would happen now. I hope it wouldn't.

"People say gypsies don't work, but I worked all my life. Travellers work as they go along."

For Liz, it is too late to meet her parents. Pointing sadly to a blurry black and white picture of a man in a flat cap, she says: "That's a picture of my dad. My sister found it in the Royal Archives of Scotland.

"When I was 13 a social worker told me my mum was dead, then at 14 I heard my dad had been run over and died.

"They told me about my mum casually, as they handed over my lunch coupon.

"I don't know much about my mum and dad. I know my Dad was from Aberdeenshire, and he made pans. My mum was from Perthshire, and she couldn't read or write, like a lot of gypsy women. I vaguely remember one day when my dad was charged with being drunk and disorderly while he was pushing my pram. They said he had been driving erratically. The policeman's wife took me to their house to stay the night.

"At one of the carehomes I met somebody who knew my dad, and he told me my dad had stopped by in the past to see if any of his kids had been brought there."

She added: "I'm not saying that things would definitely have worked out if we'd met, but it would have given me a choice."

Liz was delighted to eventually meet her sister Martha 12 years ago after requesting her files from Aberdeenshire Council. Unlike Liz, Martha, also 53 but 10 months younger than Liz, spent most of her life with one foster family. After growing up in Aberdeenshire, she attended Aberdeen University and wrote a dissertation on gypsy culture.

Liz, on the other hand, believes she will be on anti-depressants for the rest of her life. She explains sadly that she has never really felt a sense of true belonging no matter where she has lived. Only when she met her late husband Jimmy, a stonecutter, did she become confident and happy.

But for Liz, her travelling days aren't over. "I wouldn't be considered a 'proper' gypsy by a campsite because once you leave, you can't go back. If you've lived in a house you aren't a traditional gypsy.

"But when Megan's old enough to look after herself, me and Martha are going to get back on the road," she says, happily. "Perhaps for a couple of years. Martha likes the idea of a camper van. We will never meet our parents, but there's gypsy blood running through us. That'll not change."

MIXED PICTURE ON TV

Liz Stewart on Channel 4's hit series Big Fat Gypsy Weddings:

"Parts of the show did ring true, and it had some good and some bad points. It demonstrated a community spirit and how close travellers are. It showed how we like to stick to our values and support each other.

"It's accurate that women are rather controlled by the men. They do a lot of the chores, look after the men and don't get as much of an education. They aren't independent and divorce is rare. Women get married young because gypsy life expectancy is a lot lower than in any other group. .

"There is a drinking problem and people don't get help for mental health issues, they drink as a form of escape. There are "bad" gypsies, of course, but there are bad figures in every community."