Post by Admin on Jul 5, 2021 7:41:45 GMT
Travellers organise resistance to Tory police bill
by Jake Bowers, Romani Journalist
socialistworker.co.uk/art/52045/Travellers+organise+resistance+to+Tory+police+bill
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller campaigners from across Britain are uniting in a grassroots-led campaign.
They are resisting the racist provisions in Home Secretary Priti Patel’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
We are set to gather in Parliament Square, central London, on Wednesday of this week, to launch a Summer of Discontent against the bill. This bill intends to completely outlaw nomadic Gypsy and Traveller culture.
The launch of the Drive 2 Survive campaign comes as the bill continues its way through parliament. Its main aim is scrapping Part Four of the bill.
Much has been made of the bill’s intention to restrict the right of protest. But much less has been made of the fact that it seeks to culturally cleanse nomadic Gypsy, Roma and Traveller culture from the British landscape.
Part Four of the bill is the single biggest threat to the traditional way of life of Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers in our lifetime.
If passed it will entirely eradicate nomadic life in Britain and give police the power to seize Gypsy and Traveller homes.
Police will also be able to fine Gypsies and Travellers up to £2,500. And police can imprison those needing to follow a nomadic way of life because of a lack of safe legal stopping places.
In Parliament Square campaigners were to outline how a Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Summer of Discontent will roll from Westminster to Appleby Fair in August—the world’s largest Gypsy horse fair—in Cumbria.
Then it will roll to the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester in October 2021.
We have unified to fight the bill, but we desperately need help to stop it.
Chris McDonagh is an Irish Traveller activist. He says, “As nomadic people that have roamed the lands we have lived on for our whole recorded history, to suddenly be told our way of life has no place in society is totally wrong and hurtful.
“We have been part of society for generations and for somebody to decide we no longer fit is absolutely disgraceful.
“Prejudiced opinions should not have the power to destroy entire ethnic minorities. We all live in a country that is supposedly proud of its acceptance and equality for all ethnicities and minorities, but we now see this is a lie.
“We are people, and we deserve to live our lives as we always have. We deserve to exist.”
The draconian powers within the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 already lock nomadic Gypsies and Travellers into a cycle of trespass and eviction.
These powers do not need strengthening, but repealing.
by Jake Bowers, Romani Journalist
socialistworker.co.uk/art/52045/Travellers+organise+resistance+to+Tory+police+bill
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller campaigners from across Britain are uniting in a grassroots-led campaign.
They are resisting the racist provisions in Home Secretary Priti Patel’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
We are set to gather in Parliament Square, central London, on Wednesday of this week, to launch a Summer of Discontent against the bill. This bill intends to completely outlaw nomadic Gypsy and Traveller culture.
The launch of the Drive 2 Survive campaign comes as the bill continues its way through parliament. Its main aim is scrapping Part Four of the bill.
Much has been made of the bill’s intention to restrict the right of protest. But much less has been made of the fact that it seeks to culturally cleanse nomadic Gypsy, Roma and Traveller culture from the British landscape.
Part Four of the bill is the single biggest threat to the traditional way of life of Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers in our lifetime.
If passed it will entirely eradicate nomadic life in Britain and give police the power to seize Gypsy and Traveller homes.
Police will also be able to fine Gypsies and Travellers up to £2,500. And police can imprison those needing to follow a nomadic way of life because of a lack of safe legal stopping places.
In Parliament Square campaigners were to outline how a Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Summer of Discontent will roll from Westminster to Appleby Fair in August—the world’s largest Gypsy horse fair—in Cumbria.
Then it will roll to the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester in October 2021.
We have unified to fight the bill, but we desperately need help to stop it.
Chris McDonagh is an Irish Traveller activist. He says, “As nomadic people that have roamed the lands we have lived on for our whole recorded history, to suddenly be told our way of life has no place in society is totally wrong and hurtful.
“We have been part of society for generations and for somebody to decide we no longer fit is absolutely disgraceful.
“Prejudiced opinions should not have the power to destroy entire ethnic minorities. We all live in a country that is supposedly proud of its acceptance and equality for all ethnicities and minorities, but we now see this is a lie.
“We are people, and we deserve to live our lives as we always have. We deserve to exist.”
The draconian powers within the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 already lock nomadic Gypsies and Travellers into a cycle of trespass and eviction.
These powers do not need strengthening, but repealing.