Government Hypocrisy on the Roma

 The Traveller Movement, which represents the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, said it had been “surprised” by the government’s promises to better protect the community against hate speech following the backlash to Jimmy Carr’s joke.

It accused the government of hypocrisy after ministers condemned a Holocaust joke by Jimmy Carr while pushing through a raft of legislation hostile to their way of life.

Greg Sproston, policy and campaigns manager for the Traveller Movement, said the government was currently trying to pass three bills – on policing, nationality and borders and elections – all of which will “have disproportionately negative impacts” on the GRT community. He added that a national strategy to reduce inequality in the community announced over two years ago “still has not materialised”.

“If the government is serious about protecting and supporting these communities, they would scrap this discriminatory legislation and bring forward the strategy without delay,” he said.

The policing bill is especially controversial within the GRT community as it would give police powers to move travellers’ camps if anyone complained, regardless of whether a crime had been committed.

A recent survey by University of Birmingham researchers found that 44% of people in the UK had negative attitudes towards GRT people, making them the “least liked group”, nearly double the level for Muslims, who were the second group to receive the most prejudice.

Research by the Traveller Movement in 2017 found that 91% of GRT people had experienced discrimination, which it described as “the last acceptable form of racism”. These attitudes have a profound impact on areas such as employment and education, where GRT people underperform, and the criminal justice system, where they are over-represented.

Rosa Cisneros, a member of the GRT community who researches Romani culture at Coventry University, said she was “sad but not surprised” by Carr’s joke.

“This situation has highlighted that anti-Gypsyism and Romaphobia still exists today. For me, it isn’t about censoring Jimmy Carr or being offended or me being part of the ‘woke’ brigade that I want to just cancel a show or infringe on someone’s freedom of speech and his rights. No, I am utterly horrified that we live in a space where such harmful and hateful speech is accepted and seen as a joke.”

Roma accuse government of hypocrisy over Jimmy Carr joke | Jimmy Carr | The Guardian