Travellers rights

Feminists Against Borders will hold their first meeting, “Moving gender”, as part of the Gatwick No Borders Camp, Friday 21 September, 10am-1pm, Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Road, Croydon. The meeting will be an open discussion on the relationship between national borders, gender and sexuality. From their statement: “Every day of our lives we are confronted with rigid ideas of gender and sexuality and thus our 'appropriate' roles in society. Anyone who does not conform is seen as 'other' or 'strange' or even 'dangerous'. In a society that always attempts to mark someone as 'other' (by race...

Roma and travellers across Europe mark 2 August as a day to recall the persecution of gypsies in Europe under the Nazis. On the night of August 2 and 3, l944, several thousand were massacred in the gypsy camp at Auschwitz. As this day draws nearer gypsies and travellers in Basildon Essex are fighting persecution once again. To protest against the planned eviction from Dale Farm they will hold on 1 August a rally and demonstration outside the Planning Appeals Enquiry at Basildon Centre, St Martin’s Square, Basildon. It starts at 11am. The district council has voted to spend nearly £3 million on...

By Cathy Nugent During 2000, hysterical media debate about asylum seekers targetted gypsies, specifically Roma people from eastern Europe. The Roma people share the same roots, but are made up of many culturally diverse groups world wide. Not all gypsies are Roma. Roma asylum seekers in Britain are generally fleeing from persecution in the Balkans and eastern Europe. The persecution of Roma is centuries long and acute. For example, Roma were kept as slaves in the Balkans right up to the 19th century. And the Nazis built on Europe-wide “pass laws" (compulsory ethnic registration) for gypsies...

By Sally Alexander “An unprecedented mass eviction of a whole community”: that’s how a Labour councillor described the “direct action” operation voted through by Basildon’s Tory council on 14 July. By a majority of three, with every opposition councillor voting against, the council voted to back Tory leader Malcolm Buckley’s plans to remove 220 “unauthorised” caravans, housing more than 120 traveller families, from the Dale Farm and Hove Field districts. In doing so it authorised the expenditure of something like £3 million, plus huge legal costs, to create what a local human rights group has...

The Tories have used the election campaign to pour scorn and hatred on gypsies and travellers. This has spurred the Sun newspaper into an explicitly racist "Stamp on the Camps" campaign against travellers, and there has been an increase in physical attacks on travellers. Back in March Michael Howard began his hate campaign by saying travellers were given preferential treatment over the settled community on planning permission. In fact, travellers receive discriminatory treatment. Despite their best efforts, 90% of planning applications from travellers are refused. Once planning permission has...

By Rosalind Robson For some months now the Tories and Labour have been trying to win votes by competing to see who can be the most “hardline” against asylum seekeers. More recently the Tories have added gypsies and travellers to their list of “undesirables”. Michael Howard has probably beaten Tony Blair with his nasty populist election campaign. Now he is “out on the stump” spewing out his message — “It’s not racist to want to control immigration”; and “Let’s clamp down on illegal traveller sites.” The Tories maybe be in the lead in the race-hate auction but Labour isn’t far behind. One of...

Around 300 travellers (mostly Roma gypsies) marched through London's West End on 9 April in protest at the mounting number of evictions from traveller sites. The march followed a church service remembering the victims of the porrajmos (the Holocaust), and of more recent ethnic cleansings and pogroms across Europe. Many gypsies and travellers are being turfed off land which they own. Councils do this because, they say, travellers are flouting planning regulations. Yet many councils have made it very difficult for travellers to comply with planning regulations. Overall councils are not providing...