As I write, in Spring 2020, the world is experiencing a pandemic. The coronavirus, COVID-19, has spread across the globe at an exponential rate, resulting in a momentary pause of all aspects of daily life. For the wealthy, that pause constitutes a moment for retreat and reflection, for the planet to heal and for families to reconnect. The romanticism of this perspective belies the tragedies unfolding across nation states as the poor and socially excluded are hardest hit by the virus, including Gypsies, Travellers and Roma (Council of Europe 2020). The principle mechanism used to control the virus at this stage has been the ‘lockdown’ of people into their homes in order to manage its spread, protect health services from being overwhelmed and to ‘shield’ those most vulnerable who have underlying medical conditions. People are expected to keep a ‘social distance’ from each other, which actually means keeping a physical distance in public space, with no family gatherings, meeting of friends, etc. And those who become sick are required to isolate themselves, even within their households. For Gypsies, Travellers and Roma, who often live in poverty and whose accommodation is commonly overcrowded, these circumstances are worrying at best, and potentially life threatening. Gypsies, Travellers and Roma have the poorest health and welfare outcomes of any minority communities across Europe, as acknowledged by the European Commission (2019) and the United Nations (2015). The prejudice and discrimination they face in their everyday lives means that they are rarely effectively supported by health and welfare agencies, nor are they acknowledged as worthy of support from, or as part of, their local settled communities. Even in these relatively early days of the pandemic it is becoming evident that Gypsies, Travellers and Roma have been scapegoated for the spread of the virus, their needs have not been met, and their communities are at heightened risk of the virus itself or lack of service provision in the wake of the virus uptake on health services (Rorke 2020).
This book intends to explore the nature of hate harms in contemporary society, and in doing so it will illuminate how we have arrived at a situation wherein the most marginalised in society are subject to the vagaries of a global pandemic. I will argue here that the harms of hate reach further than is traditionally considered within hate studies literature. The book moves beyond the criminal justice framework that addresses hate crime, while also acknowledging the capacity of such legal and policy responses to challenge the extremities of hate behaviours. The book will consider the breadth of hate harms that Gypsies, Travellers and Roma experience, including how bias-motivated discrimination and prejudice have resulted in their social, economic and political exclusion. It will conclude by considering the exacerbation of Gypsies’, Travellers’ and Roma exclusion and vilification by the nature of contemporary society that celebrates individualism over community and the instant gratification of the self over the social support of all in society.
Controlling Gypsies and Travellers
On the 19 October 2011, just after dawn, over a hundred police officers dressed in full riot gear and carrying protective shields marched across a field in Essex, England on their way to facilitate the eviction of the illegal Dale Farm Traveller site. Police officers used axes to break down a fence at the rear of the site in order to gain entry and then faced violent clashes with Travellers and protesters within the site as they went through the six acre plot of land to make way for bailiffs to clear the site. Tasers were deployed by the police on two occasions during the initial skirmish to enter the Traveller site. By midday however, the bailiffs were able to enter the site and the focus of police attention was on the removal of protestors from a high scaffold tower that had been constructed at the entrance to the site in an effort to prevent eviction occurring. In scenes reminiscent of the English environmental protest evictions at Twyford Down and Newbury in the 1990s, protesters and Travellers were coaxed, requested and forced out of their makeshift gantry by police officers and bailiffs who used cherry pickers to access them. In the late afternoon of the 20th October, the final Travellers and protesters walked away from the Dale Farm site following a group decision to leave. Thirty four arrests had taken place over two days, largely for public order offences and breach of the peace. After ten years of legal wrangling, during which time the Travellers had fought to live on the site which they owned, but for which they had not attained planning permission, the fight for the Dale Farm site, reported to be the largest illegal site in Europe, appeared to be over.
This clash between the police and Travellers epitomises the contemporary fears of Gypsies and Travellers throughout the United Kingdom (UK). Evictions of sites are rarely so complex, high profile and resource intensive, but they are common and problematic in the UK and for Roma internationally (Home 2012). Notwithstanding the previous history of prejudice, discrimination and racism experienced by Gypsies, Travellers and Roma via state and non-state violence that has subjugated their communities over centuries throughout Europe (Acton, Rostas and Ryder 2014; Alliance Against Anti-Gypsyism 2016), there have been numerous occasions in the post-war era in the UK when similarly extreme tactics to those used at Dale Farm have been used to move Gypsies and Travellers on and away from particular places and spaces, and the collective memory of them remains an integral part of Gypsies’ and Travellers’ cultural knowledge and identity. The notion that such communities can be subject to state-sponsored force through eviction affirms their historic lack of confidence in police, local authorities and state apparatus. The control of Gypsies and Travellers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries has not happened solely through forced eviction however, despite its prominence within communities’ psyches. Gypsies and Travellers are ‘policed’ within a breadth of contexts and by multiple agencies. Akin to other minority communities, Gypsies and Travellers have been over-policed as offenders and under-policed as victims. Their criminalisation has occurred due to the complex interaction of social forces that have embedded prejudiced attitudes towards them in contemporary society and which harmfully impacts their daily lives. Throughout the course of this book I will outline the numerous ways that Gypsies and Travellers in the UK experience the harms of their criminalisation and victimisation as hate and subsequently how they interact with the state, its agencies and settled society generally.
In real terms, Gypsies’ and Travellers’ experiences of criminalisation are rarely as dramatic as the Dale Farm eviction (Reiner 2010); it is the potential for such criminal justice interventions, and community memories of them, that informs the fears of Gypsies and Travellers. The bulk of the story to be told here requires a consideration of how Gypsies and Travellers experience daily life under the gaze of a prejudiced society: when they are moving from one place to the next; when they try to establish a base for themselves with planning authorities; when they want to attain appropriate education for their children; or, when they are unwell and need to visit a doctor. This book therefore utilises the notion of harm to understand the multiple ways in which Gypsies and Travellers are impacted by anti-Gypsyism, or Romaphobia that is the prejudice embedded in their lived experience (see for example, McGarry 2017; Alliance Against Anti-Gypsyism 2016). Further, this book considers how Gypsies and Travellers are socially controlled by using Donzelot’s (1997) concept of ‘policing’ that allows a consideration of the roles of multiple agencies in the management of Gypsies’ and Travellers’ lives. Indeed, their lives are ‘managed’ because their communities are largely problematised by agencies that are unsure how to address their needs or concerns, despite extensive national and international pressure for inclusion for Gypsies and Travellers (European Commission 2019). In 2011 the European Union set out a Framework for the social and economic inclusion of Roma (including G...