Traveller rights must be recognised

When journalist Brenda Power claimed in a newspaper article that feuding was the main expression of Traveller culture and that Traveller males are lazy, violent, drunken, and misogynistic, she evoked a response that has not been seen since Mary Ellen Synon attacked the Paralympics in 2000.

Traveller support groups condemned the Daily Mail article as racist, while the Equality Authority denounced it as demeaning and hurtful.

However, her harsh words struck a chord with members of the majority settled community. Some of them have voiced their opinions online, with many sharing Ms Power’s view, either in whole or in part.

Facebook comments include: “I work in an environment where I deal with members of the Travelling community on a weekly basis and not one of them has fallen short of their stereotype yet!”

Another Facebook user’s comments are borne of bitter experience: “If you had your livestock driven into the river, quiet milking cows driven into a frenzy by lurchers, fences knocked down and worst of all your poor overworked husband threatened and roughed up by a gang of eight overfed, violent Travellers, it would be hard to feel charitable towards them.”

One man says he has spent many years in the retail trade but has not had “one encounter with any Traveller that didn’t involve some form of grief or hassle”.

Another writes: “My son’s house backs onto a halting site and he has had three bikes stolen by them and they throw their rubbish over the wall into his back garden.”

If Ms Power’s article was simplistic in painting all Travellers with the same brush, it is equally simplistic to charge all those with bad experiences of Travellers with being inherently racist. The distrust of Travellers by the majority population is fuelled more by antisocial behaviour than bigotry.

The UK recognises Travellers as a distinct ethnic minority, yet there have been many instances of group misbehaviour in Britain that no reasonable person could defend.

In 1999, the then home secretary Jack Straw told the BBC: “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.”

This from a man who has been widely regarded as the decent man of politics in Britain. There is no doubt that Travellers suffer huge disadvantages. They have a life expectancy of 10-15 years less than the general population and male Travellers have a suicide rate six times that of their settled counterparts.

In many ways, the experience of Irish Travellers as a distinct ethnic group mirrors that of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines, who suffered dispossession and enforced assimilation simultaneously. Nomadic communities have been further disenfranchised by the development of the modern, centralised state. But, like it or not, that is the world we all live in.

Perhaps, instead of lofty declarations, we can draw from the Northern peace process in framing a genuine and lasting solution to this social divide. One-sided legislation will not do it. A stated recognition of Traveller rights must go hand-in-hand with a stated recognition of the rights of settled people.

Parity of esteem works both ways.

Travellers should be recognised not as a problem but as a people. At the same time, they and their representative groups should lend a voice in support of businesses and individuals who have suffered at the hands of errant members of the Traveller community.

Only then can we embrace our differences while sharing the things that bind us — our common humanity and a common struggle to raise our children and live in harmony on this small island.