The Echo's revelations about the manoeuvres of the traveller community, which we publish today, puts the travellers firmly on the defensive. There are things here travellers did not want the rest of the world to know, and which until now they have kept well hidden. They have a lot of questions to answer.

Evidence from many different quarters all adds up to the same conclusion. Travellers have presented themselves as social victims, hard-up underdogs who have only resorted to illegal settlement of conservation land because the alternative is homelessness and destitution.

Readers who examine our reports over the next few days, particularly the conclusive evidence of multiple occupancy, will discern a different set of affairs.

Certain already wealthy members of the travelling community are playing a long-term game in property development which could ultimately be worth millions of pounds. For them, the illegal travellers' sites are real-life Monopoly boards.

The perception of travellers as human rights victims has been supported by certain members of the chattering classes who live a long way from any illegal camp.

It cannot stand up to the facts as now revealed. The real name of the game isn't basic shelter, but big business.

There are victims all right in what the BBC has termed Gypsy Wars.

They are the long-suffering residents of Basildon district, the place that has taken the unfair brunt of the travellers' prolonged Monopoly game.