TRAVELLER SOLIDARITY ALLIANCE

MEDIA REPRESENTATION

Challenging negative reporting

Negative stereotypes are widespread in the press and on television. Complaints of discriminatory reporting and inflammatory language relating to Gypsies and Travellers are rarely upheld by the Press Complaints Commission, allowing newspapers to continue to publish provocatively worded stories that fail to voice the views and perspectives of Travellers or to seek the whole truth. Press and politicians promote social division in ways that would be regarded as racist if any other ethnic minority were similarly, systematically targeted.

THE PLANNING SYSTEM

Promoting justice, equality and independence

Over many decades official site policies and increasingly severe penalties against camping have formed a two-pronged approach, creating dependency on the state and effectively criminalising nomadic ways of life in Ireland and the UK. Yet international law upholds the right of nomadic peoples to share the use of land in ways that are consistent with their traditions and livelihoods: camping is a human right, and UK law imposes a duty on the state to protect the 'gypsy way of life'. Recent attempts to 'define' Travellers and Gypsies out of existence through the UK planning system would refuse 'gypsy status' to anyone living in a house, or who has temporarily or permanently ceased travelling. This strategy, by claiming there is no 'need' for sites, seeks to end the state's role in site provision, and to make it virtually impossible for Travellers and Gypsies to obtain planning consent for sites on private land.

SITE CONDITIONS

The tragedy of social neglect

Local authorities in the UK and Ireland have both failed to identify or allocate land suitable for sites, or to make provision for new site places assessed as necessary to local communities. The inevitable results are overcrowding, homelessness and a growing number of families enduring the insecurity of roadside camps. As conditions deteriorate on older sites as a result of overcrowding, the loss of life and property through fires is an all too frequent event. In Carrickmines, Dublin, ten people lost their lives in 2015. The response of several other councils was merely to clear sites through eviction. Travellers and Gypsies who pay rent to local authorities are forced to endure the dangerous and unacceptable consequences of social neglect because of fear of eviction.