Comments on: Gypsies and Nazis

By: Peter Clay

Peter Clay — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 11:06:41 +0000

Putting the racial prejudice to one side for a moment, there are real issues that need to be resolved. Howard is and the Murdoch press are doing their best to confuse them, but that’s business as usual.

Rural local authorities refuse virtually all planning applications for new build; the aim is to “preserve the identity of the local community”. Sure, it’s parochialism, but it seems to be what people want from the planning process. It’s by no means exclusive to travellers: there was a wave of incidents in Wales recently of (legal) holiday cottages being vandalised or burnt down (while unoccupied).

Turning up, buying agricultural land, building a house on it (or establishing a fixed caravan) and living there would result in eviction and demolition, even if that would leave somebody homeless. It’s not clear why travellers should be exempted from the law. Personally, I’d like to see a liberalisation of planning law to encourage people to build their own houses rather than live in homogenous ugly new estates, but that’s unlikely to happen.

Even the Middle England in revolt wingnuts believe that council provision of traveller sites is needed.

Part of the whole issue is that Middle England gets very worked up about percieved unequal treatment: if the travellers are not held to the same legal standards of behaviour as they themselves uphold, it’s unfair. As such, they are now resorting to the HRA to protect their “traditional way of life”…

By: Jasper Milvain

Jasper Milvain — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 10:23:39 +0000

Can anyone explain why this is particularly an ‘ethnic’ or ‘racist’ problem?Because many travellers belong to a couple of specific ethnic groups (note the bit about “Roma and Irish travellers” above), and this feeds back into the way they are seen, and treated. Your step-sister did not change ethnicity, but her neighbours might behave as if she had.My apologies if that was a rhetorical question, by the way.

By: Thomas Dent

Thomas Dent — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 23:19:21 +0000

Can anyone explain why this is particularly an ‘ethnic’ or ‘racist’ problem? Did my step-sister suddenly change ethnic group as a result of going to live in a caravan rather than a house?

By: Daniel

Daniel — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 21:06:09 +0000

The conservatives want one law to apply equally to travellers and the settled community alike

Not so. Currently, the law on planning applications is not applied equally; it is applied in a way which discriminates against Gypsies. The human rights legal structure gives Gypsies a way to use the courts to try to achieve an equal application of the law. Michael Howard is proposing that the human rights law should be repealed so as to allow local authorities to continue to discriminate against Gypsies. The fact that, as Raimo correctly notes, he has not the ghost of a chance of doing so in a way that would survive its first encounter with Strasbourg doesn’t make him any less disgusting for going along with the Sun’s “Stamp the Camps!” campaigns.

By: Raimo

Raimo — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 16:45:29 +0000

If Howard did change the Human Rights Act, the gypsies contested it on grounds that it violated the European Convention on Human Rights (Protocol 1, Article 1), how good would their chances be?

By: Ethan Edwards

Ethan Edwards — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 16:24:35 +0000

What a ridiculous set of assertions.

The conservatives want one law to apply equally to travellers and the settled community alike. You do yourself no favours by inventing such claptrap. You merely make yourself look like swivel eyed loonies.

Your solution is then to allow one group to continue to be above the law at the expense of others. Sounds pretty racist to me…..

By: Andrew Bartlett

Andrew Bartlett — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 23:27:10 +0000

I don’t know that having a problem to distinguish bewteen The Sun’s campaign and the propaganda that leads to extermination is in any way a failure.
After all, in addition to their campaign to “Stamp Out The Camps” – which they argue is only ‘fair play’ because they are dealing with illegal sites – there is a parallel campaign to block John Prescott’s plan to force councils to provide planning permission on gypsy and traveller sites where appropriate.
The two campaigns are clearly designed to whip up hatred of gypsies and travellers, denying the legitimacy of any of their camps – effectively a camapaign to drive them out of existence.
Michael Howard, incidentally, is the Home Secretary who removed the regualtions that bound councils to provide a legal site for gypsies and travellers. He is directly responsible for the current shortfall in sites and is now playing on the fact that gypsies and travellers necessarily stop at illegal sites to win votes, offering solution except to engage in what can only be a perpetual crackdown – raising the levels of acceptable and letimated bigotry and hatred in the general population.
If you do not think these turns in our political culture are dangerous, and reminiscent of the first steps that cast Jews as a criminal underclass, dehumanised them and delegitimated their very right to a place in society, then the shame is on you. And you will do fine to throw your lot in with Michael Howard’s Tory Party, the same party that celebrated Tony ‘put all the gypsies in a field, surround them with barb-wire and machinegun them’ Martin as some kind of British hero.

By: Andrew Boucher

Andrew Boucher — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:48:36 +0000

” ‘so long as these are refusals of the campsites and their particularities and not of the people who might inhabit them.’
Yeh, but if you think that gypsies are getting a fair shake in Home Counties planning applications, then I’ve got a mock-Tudor mansion next to a gypsy camp to sell you.”
My reply: I didn’t say they are getting a fair shake – I don’t know. I am just questioning your logic – or rather lack of it. Your comment about “refusals to give planning consent for campsites on land that they have bought” needs to be buttressed by some evidence that they are not getting a fair shake, and nothing you have said in your post seems to provide any. Your comment (mock-Tudor mansion) does not add anything.
“Check out the Sun, man. Closer than you’d think.” How profound. Again, apparently you have difficulty distinguishing between violaions of human rights and extermination. Shame on you, twice.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:24:41 +0000

This is a test comment because a few people have told me that they’re having problems with comments; if you can see this, they might be working.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 21:33:01 +0000

so long as these are refusals of the campsites and their particularities and not of the people who might inhabit them
Yeh, but if you think that gypsies are getting a fair shake in Home Counties planning applications, then I’ve got a mock-Tudor mansion next to a gypsy camp to sell you.
Denying a group of people their basic human rights is one thing; trying to exterminate them quite another
Check out the Sun, man. Closer than you’d think.

By: Andrew Boucher

Andrew Boucher — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 20:51:14 +0000

I don’t know about England but in the U.S. there are zoning laws, and one can’t simply do with one’s land as one sees fit.
Denying due process does sound scandalous, but “refusals to give planning consent for campsites on land that they have bought” seems fine with me, so long as these are refusals of the campsites and their particularities and not of the people who might inhabit them.
In any case I’d use more care before one trots out a phrase like “whiff of a gas chamber.” Denying a group of people their basic human rights is one thing; trying to exterminate them quite another. Shame.

By: abb1

abb1 — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 19:27:58 +0000

…Irish Travellers…
Is Pitt’s character in “Snatch” one of them? ‘The fucking pikey’, right?