In 2006 Jon Blunkell, the Travellers' Liaison Officer at Norfolk County Council, received an email. 'Why do you pander to these pikey rats,' ranted the sender, 'when what is actually needed is for them to be exterminated like the vermin they are; you are a disgrace to every decent human in this land.'
It comes as a shock to be faced with such vehemently neo-Nazi sentiment, exposed in all its ugliness, far removed from the political rhetoric that often dilutes it. Britain has become so accepting of other cultures – relatively speaking, at least – that it is sometimes easy to forget that such attitudes are still prevalent. But discrimination against Gypsies and Travellers has been a problem for centuries, and it shows no sign of abating now.
Compared to many other European countries, Britain's record is fairly clean. But the belief that Gypsies and Travellers are all deviant, tax-evading layabouts with scant regard for the law is worryingly widespread for a country that prides itself on its multi-ethnicity.
'I don't particularly like them,' says Derek*, 'because of the mess they normally leave in the areas they inhabit, the fact they don't pay tax, they camp illegally ... why should any normal person have to pay rates … when they can just jump on a piece of land?'
What he fails to point out – and indeed, may well not be aware of – is that many Gypsies and Travellers live on clean, tidy, legal caravan sites, working as hard and paying as much in taxes as their house-dwelling neighbours. 26-year old Dina lives on a small Traveller site near Norwich. It is neat and well-kept; the interior of her caravan is spotless. It annoys her, she says, that a minority of anti-social Gypsies and Travellers give law-abiding people like herself and her family a bad name.
'We all get judged for what one set of Travellers do. It's hard. You're never going to get out of that, I don't think.
'I pay my taxes,' she continues. 'Not all Travellers are signing on. Half of us are working ... I've worked since I was 16, I've never been without a job.'
But discrimination because of her ethnicity is something Dina must put up with on a regular basis.
'If we want to go out for a night and we phone for a taxi, they say they're fully booked. They won't come down here because it's a Traveller site,' she says. Her husband was recently called a 'stinky rotten pikey' by a colleague, while her own employer claims that 'all you Gypsies are the same' and threatens to set 'her Gypsy girls' on anyone who causes her trouble.
The media does nothing to temper this kind of prejudice. Much of the coverage given to Gypsies and Travellers serves only to exacerbate existing tensions and create further stigma around an already stigmatised people. In a society obsessed with political correctness, it barely seems credible that an entire ethnic group is still hounded by the press with no fear of retribution. But headline archives reveal prejudices that simply would not be tolerated if they were targeting any other group.
'Gypsies ruined our kids' school,' claims one; 'Gypsies invade park and ride,' says another. It would be unthinkable to write 'Muslims ruined our kids' school' or 'Gays invade park and ride'. The media tries desperately to avoid making comments that could be construed as offensive to minorities, so why do libellous claims about Gypsies and Travellers appear so frequently in the right-wing press?
Part of the reason, says Blunkell, is that many people are unaware that Travellers are a recognised ethnic minority, and therefore do not realise that hostility towards them counts as racism. Another important factor, he says, is that no one is fighting their case – travelling communities are not organised to make legal defences themselves, while low levels of education mean many Gypsies and Travellers aren't aware of exactly what is said about them, and wouldn't know how to go about making a complaint if they did.
'They are by far the least educated group in society,' says Blunkell. 'A lot of our adult Gypsies are illiterate, so they don't know what is being written about them.'
Worryingly, discrimination against Gypsies and Travellers is often institutional. In 2005 the deputy leader of Dartford Borough Council spoke of his support for The Sun's aptly-named 'Stamp On The Camps' campaign, despite it having been described by one Traveller group as 'misleading, discriminatory and likely to incite racial hatred'. Many local authorities, Blunkell says, do all they can to assimilate groups of Gypsies and Travellers, forcing them into 'bricks and mortar' housing rather than providing them with legal caravan sites.
Things do not look likely to improve under the new government. While local authorities under Labour were required to provide a specific number of legal Traveller sites, the Lib-Con coalition has given district councils back the power to decide how many pitches are necessary, and Blunkell is certain that some of them will refuse to provide any sites at all – particularly since funding for doing so has been cut by 100%.
'I don't know any other sector that's been hit that hard,' he says.
But more legal sites are exactly what is needed in order to narrow the divide between Travellers and non-Travellers. Without them, Travellers are forced to set up illegal camps on private land, where their presence is usually unwanted and often prompts horror stories to be published in the local and national news. If more were able to integrate into their communities and live peacefully alongside their neighbours, the deep-set, age-old prejudice might eventually start to wane. But while the current situation continues, Gypsies and Travellers look set to face discrimination for many years yet.
*Not his real name.
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