Everyone in the camp was asleep when the alarm ripped through the silence.

A firework soaked in petrol had been lit beneath one of the caravans and exploded in flames.

Margaret was in the next caravan and was woken by the screeching fire alarm.

Now, every night as she goes to bed, Margaret prays she will not be next.

The burning of the gipsy van in Firle with effigies of a mother and children inside was too close to home.

She recalled: "There was a group of 20 caravans there. We were getting moved around quite a lot.

"The council in Crawley told us to go into this field, so we did.

"We were sleeping. Luckily we had a good alarm on the van or, the fire brigade said, all the caravans could have caught fire as well.

"The van was a total write-off and our dog was killed.

"I'm afraid to go to sleep at night thinking we might wake up to a fire. I'm always thinking how would we get out of the caravan. The windows are plastic. We would be trapped."

Margaret is part of a group of Irish travellers and has moved around the South of England for the past 35 years.

She is nervous and jumpy and did not want her photograph in The Argus for fear of being recognised and abused.

She said: "The problem with Firle was there were children looking out of the windows of the caravan.

"It was telling kids there that this is what you do with this type of people. It was a kind of murder.

"I don't know what we can do because these are educated people.

"We need more proper sites, then perhaps there wouldn't be such ill-feeling when we're forced to stay in parks. Other people have homes and the option to use holiday caravan parks. But we're not welcome there. We have nothing."

It is not the only time the travellers have been targeted.

Vanessa, another woman in the group, said: "We've had paint thrown at us, been spat at, even been shot at by pellet guns.

"It's racist. What else could it be? If this sort of thing happened to Indians or black people it would be condemned."

Prejudice is nothing new in a history is of persecution and struggle. Half a million Romany gipsies were killed during the Holocaust and in many parts of Europe the Nazis almost succeeded in eliminating them.

Part of the problem is that the general public know little about travellers' proud history and complex culture.

The term encompasses the Roma, who have their own language derived from Sanskrit and are believed to have migrated from India in around AD400 through the Middle East to Europe, arriving in England 400 to 500 years ago, and Irish travellers whose history goes back around 150 years.

Both are recognised ethnic minority groups.

The Roma were banned from 16th and 17th century Scotland on pain of death.

In 1445 Prince Vlad Dracul of Wallachia transported 12,000 people "who looked like Egyptians" from Bulgaria for slave labour.

Romanies are believed to have been in Britain for the past 400 years, a nomadic group trying to survive within a settled culture.

In Britain more than two in three traditional travellers' sites were closed between 1986 and 1993.

The 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act released local authorities from the duty to provide traveller sites and introduced new laws penalising people who stopped without permission.

Travelling is a legal and legitimate way of life. But for Romany travellers such as Linda Chapman, 59, it has been fraught with discrimination and racism.

She has been living at a permanent site in Robertsbridge for the past 23 years. This is through necessity, not choice, as there are not enough safe places to stay.

She feels the people responsible for burning the Firle caravan should be prosecuted and given community service to work within traveller groups.

She said: "If the people who did this are not publicly shown to be wrong then it will give the message it is okay to treat us like that.

"It was shocking seeing the children and woman painted on the side made me feel sick. We have enough prejudice as it is, such as being barred from shops and pubs.

"We're not treated as individuals - if one traveller does something wrong then all of us are blamed.

"We're treated differently. If travellers had burnt an effigy of a house we'd have had police down here in a flash and we would have been arrested on the spot.

"We've had our ups and downs since we moved here but now we get along well with most of the villagers. It's only new people who arrive who give us problems.

"After the caravan was burnt in Firle lots of villagers called us up to check we were okay."

She added: "People ask why we have to live in caravans, why we can't be happy in a house.

"It would be like asking someone who pi s lived in a house all their life to move into a caravan and travel around. It's your culture, your life - it's what you know."

Charlie, who also lives on the encampment, said: "Travelling is about freedom. Do you really feel free getting up every morning, dictated to by clocking in and out?

"Being in a permanent camp is like being in a kind of prison. There's only one way in or out and we're surrounded by fences and barbed wire, hidden from view.

"The 20 years I've been here have been the worst of my life. I want to be on the road."

Jackie Whitford is head of the traveller education service of East Sussex County Council and has worked alongside their communities in Sussex for the past 16 years.

She said: "My work is to support the education and achievements of traveller children. But these things can't function in isolation.

"Children can't realise their potential if they don't have a safe and secure place to stay and health care or are constantly being interrupted because of evictions.

"Very few people know about the complex traditions of the gipsies or about their long history of persecution. People need to be made more aware."

Sussex Police are investigating the event at Firle and a file will be sent to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Those responsible for the tableau could be prosecuted for inciting racial hatred.