In the build-up the eviction of Dale Farm, it seems like the ‘local’ press in Essex (most of which is actually owned and run by Newsquest, just in case you had any illusions that your local paper was actually local and not tied to the interests of big business) has been running the same record of anti-traveller bias over and over. In recent
This charming piece of bigotry was found recently in a pub in the division covering Flintshire and Wrexham
weeks, it’s been difficult to look at one of these papers without seeing a story about locals who don’t want gypsies near them because feel ‘threatened’, travellers ‘illegally occupying land’, councils taking action to prevent caravans entering fields or some other article trying to make it seem as though everyone must hate travellers. And in case these stories weren’t bad enough, the comments sections on the online versions of these articles have been filled with the kind of vile racism usually reserved for BNP meetings behind closed doors. Many of those posting this crap refuse to admit that they are being racist in the first place – and for the record, yes, ‘pikey’ is a racial slur.
It seems that what’s happened here is that a certain kind of racism has become acceptable – through years of these kinds of stories appearing, the constant criminalisation of their way of life, attacks on them from every direction (police, parliament, property owners, tabloid press and even comedians making hi-larious ‘gypo’ jokes), travellers have become the group it’s ok to hate. Of course this is no accident. For decades, if not centuries, travellers, Roma and Nomads have all been hounded by governments and states – they’re refusal to give up their traditions and way of life has always bothered those who want to think they’re in charge of everything. If they can get people to dislike them through the use of every bit of propaganda they have, it just makes sweeping the nuisance away a whole lot easier.
Of course they’re not the first ‘outsider’ group to be dragged through the mud like this in order to justify a governments policy – how do you think segregation in the United States and Apartheid in South Africa were justified? All kinds of messages about how black people were lazy, unclean, un tidy, natural criminals, didn’t contribute to society, were intimidating etc. permeated the media. They were mocked, demonised
The Magyar Garda claim not to be fascists, just anti-gypsy...
and criminalised – just like travellers are today in this supposedly civilised society. And it’s not just here – anti-traveller hatred seems to be going through something of a
renaissance in Europe at the moment with violent attacks of Roma people in Italy and Eastern Europe becoming depressingly regular – perhaps we should just count ourselves lucky that we don’t have neo-Nazi groups like Hungary’s Magyar Garda over here. Yet.
The bottom line is that this is racism and like any racism, is not ok. Just because they can use anti-traveller slurs on TV and the press can print bigoted stories is no reason to think this is just normal can’t be resisted.
Camp Constant sets up today (August 27th) at Dale Farm to help prevent the huge, costly eviction of travellers. This eviction goes against the UN Declaration of Human Rights. See http://dalefarm.wordpress.com/ for more.