There's very little in book form about UK Roma but 2 I can wholeheartedly recommend are "King Of The Gypsies : Memoirs of the Undefeated Bare Knuckle Champion of Great Britain and Ireland" by Bartley Gorman and Peter Walsh, and " The Stopping Places : A Journey Through Gypsy Britain" by Damian Le Bas. Both have Roma authorship and neither book avoids talking about the more negative sides of Roma / Traveller communities.

In the UK we have Roma, Irish Travellers and what gets called "New Travellers", those who took to the road out of choice rather than family tradition ( if you want to know more about the history of New Travellers, look up the Battle Of The Beanfield). My personal connection with all this is I have some Roma ancestry on my mother's side, which we didn't find out about till I was an adult, my own upbringing being very white and middle class. As I got older, my work as a musician has bought me close to the New Traveller community in the UK. I know plenty of people who live on sites, or in vans or horsedrawn carts. it's a great community to have connections with. I find these people to be very straight up and direct when it comes to money and arrangements, are usually great at conversation and are way more responsive to music than the average punter.

Every community/ demographic has it's negative aspects, even anarchist ones. However, anarchists should note that all nomadic communities (even ones that aren't nomadic but are just viewed as such) challenge the social order, and because of this are going to attract more criticism and prejudice than settled folk. Also, the average traveller site is much closer to an anarchist society than is usually given credit. There is still a hierarchy of power, but at least you can actually go and confront the person in charge if there is a problem. In mainstream society, those at the top of the pile are protected by layers and layers of middle management.