I want to say a little more about Jimmy Carr’s abhorrent ‘joke’. First, the awful truth. Many hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti people were murdered by the Nazis during World War II, in what has become known to the victims’ families as the Porrajmos (the ‘Devouring’).
How were the Nazis able to commit these terrible crimes with impunity? Its propaganda machine played a major role, reinforcing age old prejudices. Roma and Sinti were made scapegoats, blamed for the ills of society, dehumanised and stereotyped as anti-social thieves and vagabonds
The propaganda campaign worked; people were conditioned to believe what they were being told (by what would now clearly be understood as ‘hate speech’) and there was little opposition when Roma and Sinti were rounded up and transported to camps from which they would never return.
Over 75 years later the horror of the Nazi concentration camps is hard for us to imagine. Surely, such atrocities could never be repeated.
But the widespread prejudice and hate speech that Gypsies Travellers and Roma face here in the UK is an unwelcome fact of their daily lives; and to our collective shame has generally known as the ‘last acceptable form of racism’.
How does this play out? Most obviously when it comes to accommodation. With such high levels of prejudice there is little political will on the part of government to provide sufficient caravan sites for Gypsies and Travellers, so that they can pursue their traditional way of life
Without adequate site provision many caravan dwelling Gypsies and Travellers face a life on the roadside, subject to constant eviction with little ability to access decent education for their children or healthcare for their families.
Not surprisingly, research consistently shows that Gypsies and Travellers have low levels of life expectancy, high vulnerability to serious illness, poor mental health, high child mortality rates and low levels of educational attainment and literacy when compared to other groups
What is our government’s solution. The simple, humane and cost effective answer would be to build more sites. But, no - that would be too easy and might upset the sort of people who would laugh at Jimmy Carr’s ‘joke’.
Instead, the government has decided to enact legislation in the #PolicingBill which will criminalise trespass by those Gypsies and Travellers who have nowhere to lawfully camp - simply because successive governments had failed to grasp the nettle and make adequate site provision.
The Police have told the government that they don’t want additional enforcement powers to deal with unauthorised encampments and the @HumanRightsCtte have told the government that criminalising trespass will breach the European Convention on Human Rights.
But the government isn’t bothered about the legality of the new powers. It has pressed ahead with its egregious proposals and is likely to see them passed into law. Like Jimmy Carr, it’s playing to a racist audience and pandering to age old prejudices.
How can we, as citizens, bring about change? We must call out the ‘last acceptable form of racism’ whenever we see it, whether that be in the media, on @Netflix, in Parliament, at work or in our personal lives.
Only then will we ensure that today’s Gypsy, Traveller and Roma children don’t suffer as their parents and their ancestors have done.
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