Travellers' Rest

Back in 1999 I wrote about a legal scheme of the Irish government to confiscate Travellers' horses (What's New 11/21/99). Now it's their trailers (caravans) at risk of seizure. A friend in Ireland recently e-mailed a position paper issued by the Irish Traveller Movement covering this bald-faced road-side robbery. Her précis precedes it below:

The government's own report, issued in 1995, identified a need for 2,200 additional accommodation units for Travellers (more stopping places than there are families are essential if people are to have the option of moving).
We also heard, over and over again, the slogan "all Travellers in legal accommodation by the year 2000".
Seven years on two years after the deadline 129 legal places have been provided. this is 95% short of identified need .
The government has now passed a new law penalising over 1,000 illegally camped Traveller families for its (not their!) failure to meet its own assessment of their accommodation needs. This is a bit like failing to build schools, then penalising people for truancy. These families literally have nowhere to go and can now have their homes confiscated, and be fined and imprisoned, for the crime of there being nowhere legal for them to stop.
This isn't exactly fair....

July 2, 2002

Minister Martin Cullen reneges on his commitment to Traveller groups

The Irish Traveller Movement will hold a picket today 2/7/02 outside Dail
Eireann at 5.00pm to show its anger and disillusionment with the
governments’ introduction of the racist housing law. The Minister for the
Environment and Local Government today signed the commencement order for the
Housing (Miscellaneous Provision) Act, 2002 which criminalizes trespass on
public and private land leaving over 1,000 Traveller families in fear of
being evicted. The Traveller Movement were given a commitment by the
Minister that no order would be signed until the Traveller Movements’
concerns were brought to Cabinet and also that the Traveller Movement would
be fully informed of developments. None of this happened.

David Joyce National Accommodation Officer of the Irish Traveller Movement
said ‘The government actions today are despicable. They have reneged on
their commitment to us which make it impossible for us believe anything that
they say in relation to Traveller issues.’

Catherine Joyce Co-ordinator of the Irish Traveller Movement said ‘the law
is sending out a message to Travellers that this and previous Governments
are not committed to addressing their accommodation needs. This law is
racist and will make the situation for Travellers in Ireland impossible. It
is disappointing that the first action of the new Minister is to bring in
this racist law without even informing Traveller groups.’

Damien Peelo, Chair of the Accommodation Working Group of the ITM stated
‘Once approached by the Gardai Travellers should contact the ITM
immediately. We will fight this law all the way to Europe and we are
confident that we will win’.

Gràinne O’Toole of the ITM stated that the government record on
accommodating Travellers is appalling while at the same time they bring in
measures to penalise Travellers and move on Traveller families who have no
where to go. The fact is that only 129 legal stopping places out of 2,200
identified in 1995 have been provided by local authorities around the
country and no government action has been taken to address this lack of
progress. Ms O’Toole called for action on Traveller accommodation through
the introduction of sanctions against local authorities by the government
for the non-delivery of Traveller accommodation.

For more information please contact:
David Joyce / Gràinne O’Toole on 679 65 77/ 087 222 0253/ 087 2825096/
086 326 4115

N.B.:
Anyone interested in expressing their disgust over the The Housing Act by e-mailing a protest to the proper authority, use the address: Katherine_Gallagher@environ.irlgov.ie. She is on the staff of Ireland's Minister of Environment. Here is my response:

I have been informed of some of the ramifications of Housing Act of 2002 by Irish friends of the Travelling People and wish to express my utter disgust over its moral bankruptcy. I am one of perhaps forty thousand American Irish Travellers who count Eire as our ancestral homeland and, at the same time, one of many who have vowed never to set foot on your soil until our Irish cousins have been freed from the state of internal exile that has so characterized their lives, especially over the last generation or two.

There are two ways to effectively imprison a population segment: one, to wall them out; the other, to wall them in. If for nothing else, you are to be complimented for your [ministry's] brickwork on both.

It rains a lot in Ireland. We do a lot of socialising, but rarely al fresco. We go to pubs. The tiniest village has several. Almost all of them sell food - anything from sandwiches to elaborate three-course meals and in smaller villages may be the only place a visitor can get a meal. Families spend Sunday afternoons in them, chatting, perhaps watching a big match on widescreen television. Children are welcome in the daytime, and catered for with potato crisps and fizzy drinks. In the evening, they are entertainment centres, often providing live music. Pubs are crucial to the Irish way of life, and so admired by visitors that there is scarcely a city on the planet without an "Irish" pub or two.

Pubs serve alcohol as well as food, ambiance and entertainment. Sometimes people drink too much and, under the influence, behave badly. The publican asks them to leave and, in exceptional cases, tells them they may never return.

Until new equality legislation came into force in 2000, publicans (who vehemently opposed the introduction of such a law) routinely refused to serve Travellers in principle Travellers whom they had never met, and who had never behaved badly in their pub. In so doing, they expressed a conviction almost universal among the non-Traveller Irish: that Travellers are inherently violent and antisocial, and incapable of consuming alcohol without becoming aggressive. So entrenched is this conviction that the sight of a Traveller in a pub leads to an exodus of non-Traveller customers anxious to avoid trouble. The end result was de facto apartheid: Travellers frequented what were effectively all-Traveller pubs, confined to the larger towns. The new equality legislation has forbidden publicans to refuse in principle to serve individuals in a number of named categories, Travellers included, though they are still entitled to evict and forbid the return of individuals who misbehave.

Unfortunately, the new law has not changed on-the-ground convictions. Non-Travellers, convinced that Travellers will, sooner or later, "go wild", continue to refuse to mix with them. Publicans are now legally obliged to serve Travellers less than 1% of the overall population but in so doing alienate most of the remaining 99%. They are stuck between a rock and a hard place: serve Travellers and lose other customers, or refuse to serve Travellers and pay up to $5,000 compensation per successful discrimination claim taken to the equality tribunal (and Travellers have won 82% of the cases they've brought).

The Irish Independent a national daily newspaper of Friday 2 August 2002 carried the headline, "Publicans to defy law with blanket ban on Travellers", reporting that publicans in one West of Ireland town have expressed their readiness to go to prison rather than observe the law. Their decision is supported by Tadg O'Sullivan, head of the 6,000 member publicans' union, who, citing "marauding" Travellers ("I can almost taste the blood"), called the equality legislation "state-sponsored terrorism" and claimed it was "inevitable" that the ban extend to other parts of the country. On Thursday 8 August, in a television interview, he stated that the awarding of compensation for discrimination is a "gravy train" and that Travellers have been refused service in half a dozen pubs in an hour and taken claims against all of them (obviously, if they were served, they would have no claim, and the fact that people can enter pubs knowing they will not be served is the issue here).

The editorial in the Irish Independent (2 August) backs the publicans, on the grounds that "Misconduct by a large minority of Travellers is an established fact. It ranges from vandalism to pitched battles with a variety of weapons. Some of the violence is drink-related. Publicans are reluctant to serve even orderly Travellers." In so doing, it voices popular prejudice. It is a popular paper and presumably wants to stay that way, just as the publicans want to keep their non-Traveller customers.

For a very brief period after the passing of the new equality legislation, public expression of this popular prejudice became politically incorrect. With the recent ratification, and in some cases implementation, of the new anti-trespass law, empowering the Gardaí to summarily evict and even confiscate the homes of Travellers on "illegal" sites (bearing in mind that there are 1200 more Traveller families than there are legal sites, and that the state which passed this legislation is responsible for providing accommodation), the government itself took the lead in rehabilitating the public expression of bigotry. That the association of pub-owners a large, well-organised, well-heeled body are following that lead, is unsurprising. But in this climate of "free expression", what is inevitable is that the expression cross the line from refusal to accommodate (which is what the government and publicans have in common) to more direct forms. In Gormanstown County Meath, 32 trailers had been illegally camped on the local racetrack since mid-July. They offered the owners $1,000 per week rent, and promised to be gone before the races took place. There were no complaints about their behaviour. Yet on 7 August, a local farmer drove to the camp and sprayed it, and its inhabitants, with slurry (liquid manure). They left. Non-Traveller fear and loathing of Travellers is no news to anybody, but the prospect of its increasingly free expression is fearful and loathsome indeed. Now that it's okay to say what everybody's been thinking all along, and becoming okay to do what everybody's been longing to do all along, what's next?

Sinéad ní Shuinéar

The following relevent points are taken from a statement (full text given in Controversy) by Dr. Michael P. Flynn, summarizing the truths and fallacies he encountered about Travellers during his long service as a physician and public health official in Eire:

22. The Report of the Review Group on Travellers (1983) revealed that there is not a high incidence of alcoholism among Travellers and probably lower than in the general population. In former times fairs were occasions on which large groups gathered and later indulged in drinking and brawling which, being mostly open to public view, may have created the impression of constant drinking, whereas it mostly was occasional.

23. Brawling, which was common, may have been reminiscent of the rural Faction Fights of long ago. Family feuds occur from time to time and occasionally flare up. They are not unlike the vendettas which still occur in some Mediterranean countries. Slights and injuries are not easily forgotten. There may be periodic reactivation with group onslaughts onto individuals and property even up to present times. (But it must be borne in mind that brawling and injury may occur among the settled community during sporting events!)

Violence was seldom a fact of life to contend with among the Eastern branch of the Northern Travellers in the USA. There was one long-standing (50+ years) feud between two of our families but, in the main, though it had started with a deadly punch, that feud was characterized by mutual shunning rather than violent confrontation and was eventually resolved with good will and a handshake. Fights between Travellers and Country People were even more rare; after all, we were and are outnumbered perhaps ten thousand to one in this country (as opposed to one hundred to one in Eire). So I have no reason to believe that violent behavior is an inevitable characteristic of Traveler heredity or culture, even in response to threats from the non-Traveller majority. Our classic reaction was to shake the dust of such a town off our feet and go on to find a happier locale to sojourn at for a while. After all, we had five million square miles to choose from.

That was then; this is now. In the US, "Reality TV" has vastly expanded the definition of "Mob Rule," and in Eire there is no room to run free, to ease away from the pressure of the sedentary majority, to slip out from beneath the paw of the Celtic Tiger.

This last week I received several e-mails from a delightful young Irish woman who happens to be a wife and mother and a Traveller to boot. They speak for themselves so I'll reproduce them and my replies without change or comment, save for some minimal editing:

At 06:54 PM 7/11/02 +0100, you wrote:
Richard, thank you for providing this lovely website. I am a 28 year old mother of one and today my son of 3 years old was treated like a second class citizen. I come from an amazing family, am married to a great man, have a beautiful home, and I have always been extremely proud of who I am. My beautiful little blond blue eyed angel is my heart and it angers me that ignorant people pass on their racist and hurtful remarks and attitudes to their young children. Is my child not valued in this country as "the precious future of Ireland"?, Yes.The expectations from the government and my fellow countrymen of my child are that he will be a drug dealer, beat up old people, be anti-social. Then they ask why the travelling community is in trouble, but what else is expected of us when no matter what you do, you will always be an outcast in your own country?

Thanks for the kind words. May I reprint your e-mail on my website, minus your address and name of course?

Richard

At 12:53 AM 7/13/02 +0100, you wrote:
Hi Richard, you certainly can print my e-mail. I certainly feel better than I did yesterday, am better humoured,cooled down, so to speak !!! My angel is sleeping and I am counting my many blessings, Goodnight and God Bless,

B.

At 11:58 PM 7/17/02 +0100, you wrote:
Richard,
I have been looking through your site [again], and I find it fascinating that although on the other side of the world, you all don't seem so different to my people. A distance of even 20 miles here can make a big difference between the different customs, morals, lifestyle and attitudes of the travellers. Today is my mothers birthday and I would just like to point out another difference between Travellers and buffers. My parents are worshipped. My father works very hard and will probably never retire. He is a wealthy man, but, to retire would kill him. If, he didn't have money, then we would all look after my parents very comfortably. This is very common, from the poorest to the richest. He loves horses and as he doesn't drink or smoke, this is a great pastime for him.I am the oldest of 11, (5 of my younger siblings are actually my cousins, their parents were killed in a car accident) am married with one child and my father still buys me chocolate on his way home from work and drops it to me after his dinner.I never have to worry about babysitting, and I have a constant stream of visitors throughout the day.Women in these circles don't really have to work, but as we are settled Travellers, my parents encouraged all to complete our education, and MADE us all work.Honestly they were afraid we'd marry useless feckers and not have enough to eat, their view is, that, if he can't make money, then we'll be able to. This caused a little bit of controversy, but it's paid off. We're all good to earn money and to mind it! I have two younger sisters of age not courting, because, frankly all the good men around here are married, and the rest are for the birds. They are always getting asked out, but the men are just not the right sorts. We come from a very loving family and we could not bear for one of our sisters to be mistreated, and,unfortunately this could easily happen. My mother is illiterate, but she runs her own small business, and is without a doubt the smartest and wonderful woman I know.I never knew she was illiterate until I was ten.I work as an after school provider for disadvantaged kids and my husband has his own business. Very few of the Travellers I know work for someone, for the most part they are self-employed. For an ethnic minority my people have a lot of self -confidence, but I know this comes from being successful, or from having money. My generation and younger (especially men) are mostly gone from the old ways of having great cheek and gab and are finding it difficult to integrate into the settled community because of being Travellers, and are finding it difficult to make money from self -employment, because, they don't have the cheek or the confidence to do what travellers here do best, sales, contract work,etc. I am married to my second cousin, and thank God we have a healthy baby boy, and just to poke fun at the begrudgers, - we are all good looking people, not a wart, or defection in sight.So to get to the point (at last) we hero worship our parents, grandparents, CHILDREN,Siblings, nieces and nephews. We are extremely hardworking, accumulate wealth by saving, like nice things around us, are a very humourous people, we are compassionate, adventurous, we are very religious,and for the most part, we are good human beings. I have never met a buffer neighbour of a Traveller that after a short period of time as neighbours, did not completely change their opinion of Travellers. We have a way of becoming second families to these people and my brother married a neighbour of ours and they are very happy.A lot of my buffer friends are very lonely, disconnected from what little family they have, and seem to be of the attitude that they will shove their parents into nursing homes when they get the chance. Of course they aren't all like that, but they all envy our sense of togetherness.

I know a lot of thieves, con artists and racists from both sides of the community, and I realise that the great man who I call Daddy is given the same treatment as the above, but there is no daughter anywhere with as much love, respect and pride as I have for my parents. I may be truly semi-educated, but I have the highest education in life, love, forgiveness,and after seeing my loved ones completely disrespected, treated like scum, I still don't have any hate in my heart. So I don't think I'm getting on too badly, and as for the bigots, my family is happy, healthy, our kids are loved, well adjusted, come from secure homes, to a certain degree protected from many bad outside influences and may I stress again HAPPY.Get your priorities right, there's no point in having a Trinity education if your a hateful,racist,bigot, and for the record, are you so sure you're going to heaven, being such a judgmental, hateful person? [Gaelic and Cant insults to bigots omitted.]

[Open question to bigots:] Do I sense a little bit of envy regards the new pick up trucks? That's another thing that might prevent you from getting passed those golden gates. Somehow I don't think my spelling, bad grammar, or lack of a degree will get me stopped from going in there, do you?
Thank you once again for your lovely website, keep up the good work, God Bless,

B.

You're right, B; there are many similarities, as there should be. Do you speak Cant or Gammon? All of us in the USA speak some Cant, rather than Gammon. I'd like to print this letter too, except for the Gaelic and Cant salutation, if you don't mind. It may surprise you that both expressions are familiar to me (it surprised the hell out of me).

Thanks again for the kind words about the web site.

Richard