Growing up in a small town in Lancashire, I was surrounded by others who looked and sounded like me. It was a three-bedroomed, semi-detached, 2.4 children sort of working-class normality. Except my family are Romany Gypsies. I remember from a very young age being acutely aware of my difference from the other children in my school. My dad had instilled in us that it was important to be cautious when it came to divulging our ethnicity. Having suffered many instances of poor treatment due to his race while growing up, he was trying to protect us.
My cousin was my classmate throughout my early years, and I remember a time when we both got bullied quite badly: somehow one of our classmates had found out and started calling us “Gyppo” in the playground. This only strengthened the idea that I should try to preserve and protect this element of my identity from the outside world. I went through high school in the early noughties, a time when Britain’s newspapers were flaring up with regard to Gypsies and Travellers. In 2005, the Sun launched a now-infamous campaign titled “Stamp on the camps”, which ran for several weeks. It was so bad that there were families in our community who were scared to send their children to school for fear of attacks. Fifteen years on, it sometimes feels that we haven’t progressed at all. In April, Channel 4 ran the episode of Dispatches, The Truth About Traveller Crime. It was laden with harmful stereotypes and, in the words of the charity Friends, Families and Travellers, was “dehumanising, unbalanced and unfair”. It is now under review by Ofcom.
Throughout my teens and adulthood, I have experienced so many instances of racism and prejudiced views. Anti-Gypsy rhetoric is an acceptable everyday racism. I’ve sat in training sessions at work and had to listen to damaging stereotypes of Gypsy customers, and I’ve experienced death threats online for speaking out about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) rights on television. As an adult I’m presented with three choices in any new environment I enter, whether that be a workplace, a friendship or even a relationship: “come out” to the person and make clear my ethnicity from the off but risk unfavourable treatment; drip-feed them bits of information and hope they connect the dots themselves; or stay silent, and hope that they don’t say anything offensive or upsetting about my culture. I am constantly having to shrink or dilute my ethnicity to be more palatable to others.
Racism and poor treatment against Gypsies, Travellers and Roma people is nothing new. Half a million Roma people were killed during the Holocaust, for instance. Roma are the biggest ethnic minority within the European Union yet often get unfavourable treatment and are very rarely represented fairly. Many European countries to this day still have such things as segregated schools for Roma children, blocked access to housing registers and children being separated from their families by authorities. In 2010, the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy even paid Roma people €300 (£269) each to leave the country.
On home turf, we have our own issues. When the Conservative manifesto was revealed at the end of last year, it contained a notable plan for legislative powers to create a new offence of “trespassing whilst setting up an unauthorised encampment”, which would give police the power to arrest and seize the property of Gypsies and Travellers. When your property is a caravan that serves as your home, this cannot be seen as anything but an attempt to erase us from existence. Many illegal sites exist because councils fail to provide adequate housing or approve planning applications for legal sites for Gypsies and Travellers. As the UK currently has unprecedented levels of homelessness (estimated to be 280,000 people in England), I am stunned that the Conservatives seem willing to add to that number, forcing vulnerable families on to the street. We know that this rhetoric runs deep within the party and is something they tend to roll out before an election. One Tory candidate in Crewe is reported to have actually led a demonstration against unauthorised Gypsy and Traveller encampments in his constituency, and other politicians have been vocal about Gypsies and Travellers not being welcome in their areas in recent years.
This month is GRT History Month. It’s an opportunity to celebrate our rich and diverse culture but to also take personal responsibility for educating ourselves about the history of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people. Gypsies have been a part of British life since the 16th century, yet are still largely not accepted as part of our society. We must all seek to dismantle the institutional racism faced by our community, and that involves putting pressure on the media, the government and the other agencies that are failing us. My dad always told me: “Not everyone is going to like you”, but I’d welcome a world where my ethnicity wasn’t one of the reasons why.
• Grace Claire O’Neill is a photographer who campaigns for Gypsy, Romany and Traveller rights and representation