Download - AJ Racism Essay Gypsies
In What Ways Have Travellers Been Racialized in Britain?
LY 3018 Racism, Gender and Class
Candidate No: 982679
Word Count: 2,999
Candidate No: 982679
Travellers take their roots from the original Romany Gypsies an ethnic group believed to have
entered Europe from the East through Russia in the middle ages from Northern India (Crowe,
1996). Their origins were first noticed by a 1760 Hungarian theology student who overheard some
Romani builders he employed using words from the ancient Indian language Sanskrit, says Ian
Hancock a Romani professor (Hancock, 2002). This is the main consensus with the theory that
Traveller roots originating from Egypt, their name a corruption of ‘Egyptian’, rejected (Bradley &
Fenton 2002, Fraser 1995, Acton & Kenrick 2000).
In Britain, the term ‘Gypsy’ covers; “Romany Gypsies, Irish Travellers, Welsh Travellers, Scottish
Travellers, New Travellers and Occupational Travellers (including Showpeople)” (Burnett, Cemlyn,
Greenfields, Matthews & Whitwell, 2009: iii). For ease of reference in this essay, I shall refer to these
groups hereafter as ‘Travellers’.
Monitoring the Traveller population in Britain is difficult due to their itinerant nature but one of the
most recent estimates stood at approximately 300,000 (Clements & Morris, 2002). This number is
likely to be made more accurate thanks to the inclusion of a Traveller category on the 2011 census
paper.
English Travellers, Irish Travellers and Scottish Travellers are all recognised as distinct ethnic groups
now entitling them to legal protection under the Race Relations Act of 1976. Whilst this relatively
new found status is useful legally, Travellers are still often stated to be the last ethnic minority to
still face regular bouts of racism (Coxhead, 2007).
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My essay will be examining the social inequalities surrounding the racialization of British Travellers.
To avoid any ambiguity, I will be using the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology definition for racialization;
that is, the social processes by which a population group is categorized as a race (Marshall & Scott,
2009). I will therefore aim to examine the social processes surrounding the way in which Travellers
have become categorised as a race possessing certain characteristics.
"Travellers are people who think that it's perfectly OK for them to cause mayhem in an area, to go
burgling, thieving, breaking into vehicles, causing all kinds of other trouble including defecating in
the doorways of firms and so on".
These are the words of Jack Straw, the former Home Secretary who obviously, at the time, had
strong views towards Travellers (BBC News, 1999). Arguably, this view is believed by many to be
shared by the various British governmental institutions and is highlighted by the state legislation, or
lack of, that currently exists surrounding Travellers (Burnett, Cemlyn, Greenfields, Matthews &
Whitwell, 2009).
Travellers are currently recognised under the Race Relations Act 1976, an Act which is supposed “to
make fresh provision with respect to discrimination on racial grounds and relations between people
of different racial groups” (Parliament of the UK, 1976).
Until the Criminal Justice Act 1994, local councils were creating sites for travellers under a duty
imposed by the l968 Caravan Sites Act. Since this point, other than the sites that were previously in
the pipeline, councils have ceased providing sites and instead only accept private site planning
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applications. The rate of success of these is low claims Bancroft (2005); stating structural factors as
opposed to direct legal discrimination as the main reason.
Meeting the ‘provision’ of housing needs laid out in that government report is scarce with local
authorities and the government failing to acknowledge traveller needs. A government report
published in 2004 says: “travellers are regularly forced to leave unauthorised encampments in
order to avoid a criminal prosecution”. Continuing, “the unique needs of Travellers are regularly
overlooked by public bodies, which fail to recognise their nomadic existence as a viable way of life,
as most legislation is designed to meet the needs of sedentary society” (Parliament of the United
Kingdom, 2004: EV94).
If further proof were needed that Travellers were being marginalised in society, last year The
Homes and Community Agency reported that it was told to cut £30 million of its Gypsy and
Traveller programme due to a lack of local authority requests for funding (Lloyd, 2010). Nineteen
days after the general election also, “£50m that had been allocated to building new sites across
London was scrapped from the budget” (Bindel, 2011).
On the contrary though, “industrialisation has restricted the economic adaption of gypsies, while
the accompanying urbanisation has made the setting up of camps increasingly problematic”, writes
Belton (2005: 29-30). And so, rather than this being solely an issue with government and local
authorities legislation, this could simply be the world moving at a faster pace than the Travellers.
Hard to refute when the Commission for Racial Equality estimates that there are between 270,000
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and 360,000 travellers now living in brick built dwellings, approximately three times the number
living the nomadic lifestyle (Greenfields, 2009) which arguably prove Travellers are evolving.
Numbers aside though, there are still nomadic Travellers and by failing to provide sufficient areas to
inhabit it could be suggested that local authorities are creating a social inequality as access to
accommodation is a basic human right that allows for education, healthcare and various other
public services. A lack of local authority sanctioned areas leaves Travellers little choice but to
trespass and inhabit land illegally. In fact, as of 2009 one in four Travellers were living in a caravan
which did not have a legal place to park on – thus, effectively marking themselves as homeless in
the eyes of the law (Johnson, 2007). Whilst it may not be directly their fault, it is clear to see that
this legislation racializes Travellers by characterising them as law-breakers whether they live in a
fixed abode or in caravan.
A specific example of traveller housing strife which has received significant news coverage of late is
that of Dale Farm, a traveller community in a former scrap yard near Basildon. The local council
want to evict over 500 travellers from the site, the largest of its kind in Europe, in an attempt to
claim back ‘greenbelt’ land (an area where urbanisation is restricted). The eviction would cost
Basildon council £8 million in taxpayers’ money, almost a third of their yearly budget, and is
opposed by those who would rather see the budget spent elsewhere and do not want to see
vulnerable old people and small children made homeless (The Telegraph, 2011).
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In the context of normal sedentary society, an eviction on this scale would be completely
unprecedented and received with uproar. However, as the eviction involves Travellers the public
uproar is minimal and is if anything in favour of eviction.
The council insists that the travellers have gone against principles that were agreed when the
travellers were first granted the land in the 1960s (Basildon Council, 2010). In addition, since
granting the land more and more Travellers have flocked to the site after evictions at other
locations. Now numbering one thousand, the site is the largest in the UK. The council also make it
clear that legal tenants are allowed to remain at Dale Farm if legal owners of their plots.
An eviction this size would effectively create over five hundred ‘homeless’ individuals which in itself
is a human rights disaster; a social cost larger than the financial one.
The Travellers are stubbornly refusing to move despite not actually having any legal claim to their
plot of land and Basildon council who could easily be accused of excessive tactics in an effort to
evict the largest number of Travellers in Europe. Nevertheless, this case is poised as no matter what
the result it is almost certainly going to set a precedent in terms of state legislation and
management of Travellers. Either way this ends I believe travellers will still stand to lose out in
terms of racialization as by staying they are effectively confirming their unlawful trespassers
reputation and by leaving the public’s opinion of them is simply unlikely to change.
Travellers have often been portrayed as specific characters by the media. Films such as Snatch, Drag
me to Hell, and Time of the Travellers, have often represented them pejoratively to be of a
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questionable nature, sometimes magical, and rather antiquely inhabiting some form of caravan. A
further perhaps more abstract portrayal of Traveller treatment would be that of the ‘Prawn’
characters from District 9; a film with racial undertones in which the prawns suffer horrific
discrimination from a bourgeoisie class who have evicted them from the slum-like conditions they
were originally made to live in as a result of their subordination.
A current example of Traveller media portrayal is that of the popular Channel 4 television show My
Big Fat Gypsy Wedding (MBFGW) which claims to ‘offer a window into the secretive, extravagant
and surprising world of gypsies and travellers in Britain today’. Vast viewing figures, indeed Channel
4’s eighth most viewed programme ever, have led to a widespread Traveller anger as they feel
grossly misprepresented by, as they put it, the production company “largely filming Irish Travellers,
who make up perhaps just 10% of Britain’s Traveller community” (Times, 2011).
Many Travellers are asking us to accept solely their word as their defence. Judith Okely highlights
though that “Travellers have scarcely written their own history”, and that “their’s is a non-literate
tradition” (Okely, 1983: 1) making it hard to prove such statements, especially as the programme is
delivered via a much more powerful format to a wide audience. By heckling at the production team
and creating a fuss with newspapers, Travellers are leaving themselves open to further criticism by
the same discursive elements such as television and newspapers that have played such a major part
in racializing them previously.
In the Travellers defence, MBFGW was heralded as ‘it would throw an overdue light on a secretive,
marginalised and little-understood segment of our society’. However, the show has been criticised
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as it “largely avoided the myriad of problems, such as discrimination, poor health and poverty faced
by Travellers and instead focussed on over-the-top weddings and other excesses” says Julie Bindel
(2011). Seemingly, altering public perceptions of race is difficult as so much opinion these days
revolves around gossip, discourse, and idle word-of-mouth spawned by shows such as this.
A common phrase aimed at Travellers is that they are ‘dirty’. This attached stigma, according to
Bhopal and Myers, “demonstrates a blindness to Traveller taboos about cleanliness and hygiene”
(2008: 79). Ironically, Travellers have some of the most puritanical values relating to gender roles,
the institution of marriage, and childbirth. It is debatable that the society that belittles them is in
fact more guilty of being dirty than Travellers with more relaxed views on chastity.
Where did this stigma of Travellers being unclean come from? The depiction of Travellers by media
and films is that of a dirty individual. Additionally, this misconception could be linked to how
Travellers live an itinerant lifestyle; the way in which they are inclined to follow a nomadic life in a
rural and therefore less hygienic setting.
There is this idea put forward by Mary Douglas of “dirt as matter out-of-place” (2002: 44) which,
creates a sensible link between this notion of Travellers being dirty and their non-conforming
itinerant lifestyle. Douglas, an eminent anthropologist, states that this ‘dirt’ is always relative to a
particular system of classifcation. This notion she creates is that rather than viewing the Traveller
systems in terms of taboos and purity, modern concerns with hygiene, such as the Travellers being
dirty, are simply another instance of symbolic ordering. And so much like Marx argued the
bourgeoisie reigned the proletariat, using Douglas’ theory in practice, as general society believe
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themselves to be of a higher hygiene level they therefore place themselves systematically above
Travellers who are considered to be ‘dirty and out-of-place’ in comparison.
Thomas Acton defines Travellers differently. Not, this time as dirty but as being sterotyped as
unrestrained, rootless – indeed ‘free’, saying: “to the majority of the population this assumed
freedom is the antithesis of their own life circumstances and is at one level an object of desire”
(1997: 97). So, instead of these derogatory remarks made about Travellers simply being belittling,
Acton continues to suggest that this could in fact be an envious undertone, an envy that travellers
experience a life without the trappings of a ‘normal’ existence such as a mortgage, job, rent and so
on. Acton calls this envy, ”a hypocritical element of resentful dependence and projection of guilt”
(1997: 97). Justifying it with an example of the Jewish population; where Jewish traders and
financiers face predjudice from the population they serve but who simultaneously hold them in
contempt for doing so (Acton, 1997: 97). Whilst it cannot be said that Travellers provide financial
expertise like Jewish people, they have been known to provide services such as cheap motor
repairs, alcohol provision and unregistered labour. And so, the basis on which Travellers are
racialized and subjected to stigma by society for being dirty could just as easily be a mirroring of
envy as it is of genuine offence.
Referring back to Douglas, if Travellers are defined as out of place it poses the question where then
would be their rightful ‘in-place’?
As a minority, it is fair to say they suffer from a lack of government and local authority policy
making. An audit in 1997 by ACERT showed that less than one third of local authorities in England
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had a policy on Traveller site provision in their development plans (Wilson, 1998). Despite the
introduction of ‘Circular 1/94’ in 1994, “a circular designed to create a level playing field so that
private site applications could be easily handled” (Crawley, 2004: 20), there are still pitfalls in the
way that make it exceedingly difficult for Travellers to access land to live ‘legally’, as Crawley
explains, “...there is no evidence of a level playing field for dealing for sites on land that has been
purchased by Travelling communities” (Crawley, 2004: 23).
In addition, particularly at school Travellers’ children experience a much lower level of achievement
and are often taught separately from other children (Burnett, Cemlyn, Greenfields, Matthews &
Whitwell, 2009). By setting children apart, or marginalising them even if for their own educational
good, it will obviously incite bullying. They have indeed been sighted as “the group most at risk in
the education system today” (Ofsted, 1999: para 8) referring to their low educational attainment.
Many authors have argued the issue as to the existence of a true ‘authentic’ Traveller in the 21 st
century. Whilst the romanticized Traveller image that emerged as a literary by-product in the 19th
century is often mentioned (Bhopal & Myers, 2008), the current debate focuses more on the
practical nature of a Traveller rather than the historical image. Steve Garner outlines that, “the
inauthentic are poor horsemen, only con-men, and do not dress or look noticeably different to the
urban poor” (Garner, 2007: 114-115). The authentic Traveller is described by several as preservers
of their culture (Rovid & Stewart, 2010), speakers of the Romany language (Okely, 1983), and their
preference for rural life (Garner, 2007). Authenticity is an important issue to Travellers, not only
because they have a reputation for having a strong belief in tradition, roots and their Romany
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history but because inauthentic Travellers ruin this reputation. Jack Straw, in his remarks made on
radio, claimed he made them regarding inauthentic Travellers.
Whilst this may be true, areas where residents have low levels of skills training, education and
academic qualifications tend to have the highest levels of poverty (Goulden, 2010). Traveller
children are often bullied and marginalised at school causing them to a leave and thus have a
stunted education. Whilst their itinerant life does not lend itself wholly to stable education and
employment, it could be argued that Travellers lack the aforementioned set of skills linked so
closely to poverty. These are characteristics that racialize Travellers as a group.
On the contrary though, “Travellers have found and retained a special niche within the wider
economy, exploiting a multiplicity of occupations” says Judith Okely (1983: 50). She adds that
Travellers have an extraordinary number of occupations. Therefore disproving the notion that
Travellers cannot work. If anything they are more advantagious and entrepeneurial than most
others quashing any preconceived racial associations to employment.
According to Angus Fraser, internal debates amongst Travellers as to ‘authenticity’ often lead to a
“‘them and us’ dichtomy” (1995: 8), which would suggest on the one hand that if Travellers find
their own people ambiguous, how can an outsider judge?
There are several clear cut characteristics that reveal ‘authentic’ Travellers and different factions
within the British Traveller population. To this is added the public belief that if a Traveller does not
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fit the romanticized stereotype (have a horse-drawn wagon, sit around an open fire, or strain at the
fiddle (Bhopal & Myers, 2008) then an individual is not an authentic Traveller.
In conclusion, it is clear from my analysis that Travellers are racialized as a group in thanks to the
media, government, education, and word-of-mouth creating a much debatable stereotype. This
racialization has moved on significantly from when Hancock’s Hungarian student noted them for
their language. Currently the racialization is usually of a pejorative nature. This does not have to be
the case though; as identified, it is possible to racialize the Traveller community further between
different sub groups so as to shed some broad stigma attached to all Travellers. Referring back to
the introduction, there are many different groups of Travellers in Britain who may all share similar
heritage but are not all the same and should not be tarred with the same brush. Particularly with
crime, failure to differentiate between Traveller groups comes when information is conveyed
generally. As an example, a story in the Daily Mail states that police are struggling to deal with an
800% rise in crimes committed by Romanian immigrants in February 2008. This, however, has been
reformatted by various news portals to now read ‘Romanian Gypsies’. Whilst this group of
individuals share little in common with their UK counterparts, they are banded together and people
therefore deduce that Travellers and crime are connected.
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