Irish and Proud - Including Travellers?
30 October 2014
For generations Irish Travellers have been discriminated against and made feel unwelcome in their own country. Roma, many having arrived in Ireland only in the last two decades, are now experiencing similar discrimination. Media outlets revel in portraying stereotypical and negative images of Travellers and Roma, readily pointing to ethnic markers if someone who is a Traveller or Roma can be connected in any way to any scandal. As for the impact of such media representations – well Ireland made headlines when a Romani girl was taken by police from her parents in Dublin after a woman contacted the presenter of a trashy TV programme (which sometimes featured trashy hysteria about Roma in Ireland) claiming that the child didn’t look like her parents (and that Roma rob children so that they can get child benefits). The child was eventually returned to her family, and apologies were forthcoming (although not from the TV station), but the damage had already been done.
The first state attempt to address the situation of Travellers in Ireland recommended an assimilationist approach, which was adopted in the 1960s and 1970s and destroyed many elements of Traveller life and culture. Let me give one example. Most Irish people don’t want to live in a caravan, a once-traditional Traveller home. Most of us prefer homes made from bricks and concrete. They are a bit cold sometimes, and maybe a bit monotonous because every time you look out the window you see the same thing, but for most of us home is something fixed to a bit of the earth, rooted to a plot of land. We would never force someone to live in a caravan, and tell them that they can’t be rooted to that bit of earth. Yet a Traveller who wants to live in a caravan, because he grew up in one, because he had always lived in one? That part of his culture, his heritage, that lifestyle was unacceptable. So Ireland took various steps to stop people from living in caravans, and we have almost completely eradicated a traditional way of life within a few generations. Unless you are a tourist that is, and you want to rent a caravan for a week and travel around the beautiful countryside – that’s not a problem. You see a “traveller” is fine, but a “Traveller” needs to be shown how to live like the rest of us.
In short, the 99% of Irish people who are not Travellers were either incapable or unwilling to show any respect or attach any value to Irish Traveller traditions. In this regard, Irish people have not changed much.
When Irishman John Joe Nevin won a silver medal in the 2012 London Olympics, in a sports-mad country not accustomed to East German levels of Olympic glory, he became a bit of a hero for some. He was the first Irish Traveller to win an Olympic medal for Ireland, and a key member of the most successful team ever to compete in the Olympics for Ireland. But his achievements were not enough to win the respect of others. One Dublin restaurant felt it acceptable to imply on twitter that Nevin’s family were all thieves – an apparent attempt at a “joke”. In Nevin’s hometown, everything else came to a complete standstill as crowds gathered to watch him compete; but some of Nevin’s family were refused admission to a bar to watch him - “no Travellers welcome”. As for the media – the same media which revel in portraying Travellers in a negative light – they reported on John Joe Nevin’s great successes alright, but rarely mentioned that he was also a Traveller. Suddenly such details weren’t relevant.
In the last few years, Travellers in Ireland have successfully used the law to fight discrimination and to protect their rights. In 2013, two women, both bereaved by suicide, successfully sued for discrimination when they were refused admission to a suicide awareness event. Cases have also been successfully taken against supermarkets, hotels, and other businesses. One mother is currently suing the Irish police, who registered her two children, aged four and five, on a criminal database. However, the number of cases is surely only a tiny fraction of overall incidents. It is not always easy to prove discrimination has taken place. Was it your Traveller accent (one of several easily distinguishable Irish accents) that led to the refusal, or was the restaurant really fully booked on a quiet Tuesday afternoon?
Businesses also find ways to circumvent the law. Picture the scene – a quiet Irish town on a nice (maybe rainy) (probably rainy) Thursday afternoon, all of the pubs closed. For tourists it’s a bit confusing – pubs are only obliged to close on December 25th and on Easter Friday, and are open every other day. And there’s no better place to take refuge from the rain. For locals though it is clear what is happening – there is a “Traveller funeral” and pub owners, knowing that they can’t refuse admission to someone because he is a Traveller, choose to close the doors completely instead. That’s the easy way to avoid Travellers.
The most recent case of discrimination to gain media attention is truly, grimly shocking. It is a tragic story which shows that discrimination against Irish Travellers has few limits. 14-year-old Aaron Joyce died on Christmas Eve, 2011 after an illness. His family arranged his funeral, but were subsequently refused access to a funeral home. They took a case to the Equality Tribunal, and the Tribunal found in October 2014 that they had been discriminated against because they were Travellers. The family donated the compensation awarded to a charity for sick children, in memory of their son.
Even as the family grieved, and even as they prepared to say their final goodbyes to their son, they faced discrimination. Even after his death, Aaron Joyce was discriminated against because he was a Traveller.
The Equality Tribunal didn’t have the last word though. The bottom half of the internet – the comments sections on news portals and social media – had something to add. The Tribunal had made their decision with the advantage of full access to the facts of the case, but what do they know? A few people, using relatively anonymous profiles, made unsubstantiated and borderline libellous allegations about the family; they were bad eggs, they were troublemakers; they were criminals. In other words, they fit into our bigoted stereotypes, and so didn’t deserve respect, even in a time of such grief and heartbreak. A few other commentators made vague and unsubstantiated comments about all Travellers as a justification for the discrimination – no Travellers deserve respect, even in a time of grief or heartbreak.
And the reaction? Never mind that the comments were virtually anonymous and totally unsubstantiated, and never mind that they peddled malicious gossip and crass stereotypes. Never mind that Aaron’s mother, when she appeared on TV, was a dignified and admirable person, who had shown the resolve to take her case to the Tribunal because she felt she had been discriminated against. And never mind the fact that the Tribunal had access to the full facts when they made their decision. The bottom half of the internet lit up with vitriol aimed at the family, and aimed at all Travellers. A story about the death of a 14-year-old boy had turned into another opportunity to blame Travellers for everything and anything, and ultimately to blame Travellers for being Travellers.
The same attitudes and prejudices fuel so-called jokes about sporting heroes, and discrimination against a grieving family.
I’m Irish, and like most Irish people, I am very proud of many things about our country, its culture and its history – in fact, we love telling people about how great Ireland is (even as we complain quietly between ourselves about the cost of living, Bono, or the rain). And we love the fact that Lonely Planet named Ireland in the top ten places to visit in 2015. But we are only proud of a certain brand of Irishness. Irish Travellers are a part of Ireland’s rich history and culture, yet at every turn we reject them. They don’t fit our brand.
We exclude Travellers from everything, and then blame them for their exclusion. We create a circle of rejection and exclusion. To address this, some of us, sometimes, well-meaning and with good intentions, start to talk about integration, or inclusion. It’s just that integration sounds like assimilation, doesn’t it? As for inclusion, inclusion into what - a prejudiced and bigoted society where we can’t even celebrate a sporting hero without insulting him; where we put a 4-year-old on a criminal database; where we won’t even sit in the same pub together with other Irish people because they are Travellers with a capital T? A society where we can’t even find the human decency to show respect to a 14-year-old boy who has died, and to his grieving family? If we can’t show respect then talk of anything else is meaningless. And if we can’t show respect to Aaron Joyce and his memory we have nothing to be proud of.
