Travellers Count

Article published in Inside Time; the national newspaper for prisoners.

Gypsies and Travellers are a tiny minority group in Britain, making up around 0.5% of the population and often living separate, parallel lives to the wider community. Knowledge of these communities, which according to the Department for Communities and Local Government are ‘the most excluded ethnic minority groups in British society’, is all too often informed by sensational stories in the Sun or Daily Mail, or more recently by the ratings-grabbing ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’.

 

The TV shows and headlines fail to capture the grim reality of exclusion and deprivation faced by Travellers in modern Britain: Life expectancy is 12 years below the national average, infant mortality is higher than for any other group, illiteracy rates are off the scale and 25% of Gypsy and Traveller children are not enrolled in education.

Travellers are also massively over-represented in British prisons. HM Inspectorate reports reveal that Gypsy and Travellers make up 5% of prisoners in male Category B Prisons and 7% of prisoners in local female prisons.

A NOMS’ Race Review in 2008 noted ‘particular concerns relating to Gypsy Traveller Roma prisoners’ including ‘difficulties accessing services, including offender behaviour programmes, as the literacy level required was too high, derogatory and racist name calling primarily by prisoners, and by some staff… lack of confidence in the complaints system and the lack of cultural awareness and understanding of staff.’

Until recently, Travellers were not included in NOMS ethnic monitoring, meaning that even where large populations existed, their needs could effectively be ignored. A 2011 inspection of Wormwood Scrubs for example noted that although 9% of prisoners came from a Gypsy or Traveller backgrounds there was ‘no attempt to identify and meet the needs of this population’.

It was for these reasons that the Irish Chaplaincy launched the ‘Voices Unheard’ research project in 2010, to look at the experiences of Travellers in prison. Some key findings from the research were that:

• A lack of monitoring had led to a failure to formulate or implement measures to ensure equality of opportunity for this prisoner group.

• Traveller prisoners often felt extremely isolated when cut off from other community members in prison, leading to incidents of self harm and suicide.

• 59.3 % of Traveller prisoners were identified as requiring basic educational intervention.

• Travellers faced particular problems around resettlement, often due to assumptions by resettlement and probation staff that Traveller sites were unsuitable accommodation for release on licence.

In the course of the research we also came across many examples of prison staff doing excellent work with Gypsy and Irish Traveller prisoners. In HMP The Mount for example, a ‘Traveller rep’ had been appointed who was involved in inductions and advocating on behalf of other Gypsy and Traveller prisoners. HMP Highdown had organised Gypsy and Traveller History Month events for the past two years which had helped overcome the perception of many Travellers that their culture was not valued or respected in the same way as other minority groups.

Across the prison estate the ‘Toe by Toe’ reading programme run by The Shannon Trust appeared to be extremely popular with Traveller prisoners. Having never had any formal schooling many Travellers found that even the most basic literacy classes in prison were beyond their current ability and as a result they were too embarrassed to attend. The one-to-one mentoring approach of Toe-by-Toe overcame this stigma and has a proven track record of success with this group.

In September 2011 the code ‘W3’ for ‘Gypsy or Irish Traveller’ was included on the P-Nomis offender management system for the first time. This is an important development for Gypsy and Traveller prisoners as it meant that for the first time the prison service will have official figures on the number of prisoners from these groups. Knowing more about the size and distribution of the Gypsy and Traveller population will allow the Prison Service to work more effectively with these groups, and provide more resources to meet their particular needs.

But although the code exists, many prisons are not effectively using it and many Traveller prisoners are still being categorised as ‘White British’ or ‘White Irish’. Prison staff working on induction will need to be more proactive; giving prisoners the full list of available ethnic codes to choose from and not making assumptions. The inclusion of Traveller diversity reps at induction in some prisons has proved a particularly effective way of encouraging Travellers to declare their identity.

If you are a Gypsy or Traveller prisoner and would like to be recorded as such, then you can apply to be changed to ‘W3’ on P-Nomis at any time.

Being counted means that you count. If Gypsy and Traveller prisoners are being recorded then more attention will have to be given to their needs.

Joe Cottrell-Boyce

Coalition’s new planning policy will make more Dale Farm style stand-offs inevitable

Originally posted on Left Foot Forward

Last month the government released its new planning policy (pdf) for Gypsy and Traveller sites in England and Wales.

The ‘radically streamlined planning policy’ – which slashed the previous 54 page document to just 8 pages – will apparently:

“…ensure fair treatment of Travellers in the planning system while respecting the interests of the settled community… [putting] the provision of sites back into the hands of local councils, in consultation with local communities.”

The new policy removes government targets for Traveller sites which it claims “caused tensions with the local settled community” and created a perception of “special treatment for some travellers”.

That Travellers ever got special treatment in the planning system is an extraordinary claim. The reality is that 90% of planning applications submitted by Gypsies and Travellers are rejected, compared to only 20% of applications from the general population.

And while the previous policy of including targets for sites in Regional Spatial Strategies did indeed fail, this failure was characterised not by a rash of new sites causing local tensions, but by local opposition to directives preventing most of the allocated sites being built at all.

The reluctance of local authorities to comply with the 2004 Housing Act and identify adequate new Traveller sites has meant that in the eight years since its introduction, the number of caravans on unauthorised sites stayed constant at around 20% of the total, which in real terms was an increase from 1,977 to 2,395.

Put simply, the provision of Gypsy and Traveller sites is not a vote winner and many local authorities treat Gypsies and Travellers as problems to be got rid of.

A 2006 report by the Commission for Racial Equality concluded:

“Local councillors do not usually see Gypsies and Irish Travellers as members of the community.”

In this context, relaxing the obligation on local authorities to build sites is likely to lead to even the current trickle of provision drying up.

The situation of Britain’s Gypsy and Irish Traveller population is a national embarrassment. Life expectancy is 12 years below the national average, illiteracy rates are off the scale and 25% of Gypsy and Traveller children are not enrolled in education.

Many of the disadvantages faced by Gypsy and Traveller communities stem from a national shortage of legal sites where their families can settle. Twenty per cent of Britain’s caravan dwelling Gypsies and Travellers are officially categorised as homeless, due to living on unauthorised encampments with no legal alternatives.

Illegal sites usually have extremely basic facilities and residents are unable to access GP services or enrol their children in schools.

Adequate site provision is an essential first step towards tackling the gaping disparity in opportunities between Gypsies and Travellers and the settled community. It is also the only sustainable solution to illegal site development.

The scale of the solution is both modest and achievable even within the current economic context. Four thousand additional pitches are required, less than one square mile across the whole country. But to achieve this, proactive policy and strong leadership would be needed in the face of lowest common denominator anti-Gypsy NIMBYism.

What the government has delivered instead is a great leap backward. A policy prescription that will worsen an already dire situation, and make numerous Dale Farm style stand-offs inevitable in the future.

Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier. More Racist.

Originally posted on Liberal Conspiracy

I have a confession to make; when ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ first aired as a one-off documentary two years ago, I didn’t think it was that bad.

Having been acclimatised to Daily Mail Gypsies-camped-in-my-living-room-and-ate-my-babies type hate mongering, the show was in contrast, fairly gentle.

Voyeuristic and misleading no-doubt, but I was pleased to see issues affecting the community, such as evictions and discrimination, being aired to a mainstream audience. At the very least, I thought, ‘it can’t do any harm’.

How wrong I was.

Fast forward two years and MBFGW has become a cultural phenomenon; Channel Four’s highest rated programme since Big Brother, syndicated internationally and a favourite talking point of the tabloid press. The programme makers claim that the show throws ‘an overdue light on a secretive, marginalised and little-understood segment of our society’.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Far from increasing understanding, the incredible reach of the show has succeeding in propagated a warped depiction of Travellers in the UK, objectifying an entire ethnic group for the sake of light entertainment.

The programme focuses almost exclusively on a handful of wealthy Traveller families with a penchant for extravagant celebrations. Self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship are central to Traveller culture and some families have done very well; but the vast majority of Travellers in the UK who live below the poverty line are conspicuous by their absence from the programme.

MBFGW’s characterisation of Travellers as a wealthy care-free bunch masks the fact that 20% of Britain’s caravan-dwelling Travellers are statutorily homeless; trapped in traumatic cycles of eviction. That Gypsies and Travellers have a life expectancy 10 – 12 years below the national average.

That 18% of Gypsy and Traveller mothers have experienced the death of a child, compared with less than 1% of mothers in the settled community. That 62% of adult Gypsies and Travellers are illiterate and 25% of Gypsy and Traveller children in Britain are not enrolled in education.

That a staggering 4% of the adult male prison estate is comprised of Gypsy, Traveller and Roma prisoners, many of whom have graduated from the care system. These statistics paint a grim picture of the Traveller experience in Britain; one that is a million miles from the high jinks of MBFGW.

The programmes producers claim that they merely ‘film what they see’ but this is clearly disingenuous, neglecting the power which they wield in deciding what makes the final cut. Of course commercial television is going to focus on the bizarre and titillating to secure an audience, and Travellers are not the first group to be exploited via the medium of reality TV.

But there is something particularly distasteful about adding to the already bulging cannon of stereotypes and slurs which the Travelling community has to endure. While it may ‘cast a light’ on some frilly dresses and mammoth cakes, the programme does very little to illuminate the myriad disadvantages and injustices which the community endures.

Anti-Traveller attitudes continue to go unchallenged in Britain

From Left Foot Forward

When my mother came to England in the 1950s to work as a nurse, the signs on the boarding houses said ‘No Blacks, No Irish.’ She described it as normal.

You couldn’t get away with putting up signs like that now.

That’s what I thought. Or really, what I thought was that nobody, even if they were racist, would be stupid enough to erect signs like that and attract the attention of the police.

I was wrong. And I was wrong on two counts. Firstly, because there are people stupid enough to put up the signs. Secondly, because I assumed that the police and the CPS would pursue these people under race relations legislation.

Before Christmas, I was walking up through a back street in north London when I noticed a pub that had a sign that read ‘Travellers strictly by appointment only.’

I thought it was a mistake, so the next day I went back to the pub with my colleague Joe.The signs were there alright – three of them making it clear that Travellers weren’t wanted.

Even though I’ve heard a lot of racism towards Travellers, I was surprised that in multi-cultural London a sign like that could remain in the open for some time. We took photos and reported the sign to the police, who promised they would investigate.

I went to the police station and made a long statement, stressing the seriousness of the crime. I made the point that such racist incidences prevent Travellers from getting legal work and getting on with their lives.

I stated that when there are signs like that it’s not surprising that many Travellers in prison point to discrimination in schools and society as one factor that put them on the path to offending.

I stressed that, like everybody else, Travellers have a responsibility for their own actions. But I added that whenever Travellers as a group are singled out for unfair treatment it just means this section of society feel unjustly treated. Then everybody loses.

It is in the interests of the police and society that they pursue these cases of discrimination, otherwise Travellers will rightly feel aggrieved and disconnected.

Yesterday, I received a phone call from Islington Police Station. The CPS have decided not to pursue any action against the pub.

The next time I’m in a prison and a young man whispers to me that at school he had to stand on a chair in assembly while he was called a ‘dirty gypo,’ I’ll think, like my mother, that that’s normal.