Government policy: racist posturing

The following is written by Rachel Morris, Co-ordinator of the Traveller Law Reserch Unit. Views expressed are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of other Unit staff, Unit funders, Cardiff Law School or Cardiff University.

The 'Gypsy' style is in right now, according to a great many fashion mags, but in all other and less superficial ways Gypsies and other Travellers are right out. On Friday 5 July 2002 the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Home Office jointly issued a racist press release about a racist and hackneyed 'policy', which described itself as 'radical' and 'fair'.

The policies were tried 30 years ago and didn't work. The policy of blanket evictions from an area following minimum site provision is a form of quota formerly known, under the 1968 Caravan Sites Act as 'designation' (or, in South Africa, as 'apartheid'). This is illegal and racist, which is precisely why the Northern Ireland government rescinded designation there in 1997. The Government are, to be charitable, disingenuous if they seek to convince the settled population, including those who have genuinely had negative experiences with the minority of Travelling People who do cause problems, that their 'policy' will end them.

The best way to reduce encampments is to ensure that there are sufficient, lawful and appropriate stopping places. The only way to get sites built is to create a political climate in which settled people won't react in a negative, knee-jerk fashion at the mere suggestion of a site being within 15 miles of them, but who will be made to realise that - whether they like it or not - they must respect diversity and the legality and legitimacy of the nomadic way of life. The government has defeated its own proposed 'policy' before it has even begun by (as other governments before it for 500 years) sending a message to settled society that it's okay to be horrible to and about Travelling People, regardless of what they're like as individuals, purely because of their membership of a group. No sites can be built now. Racism rules ok.

Yes there are some Travelling People who aren't, to say the least, much fun to be around. I defy you to find any sector of society which doesn't have its share. (From crooked corporate fatcats - Enron, anyone? - to the nice, middle class, respectable people in my park-rich neighbourhood who are too squeamish and irresponsible to clear up after their pets). But ample and well-worn laws exist to deal with them: if there is a ongoing and unmanaged behaviour problem (and senior police officers assure me that they have no more and no less trouble with Travelling People than from any other groups in the UK) then it is not a Traveller problem, it is a policing problem. And the behaviour of individuals is not the same thing as having unauthorised encampments on highly visible and unsuitable locations because the adults and children concerned have nowhere else to stop.

Both the tenor of the release, and the contents of its ill-thought-out 'policies', contravene the Race Relations Act 1976 (as amended, 2000). The Home Office is not only bound by the provisions of the Act - as are all Ministers of the Crown and government departments - but oversee them. This development would therefore be ironically comical if it weren't so appalling, cheap and retrograde. In treating accommodation for Travelling People in such a vastly different way than that for settled people, the ODPM is directly discriminating against Gypsies and Irish Travellers. This is illegal. In sending out a press release which elides issues of criminality and bad behaviour with those of accommodation, and which implies that worse behaviour can be expected of Gypsies and Travellers in general than other groups in society, both departments breach the positive duty they have recently placed upon themselves to eliminate unlawful discrimination; to promote equal opportunities; and to promote good race relations between people from different racial groups. The Government states in the release that all people should have regard for the law. This would appear not to include the Government. Further details of this pandering populism dressed as 'policy' and my objections to it are on Epolitix (search with keywords 'Traveller law').

Aside from the Epolitix site and BBC Radio 4's Face the Facts programme the UK media's response has largely been to repeat the press release verbatim, then drop the story altogether. Imagine this for a moment: that the press release has suggested that appropriate accommodation for black people will henceforth be met piecemeal out of existing budgets, dependent on the 'tackling' of / a 'clamp down' on Yardi gangsters, and has implied that all black people are Yardis. Or imagine the announcement runs that the number of Asian people permitted to live in Bradford is to be restricted, and that it's time to get tough on them because they're all violent rioters, man woman and child. Would the Guardian's Society section still say, on a Monday morning, that it's too late now to put in a piece on Wednesday and, in any event, they did a piece on Pakistanis just a few weeks ago? Would the Commission for Racial Equality stay so shamingly silent? Would the Government still be standing?

The Advisory Committee of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities at the Council of Europe has recently published its report on the UK in which it 'notes with concern that many of the Roma / Gypsies and Irish Travellers face considerable socio-economic difficulties in comparison to both the majority and other national minorities, in particular in the fields of education, health, employment and housing, including the availability of stopping sites (examined further under Article 5)'. The Committee then states that 'This situation is recognised by the United Kingdom Government'. (I'm not convinced, to be frank). The negative impact of eviction on education, and racist reporting of Travelling People by the UK press also feature. Considering what a small proportion of the minority ethnic population of the UK are represented by Travelling People, they are mentioned disproportionately frequently.

Law reform: anti-racism and practicality

During the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill debate on local authority powers to direct unauthorised campers to leave land (House of Lords Weekly Hansard, 11 July to 15 July 1994, cols. 1516-7) Lord Irvine of Lairg (then in opposition, now Lord Chancellor) asserted:

"[T]o make a man a criminal because he fails to move his family and himself when he has nowhere to which he may lawfully go will devalue the criminal law. A person in that position is more in need of assistance than prosecution. It will not enhance respect for the criminal law to treat such practical problems as the occasion of a criminal offence. Secondly, to force a man to move himself and his family when he has nowhere to which he may lawfully go will mean merely that he must camp unlawfully somewhere else. Far from the law helping to solve any problem of unauthorised camping, it will merely transfer it to another location at considerable public expense … and in defiance of common humanity".

On the subject of considerable public expense, TLRU will be publishing a book entitled At What Cost? on 4 September, which deals with the issue of how much more expensive inequitable policies can be. As for the rest, I now find myself supporting a Tory MP in favour of common humanity against the mindless actions of a Labour government. Lord Irvine has long forgotten these concerns, if they were ever those of his party. However, on Wednesday 10 July a Private Member's Bill promoting equal access to justice for Gypsies and Travellers (the Traveller Law Reform Bill) was read in Parliament by David Atkinson MP, with some cross-party support; it was intended to receive its second reading on Friday 19 July. However, this was interrupted by a Labour Whip; it is therefore not clear at present what the Bill's progress might be.

This Bill has the backing of a wide range of those sectors who developed it, including local government, police, churches, health and education workers, lawyers, planners and Travelling People. It sets out a rational strategy which meets the concerns of settled people while treating Travelling People with equity and respect. Rather than as the architects of their own misfortune.

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