Media Storm - S2E7 'Gypsy, Roma, Traveller’: Why is prejudice on the rise? - with Mikey Walsh

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

Warning: Some strong language and reference to suicide  We often think of ‘progress’ as an enemy of ‘prejudice’, but when it comes to prejudice towards Gypsy, Roma and Travellers, the opposite is true. YouGov polling shows a decline in British society’s attitudes towards their nomadic members, as the UN flags a rise in hate speech and violence towards the ethnic minority across Europe. Why is this happening? Is it down to changes in reality, or simply changes in perception? We speak to activists and actors about the role of politics and pop culture in creating an increasingly hostile environment, and unveil the masked mental health crisis that is endemic among Traveller youths. Mikey Walsh - author (and protagonist) of ‘Gypsy Boy’ - joins us to talk about the news media’s complicity in creating a society clouded more in fiction than fact. We look at headlines on ‘Traveller crime’ and opinion pieces in mainstream papers pleading to phase out the ethnic minority. The episode is accompanied by traditional Romani music performed and produced by Bill Lloyd. Enjoy and share his translated version of Djelem Djelem HERE. Read the fantastic analysis of GRT media coverage by Leeds GATE and London Gypsies and Travellers HERE. Many thanks to Rachel Trafford for help producing this episode. The episode is hosted by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia), with research by Izzie Addison.  Guests: Charlotte James, Community Health and Wellbeing Coordinator, LeedsGate Tom Manders, actor, writer and producer Jonathan Lee, European Roma Rights Centre @ERRCtweets @errcinsta Leeds Gypsy & Traveller Exchange @leedsGATE London Gypsies and Travellers @LondonGypsyTrav @londongypsytraveller Sherrie Smith @SherrieRomany Mikey Walsh @thatbloodymikey   Sources: University of Birmingham study on UK public attitudes UK GRT population size My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding viewing figures Suicide rates among GRT populations Get in touch: Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/mediastormpod or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mediastormpod or Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mediastormpod like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MediaStormPod send us an email [e-mail] check out our website https://mediastormpodcast.com Media Storm is an award-winning podcast brought to you by the house of The Guilty Feminist and is part of the Acast Creator Network. The music is by @soundofsamfire.  Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Helena, I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to be as honest and as unselfconscious as possible. Okay, just imagine that this isn't a podcast and you're not a journalist and you're not accountable for nuance or accuracy. Okay, what on earth are you going to ask me? Okay, what do you know about gypsies and travellers? What words or images come to mind? Okay, wait, but before I answer that, question, are we allowed to use the word gypsy? I thought that was something we're not meant to say. Yeah, no, I'm glad you asked that because it's complicated and it has a different reception to different people. But within the UK, to refer to these collective

nomadic or historically nomadic cultures, we use the acronym GRT, meaning gypsies, Roma and traveller people. Gypsies and Roma have the same roots in the Romani ethnicity, which traces back a thousand years to India and is now a population that is spread across Europe. But in the UK, the term gypsy, as opposed to the term Roma, describes Romani people who immigrated to the UK centuries ago and have a more anglicised culture than Roma people who immigrated in the more recent few decades. And so many Romani people in particularly England and many of the people who I've met to and whose voices you'll hear in this episode refer to themselves as English gypsies.

But you're right to point out that, especially in Europe, it's a word that's treated as unwelcome because it has been used as a pejorative term so much. And just to complete the acronym, GRT, Travellers, refers to a completely different ethnic group that's native to the British Isles. And there are a few different groups, but the main ones are Irish travellers and Scottish travellers.

Okay, thanks for that explanation. and excited to hear from the voices coming up in this episode. To go back to your original question, what do I know about gypsies and travellers and what words or images come to mind? Honestly, not a huge amount. For some reason, an overwhelmingly negative portrayal comes to my mind. And to be honest, the only real thing I saw

was from Channel 4's My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Like, is that bad? That's pretty much. And so what's that? That's bare knuckle fighting, teen weddings. And I guess like a trashy, rebellious community. That sounds really bad to say. But it's honest because polling has found that that is not an anecdotal perception.

In fact, this is where I want to set up our core issue. Half of people across the UK have an inherently negative view of gypsies and travellers. This is according to the latest annual log of a decades-long poll by UGov and the University of Birmingham. It's the most widespread prejudice towards any ethnic minority

recorded in the UK today. Wow, that's shocking, especially because it's unexpected in a way. We obviously know that prejudice is a huge issue in the UK, but when we have conversations about it, I would expect, for example, that it would be more towards,

for example, Muslim people, as we've heard a lot about that. It's actually really interesting you say that because this study, this study by the University of Birmingham, is a study into Islamophobia. And it is disturbing that 25% of Brits were found to hold Islamophobic views. Also, 9% presented inherently negative views against black people.

45% have an inherently negative view of gypsy, Roma and traveller people. Wow. And this has, not always been the case. The same poll in the 1950s showed that 98% of Brits had a positive view of the same group. 98% had a positive view and now 54% have a negative view. That is a huge dramatic change. It's a nosedive. I knew that prejudice existed but I was under the impression it was rooted in history and had probably gotten slightly better. So what on earth has

made it so much worse. That's what I'm off to investigate. I've been heading around the UK speaking to gypsies, romers and travellers about their encounters of prejudice to ask them why they think it's getting worse. And I'll see you back in the studio with a very special guest to discuss everything around this media storm. Why is this government determined to lock up gypsies and travellers? The gypsies are coming, the old people say, to buy little children and say.

They've always been very receptive to gypsies, but we're now getting far more than our fair shab. Dark-skinned exotics with the power of the... Rumiies were flashy with their money. They are the largest minority group and the most widely despised. Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Matilda Mallinson and I'm Helen O'Dia. This week's investigation. Gypsy, Roma, Traveller.

Why is prejudice on the rise? You less as an deal in men, you travellers and all. What can you tell me about gypsy culture? What comes to mind when I say Roman? Have you ever met a traveller? In the UK, GRT is the official acronym for minoritized nomadic cultures, but they're not all nomadic, and they're not all the same. This is Bill Lloyd, a musician.

and committee member at Appleby Fair, Europe's largest traditional gypsy fair. He's given us music for the episode, and you can find details in the notes below. From the moment they set foot in Europe, they were exiled, enslaved, and exterminated. Romani people from whom romers and most gypsies descend have a long history of persecution across Europe. For centuries, they were enslaved, segregated, prohibited from buying land. They faced genocide in Nazi Germany. Hundreds of thousands murdered for being defined as racially inferior.

By the end of the Holocaust, many countries had lost more than 80% of their Roma populations. But this persecution is not consigned to history. 90% of Romanese in Europe live below the poverty line today. And the UN announced in 2021 that hate speech and violence against them was suddenly. suddenly on the rise. But they never mention the thousands of gypsies that were killed by the Nazis. No one ever wants to talk about that, because no one ever wants to talk about the positives.

As we heard in the introduction, over the past two generations, negative public attitudes towards gypsy, Roma and traveller people in the UK have overtaken positive ones. So how is it to grow up with that identity? today. So I'm Charlotte. I'm a member of the gypsy community. Hi Charlotte. What are the first kind of stereotypes or adjectives that come to your mind when you think about how the media depicts your community? Dishonest people. Sort of like scum of the earth with no morals. You're

always aware that people sort of seeing your piking and your gypsy and you receive that from a very young age. How was it growing up and being aware of those attitudes around you? You grow up sort of being learned in a way from your family to hide who you are and not to make people away that you're a gypsy because you know that straight away that they'll change their opinion of you, straight away they won't trust you. That makes you feel obviously on edge and like paranoid that they're going to be accusing you of something that you might have not done so it makes you feel very vulnerable

it is very very challenging growing up being from the community you have to hide your identity and pretend that you're not a gypsy you know we shouldn't be accepting this behaviour we shouldn't be brought up to be resilient but that is how we're brought up because obviously that's the world that we live in

I can sit and speak about it in a broader way of looking at things compared to, I think, some other gypsy and traveller people, I can be a little bit more open-minded. Why is that? Because I've got a bit, you know, a bit of education. I can see how people can be. They've been brainwashed, basically, by the media.

Like, you know, some people might initially think, oh, they're being racist. But I'll think of it a little bit more broadly now, and I'll think, I bet this person hadn't ever worked with a gypsy and traveller before. And I bet when they do, they'll be fine, and they'll have a different perspective. And when you think about how you used to think or other members of the community who maybe haven't had the same access to education as you, how do you think seeing that racism affects them,

their self-worth and their relationship with the rest of society? You know, it can make people angry, it can make people very confrontational, it can make people defensive. And I can understand that because, you know, they take it very personal. People will really get down over it and feel that

they're not able to sort of integrate with the rest of the community and that might be very lonely because they might need support from external services or the rest of the community. That's sad, isn't it really? Anti-gypsyism has existed for centuries but what has happened in recent decades that might explain it getting worse.

Look, Captain, gypsies. The gypsies live outside the normal order, and they must be stopped. This is a clip from the 1996 Disney film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It implies filth, theft, an impression echoed repeatedly in pop culture, from music. I'm a gypsy. I might steal your clothes and wear them if they fit me. To TV. You want some beef?

Yeah, I will give you some finger. It's bigger, fatter and gypsyer. Like millions of others, I grew up watching Channel 4's My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Named so, despite launching with a chain of exclusively traveller communities, a totally separate ethnic group. With unprecedented access to the UK's most secretive communities. They don't like anybody knowing anything about them at all. They even have their own language.

This series will take you to the very heart of Gypsy Life. The show claimed to take us in. a secretive and closed community previously unknown to outsiders. If asking why prejudice towards gypsies and travellers is rising, could it be simply down to more exposure? Or is the nature of that exposure responsible? I think there's been a massive shift in how we're portrayed in the media. This is Tom Manders, actor, writer, producer.

Yeah, so I'm Romani. Saying the word gypsy has a lot of different connotations in different parts of the world, But yeah, I think Roman egypti for me is right. I asked him why the past half a century has seen ancient prejudice getting worse. As much as it was incorrect up until the 60s, we were portrayed as these kind of magical, otherworldly people, which has its own problems. But when you look at it from a media perspective since the 60s,

the media representation of us in that time has become awful. My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, Snatch. Now, there was a problem with Polly. What are you doing, pardon? Get out the way back. Can't really understand much of what is being said. The most watched sitcom of all time now is afterlife of Ricky Jivace. Shit. What?

And Mickey the Gypsy is a comedy character who sleeps with someone's wife. My ex-wife, Mickey the Gypsy. He's dirty. Is he violent? Punches out people for no reason. Absolutely psycho. Then you factor in that there aren't any gypsies anywhere. No directors, no screenwriters. We're not in the media. So we have no say in how we're portrayed.

It's much easier for policy to follow public opinion and public opinion is quite clearly shaped by what's being done in the media. Unless there is a break in that cycle, it will get worse until we, you know, effectively don't exist. Speaking of under-representation in the media, you are an actor, writer, trying to make it in the media. How is it being in that industry as someone from your background? So I've been told at drama schools that gypsies don't count under diversity policies.

I've been rejected for funding for creating short films because I'm not the right minority ethnicity I've had directors call people Pikes say stuff like be careful with the cameras there's gypsies in the area as like a comedy gag that everybody laughed at film and media in general is hardly the sort of bastion of the right wing

generally is very progressive except when it comes to us you have these people who are making massive speeches about how black people need this opportunity you know, we need to get Asian representation correct. The same people are making a movie that has Romani characters played by non-Romanie people. They have this whopping great big blind spot. You know, it's obvious to me and a lot of other people that there is a privilege in being seen as a white person in today's society.

I understand that. But I can turn mine off really quickly. I only have to mention what I am and the entire room atmosphere changes. They're wary of me. I've had fellow cast members put stuff away when I'm coming for dinner like putting expensive things away just in case

these people have an opinion that I'm like I can't help my base nature I'm just going to come out and steal everything That must be so affronting How does that affect you When you feel those suspicions directed at you? It's so normal that I wouldn't know any different

There is a definite mental health crisis among gypsy and traveller people Gypsy Roman traveller men are seven times more likely to commit suicide than national average. Women are six and a half times more likely. A note, the data Tom references are from an Irish study that's over a decade old, but it actually remains one of the most in-depth attempts to quantify what are widely recognised as exceptionally high suicide rates within Gypsy, Roma and traveller populations.

You know, it's evident that there are external factors affecting people's self-esteem. It's like the old saying, if it's said enough, you'll believe it. If everybody from the community that isn't you tells you you're worthless, I can imagine the path to a mental health issue very easily. Pop culture helps to explain a change in perception. But what about change in reality? In recent history, how has the situation changed for gypsies and travellers that might affect their relationship with outsiders today? My father is Welsh Romani. My mother's American, so I'm mixed. The European Roma Rights Centre is a law organisation tackling human rights abuses against Romani people.

I was working at a pig farm, actually, after I finished uni because I couldn't find any jobs. Their communications director is Jonathan Lee. I thought that sounds much better than working. on a big farm. And yeah, six years later, I can't really imagine doing any other kind of work now, actually. Jonathan, one of the first thing that comes to mind when wondering where hostility towards Gypsy Roma and Traveller communities is rooted is a perception of criminality. There's this sense, I think, that an itinerant lifestyle isn't really compatible with traditional law and order. Would you start just by outlining the legal situation around nomadic

life in the UK. The reason that you have these illegal encampments is mostly because this travelling life has been criminalised by successive governments in the UK. So it might surprise you to learn that as many as 80% of gypsies and travellers live in houses or in trailers on permanent sites. So, you know, this media obsession with like illegal encampments that you see, this like classic ragedy Daily Mail headline, this is only really a tiny fraction of Britain's G and T population, if that makes sense. When my grandfather was young, he lived in like a beautiful painted wagon with intricate carvings and filigreeed interiors that was pulled by a horse. It was this intrinsic part of rural Britain that had a place in kind of the ecosystem of the countryside.

Now we're at the point where it is effectively illegal to follow travelling culture in the UK. So I'm looking in particular at changes since the 1950s. Is there legislation in that time that helps explain why people might be having either more negative encounters or more negative perceptions of GRT groups. So the Highways Act criminalised stopping on the roadside. Then in 1968 comes the Caravans Act, and that meant that local authorities could put gypsies and travellers on sites, which, looking back, actually, this was a better time than now, because then at least councils had to provide stopping sites.

This act was scrapped in 1994, so now authorities don't even have to supply sites. Most gypsy and traveller families stop on unauthorised sites simply because they have nowhere else to go. Most of it kind of pales in comparison to, I think, what most gypsies and travellers think of as the final nail in the coffin for a travelling way of life. Pretty Patel's legacy, if you like, this police crime sentencing and courts act that was passed in June. The Conservative Party takes its rightful place as the Party of Law and Order in Britain once again. To us, this is targeted legislation, because what this does is largely criminalized trespass. They can not only arrest you, they can not only fine you, but they can take away your vehicle, which, if you're a traveling gypsy, is your home. The British state has been trying to get rid of us for centuries and has not succeeded.

This new act is not going to stop people traveling. It's just going to make their lives more miserable. It's going to increase tensions, actually, between settled and traveling communities. So, we've been to get born in some places. Go along, get along, go along, get along, go, go, go ship. So, we've investigated some of the causes of worsening public attitudes towards GRT people. Now, let's look at the consequences. I grew up in what we call community housing, so it was actually bricks and mortar accommodation, social housing.

I spoke to Sherry Smith, director of Gypsies and Travellers, Essex, and a Romani mother of two. I've got a daughter. She's 18 now, but she left school at 16 and went to college because she was bullied on mercifully. She was absolutely tortured in school about being grabbed and when she was going to get married because the media has sold this package on big fat gypsy weddings. We're not even travellers with gypsies, so with different ethnics, different DNA, different language, different cultural beliefs. But they've sold this package that, you know, we're all out there getting sexually molested and grabbed. And that's just not how it is or all getting married at 15. That's a very small slice and sector of the communities. My children throughout school have been asked repeatedly.

Do what kind of caravan site do you live on? I don't. Why do you travel? How can you be travellers if you don't travel? You know, it's just such misinformation. Sherry points to a mental health crisis. We have an epidemic of young ones taking their own lives. It's prolific. I mean, in the last six months I've buried two cousins in a week.

And it's often men, but it is our women as well. You know, and our young girls, it's everything. When your whole life and options seems to be controlled by what's in the newspaper, or what's on the TV or what people's perception of you is, you're pretty limited. I really believe it's all undependent comes down to the attitude that's given to gypsy and travellers. So how is access to mental health services and support from the wider community for gypsies and travellers? If you've spent your whole life being ostracised and not wanted by the wider community, you don't go and put yourself. and all of your innermost faults and concerns and worries,

you don't go and put that out on your sleeve. You come to a self-help group, what comes, sit in a group and talk amongst 25 non-Gypsies about being a gypsy when I know that 75% of you would rather not be in a room with me. It's just so much harder for the Gypsy Roaming Traveller community to go and talk about it than it is someone from the wider community. My final question, you've given some of the adjectives

that you associate with how the media has portrayed gypsy women traveller people words like dirty or untrustworthy what are the words that come to your mind that define your culture what is the portrayal that you think should be out there family orientated strong culture resilient you know passionate i think we're passionate proud is a massive one familial pride is a huge thing in the community. I also think entrepreneurial creativity is another one. Creativity and storytelling and sitting around the fire telling campfire stories. Don't be frightened to get to know anybody that you've been influenced or told different about. How much of a role have gypsies and travellers actually had in shaping the narrative around them, where pop culture and politics can

warp our reality, doesn't it fall to the news to identify what's true? That takes us back to the studio. Thanks for sticking around. Welcome back to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. This week we are looking at Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people asking whether that the mainstream media has played a role in misrepresenting and maligning them. With us is a very special guest. He is a best-selling author and gay times columnist brought up as a bare knuckle fighter,

a member of the Romani community and outspoken queer activist. It's Mikey Walsh. Woo! Hey, Mikey. Hi, Mikey. Hi, Mikey. Well, Mikey, we're so happy you can join us on Media Storm

and we want to start really by talking about your day you book, and you kind of shot to fame with that book, and it's called Gypsy Boy. Can you just tell us a bit about it? So I'm a kid of the 80s. We consider ourselves like the last wave of the community before we all basically start to get properly assimilated and basically white tell. But my story is me growing up as an 80s kid through that, just my amazing family and

all the madness, really, that comes from being a young Romney Gypsy kid in that time. and then me leaving home, like in my early teens, and building my life again on this side. Something I noticed was that it touches on the complex relationship between gypsy and settled culture. But you also describe how these customs are connected to a history of persecution and exile. So I'm just wondering how important is historical context like this when it comes to understanding Romani gypsy culture? from the outside. People don't understand our community is actually being wiped out now. Our whole existence is illegal now. So in the UK, let's say 40 years ago, 45 years ago, there would be gypsy and traveller camps all over the UK. There were loads of them and they were

always owned by fellow gypsies and travellers. And that was always usually by people that they get to a certain age where they can't physically keep moving around all the time. So, but they still love the lifestyle. So they're like, oh, I'll buy a camp and then I can have all my friends and family move on and off there. And these weren't illegal camps, wasn't all, you know, like what you read in the papers. These are camps that are built, passed for permission and made absolutely beautiful. But what happens is that over 40 years, you have a media that start demonising a community

and you also have a kind of a fear of it that starts to build. Like I remember being a kid and seeing the no gypsies on the doors of pubs and things like that. Like, you know, I turned 42 the other day. This isn't a long time ago. And then as time went on, you'd start hearing of so-and-so's camp has been shut down. It's been unpassed for permission. And what was starting to happen was communities, were starting to get together, building these kind of fear groups, meeting with councils,

and basically doing everything they can to get these gypsy camps out of their communities. And then you've got groups of travellers and gypsies being basically thrown from town to town after that. So then the news escalates. Gypsies arrive on this park. Gypsies arrive in this, you know, car park. Gypsies arrive here. look at the mess they leave, look at the disgusting stuff, look at everything they're doing. And the reason for all this is not because we're moving there to destroy your homes.

It's literally a group of people. They've been forced out of their own home that they've built and had passed for permission. You had more and more of us literally just stranded. So that's what you read about in the papers. And you're not going to be able to see anything other than that because why would they, why would they paint you any other way? It's really helpful you providing that context that is so often missing from these new stories. This history that we think is ancient history for how many people,

this history of persecution and of displacement and exile, it's actually a very, very modern, recent history that's been happening in the UK, that's meaning there is less land available and there's just more visibility of families who have no choice if they want to continue their culture that dates back generations. they have no choice but to camp on, quote, unauthorised sites. So thank you for providing that context. You're welcome.

Just as time has gone on, you get quite bitter with trying to kind of make things better because it just doesn't. The thing is, is that we've been burned so hard is that even politicians see us as a vote loser to support us. You know, we're in a place now where they can forcibly take your home, take your vehicles, and therefore, without homes and vehicles, they can also take your children. And so you've got no choice but to be assimilated into the community and outside, and you're basically just wiped out. The way that you speak about how the media intertwined, with government policy and with this,

what you said, basically trying to phase out this group of people is so interesting because we often talk here at MediaStorm about the ramifications of a media that consistently fails to include minority voices in the stories affecting them. Mainstream journalism often overlooks firsthand sources with lived experience,

allowing people like charity reps or politicians to be speaking for them. Now it seems we've reached a stage where those same groups, having been denied that control over their own narrative, have become reluctant to engage with the media at all. So it becomes this very vicious cycle. Yeah, we found that doing this episode that people were quite reluctant to speak to journalists because people from Gypsy Roma travel communities

are so mistrusting of journalists. Yeah, and can you, Can you explain or go some way further to explain why Romani people are so often suspicious of journalists? And for example, you asked us warily when we invited you on the show whether we were going to be having you on a panel. You know, why did you ask that question? What experiences have you had?

I've just had 10 years of being set up, that's all. I did one interview with a public broadcaster. Basically, they keep your details after one thing. whenever an issue rises, they call you again. And I kept getting cold-called about issues that were nothing to do with me, but they wanted to have my voice to just be shouted down, actually. And so it was always me, but with some, think of the most right-wing, awful ex-politician you can, and they'll always put me up against that person. And it's like talking to pork. It's just not, it's pointless. It's absolutely pointless. Like my granny always had this saying,

you can't educate pork, I felt like I was just constantly having to stand up for my community. It just felt like such an attack on my life and my family. And I just thought, I can't do this anymore. I'm here trying to tell you about the wonderful things about my community and you're here to try and get me to tell you that we're all basically murderers and thieves. So I don't blame people for not wanting to speak. I think when it came to the two years running up to the policing bill passing, watching people that I really admired be completely reluctant to even speak on the issues

that was happening in Gypsy and Traveller communities, just felt like such a letdown. It was such a letdown. And I really begged and I argued and I tried. And no one, just it wasn't a vote winner for them because they know that a wider community has been indoctrinated to hate us and will lose you votes. And so when the bill passed,

the third reading of the bill passed that brought into law that they could literally snatch away our homes, I think now it's, everyone's just at a point of trying to make the best of what they can and huddle their families together and try and look, after ourselves while we're all slowly picked off. A lot of the activism I saw to try and stop the policing bill from passing online, for

example, was all about our right to protest and, like, you have to stop this because our right to protest was being taken away. I don't think I saw very much, if anything, about the laws in there about your community. Like, I didn't see the outrage for basically, trying to wipe out an entire community. Like, I did not see that outrage. I saw a lot of outrage about noisy and annoying protest. But where was the outrage? And I think that just goes some way to show how marginalized and maligned, you know,

the traveler group has become. When you speak about it all out loud, you can't help but feel really jaded by it. Because I was involved in a lot of left media groups as well, and they just wouldn't talk about it. They refused to put it on. And then when I challenged them about it, I ended up like blacklisted and you just go, you guys are meant to be our big left media voices when you see Labour MPs publicly saying terrible things about travelling people

and instead of anything coming to that, they get promoted to the front bench or made a lord. It's just so frustrating trying to get people to care. I just get so upset when I think about the life I lived that's just impossible now. A lot of people on the outside don't understand to what extent this culture has been wiped out because when we read the media that we do, we would think that, you know, still all the stereotypes, we would still think that, you know, oh, we're overrun with gypsies with travellers. It's always words like infested or a plague. Let's talk a bit about that media and the language that is used in that media.

I hope you don't mind. We just want to start with the very basics. In the UK, the government and the press will use the term GRT for Gypsy Roma and Traveller people. And I was wondering what you think of that acronym to encapsulate this quite diverse collection of people. Is it a useful term in that it helps to define what should be? protected minority group or is it a reductive, simplistic term? Do you have a view on us using GRT as a term? It's similar to some people will not like the word BAME. You know, we have similarities, but we're all different. But the one thing in common we have is that nomadic

lifestyle. A lot of people think that certain words are not the right words to use. Like some people think the word gypsy is a bad word. And I'm like, well, it ain't a bad word. You made it one. The problem is, is that now people use it as almost like a swear word. And that's what's really frustrating is that you, you know, this is a word and a term for what you are, but people are actually using it in a bad term. But yeah, so the term GRT, it's a safe way to say Gypsy, Roma and traveller. It was also a safer way for the outside to be able to speak about us regarding the policing bill because regardless of the difference in the cultures, we're all going to suffer the same fate. But I'm not going to speak for Irish travellers and I'm not going to speak for the

Roma community because we have our similarities, but we have our differences too. But people within the community won't say they're GRT. If I told me daddy was GRT, you'd be like, what the fuck's GRT. Carrying on talking about language, another thing you'd see when reading articles on this topic is that the words Gypsy and Traveller are sometimes misspelled, they're often not capitalised. These may seem like small, perniquity little issues, but what do they tell us about the wider culture within newsrooms? You know, I think it's a, I think it's basic common sense to call, you know, someone who's

Black is with a capital B, you know? If you're a gypsy, it's a capital G, a traveller or a capital C, it's what you are. When it comes to the media writing it and misspelling it, I mean, that's far from the worst that they do. And so, you know, for them to even write it, write that instead of parasite is a good thing, isn't it? Low bars. Well, maybe we should talk about images then instead of words. If we look at the images used in the media, traveller groups have. have often spoken against sensationalist or misrepresentative images being selected to accompany

stories about gypsies and travellers. And it's typically pictures of rubbish, rubbish-strewn campsites, something else that's been noticed as dirty children or unaccompanied children being pictured. Mikey, what do you think of the imagery used by news outlets to cover stories of this kind? Well, there's always stuff behind it. When you've got like 40 people that have desperately move, they've literally just been chucked off of where they bought and spent their living. It's just out of desperation. You find a space and you have to settle down to move on to the next thing because you're trying to make your way to the next place.

But you're not supplied with any sanitary stuff because they don't want you there. You don't even have water. No one's going to put nice images of us there. They're going to find the very worst ones that they can because that's what they do. Like, you go and find the most awful person that you possibly can, take a picture of them and say, this is what that, this is what that community looks like. And this is just what they do. And it's just become so in the norm, you kind of just get desensitized to it. Time now to look at some of the examples of articles that have put Romani people and travellers in the headlines.

Before we address the latest stories, we need to talk about that time's opinion piece written by Matthew Paris last May. The piece argues that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller should not be considered an ethnic minority and that it's time for traveller people to be forced to settle. To quote, there is simply no place for the true nomad in modern Britain. It isn't their fault, it isn't our fault, it isn't the law's fault, but life here involves accepting responsibility for a defined patch of real estate as proprietor or tenant. That is depressing if that's life.

He argues that we should phase out the ethnic minority in quotations, rights of people who are not a race but a doomed mindset, and prioritise with the utmost generosity, the offer of social housing to traveller families. Paris proposes a gradual but relentless squeeze on those who refuse. He sums it up, their lifestyle offers them and their children no future, but their country wants to help them change it. I saw the article and I just think you've got no...

You were in zero position to make these sweeping statements. You are just... You, like, we, like, Romney Gypsies are an ethnic minority, and I'm sorry if you're offended by that, but kiss my ass. I have nothing else to say because you're... talking out of your backside. There's literally nothing in that apart from racism. And for somebody that's helped found Stonewall,

like I'm a gay man as well. Like the hypocrisy of people that will talk about their own persecution and they'll talk about how they were treated. What rotted your brain at that point to make you this kind of person to say such horrible things? But also, I think that actually it's quite, it's quite scary to have an article printed like this because, you know, you said it's racist, it's horrible. Yeah, it is. But it's also, it's giving legitimacy to these far right ideologies such as that we should phase out an ethnic minority.

Like, that is literally fascism. That's literally fascism. And I wonder if it was not about Romani, gypsy, travel. of people, would it have been allowed to be printed? It's terrifying that this pass through editors. So they roll out, the Times rolls out this guy to produce highly controversial, provocative articles about groups that they consider it acceptable to do that for. So the Times knows exactly what they're getting.

This is the guy who wrote the most complained about article in, I think it was 2007, which was an opinion piece about how I think cyclist should be decapitated with, you know, wires laid out across roads because, you know, God forbid that we have climate activists like actually changing anything about the way we live. So the Times knows what they're getting with him, and it is not an educated, informed opinion. It is not anyone with remote lived experience, connection or insight into the issue he has such a radical opinion on. It is just a piece that they know is going to cause so much outrage. it's going to get so many clicks, drive so much traffic to their website, and that's what they're paying for, and that's what they're getting their returns for as well. It's all just one big hate game just to get you loads of cash.

The next set of headlines we want to look at is a slightly less overt form of pushing similar opinions, and those are public nuisance stories, and it's a little bit more of a complicated issue because, of course, these are fact-based, in theory, and not opinion-based, pieces of reporting. But we worked on this episode with the charity's Leedsgate and London Gypsies and Travelers, who recently did an analysis of three years of coverage in 12 of the biggest papers. It's called media that moves, and I actually really encourage people to look up the report because it is just so insightful about what the media gets wrong reporting on so many minority issues. But they found that there is one Gypsy Roma Traveller's story in national papers every three days, a massive over-representation.

And over half of these stories come from the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. So there's a tabloid lien, and most of them are about crime and or unauthorized campsites. I did a little browse through the Daily Mail's websites, and there's a particular concentration of stories like this around the time of Appleby Fair this summer. And that's the biggest traditional gypsy fair in Europe, and it takes place in Cumbria. The majority of the male stories were about litter. This is on Appleby Fair. About litter, a couple of arrests, and a desecrated war memorial, which, if you actually look at the picture of, is basically just a couple of pieces of litter on a concrete plant.

But here's one daily mail headline from that period. It reads, Travelers vow to set up illegal camps on roadsides and in car parks after losing four-year legal battle to live on their own patch of land. If you actually look into the story in full, firstly, the campsite, as pictured, it is immaculate. The families, these are families being evicted, have no other place to go. And there isn't context given to the fact that the council has failed and been found to have failed to provide adequate land spaces. The article repeatedly uses language like residents now fear their town will be plagued by travellers.

And that's not quoting a resident. That is the fact-based reportage language plagued that the journalist is using to tell this story. So, Mikey, what is your response to reporting of this nature? That town would have been fear in that the moment that they complained to the council multiple times and made sure that they got their home snatch from them. You'll get a plot of land up for sale that's passed for permission as a camp site. And then, you know, a gypsy or travel a man of an age that still wants to kind of keep that

lifestyle and have his family move on there and we'll buy that place they'll do up immaculately because that's what they do and then once they'll move on there and people as soon as someone's like they'll start to see oh they've got a transit van oh they you know that girl wears her hair down a lot and suddenly it's like oh did you know that actually the camp that sold up the road is a gypsy camp and then it suddenly turns into this whole thing where you'd think that they had vampires living on the mountain at the top of the, you know, of the village. And suddenly the pitchforks come out and the council gets them taken down. And then we're the enemy because, why?

Because you literally had a home snatched away from us and we don't like that. I'm sorry, we're like, we littered your war memorial. Fuck you. These articles will never stop because hate is their game. Yeah. And once again, almost none of the. these articles about unauthorised encampments mention any wider structural issues about access to land and services and the fact that loads of councils have a lack of authorized

traveller sites. But yeah, there's no context. There's no historical context. There's no context. There's no context about the structural issues. Also, one of the mail articles that we're looking at about Appleby Horse Fair literally has the line in it. I think it's in like one of the third paragraph, while locals claimed that it was travellers who left the litter on the memorial, this is not certain and no proof has been provided. Why are you writing it then? It's literally your job. It's literally your job not to print unfounded claims. What are you doing? There is no effort to present accurate information when it comes to this community. It's so blatant, let alone shocking. This is the thing they've already got their opinion fixed on it, don't they? You know,

don't need context because they'll just be like, well, we know what they're like. Which is why we are really grateful to you, Mikey, to taking the energy to come and educate us because we know it's hard and we know it's depressing, but it does actually make a difference. And everyone listening is here because they want to learn how to be critical when they read the news. Mikey, thank you so much for joining us on Media Storm. Where can people follow you? I have, I'm on Instagram and Twitter and it's that bloody Mikey.

Don't swear on our show. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with a bonus episode from our very first live show. It's about holes in UK democracy, discrimination getting into and inside Westminster. And we'll be back with our next investigation. into mental health and the pros and cons of diagnosis the following Thursday. Follow MediaStorm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear, share this episode with someone and leave us

a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices. You can also follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helena Wadiah and follow the show via at MediaStorm pod. Get in touch and let us know what you'd like us to cover or who you'd like us to speak to. Media Storm, an award-winning podcast from The House of the Guilty Feminist is part of the ACAS creator network. It is produced by Tom Solinsky and Deborah Francis White. The music is by Samfire.