Tag: Dale Farm

Planning environmental injustice – my findings

Featured Katharine QuarmbyLeave a comment

I’ve spent much of the last year digging into how the UK planning system seems to embed racism and segregation, placing authorised Traveller sites in unhealthy, isolated and hazardous places, separated from settled communities and in areas that in some cases had been identified by local authorities as dangerous.

I want to thank the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Ideas and Pioneers Fund for part-funding my research. The funding gave me time to uncover the complex and racialised processes that have resulted in Travellers being placed in places others are not expected to live – near sewage, refuse, industry, motorways – and what is it like to live in those places. This work has stemmed out of years of reporting with and about Britain’s nomadic communities, from my first visit to the then largest Traveller site in Europe, Dale Farm, in 2006, for The Economist right through to when 86 families were evicted in 2011, visiting other flash points such as Meriden, in the West Midlands, as well as more celebratory articles on religion and the arts, and culminating in my book, No Place to Call Home, published by OneWorld, in 2013.

This recent work has now been published in different outlets; thank you to all of them for refusing to ignore what should be as a UK housing scandal, but sadly isn’t.

PUBLICATIONS

First up, thank you to openDemocracy for publishing the kick-off piece, exploring the current planning system: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/gypsies-and-travellers-face-segregation-by-planning-in-new-housing-developments/

I then started to map segregation, with the next investigation of site location in England published by Byline Times: https://bylinetimes.com/2021/05/24/systemic-racism-within-a-rigged-system-new-investigation-reveals-how-travellers-sites-are-routinely-placed-in-risky-locations/

Then, more recently, just as the government criminalised trespass in the UK, I published three linked articles. First up, my long-read for Al Jazeera, looking at the environmental issues arising from poor location of sites: https://aljazeera.com/features/2022/6/29/rats-for-neighbours-smells-like-death-life-for-uks-travellers.

I also worked with the community news organisation, Travellers Times, focussing on the current issues with the planning system: https://travellerstimes.org.uk/features/dumped-sewage-how-so-many-traveller-sites-ended-hazardous-and-isolated-places.

I then published an investigation with The National Wales, focussing on the dire state of many sites in Wales. https://www.thenational.wales/news/20249600.scandal-authorised-gypsy-roma-traveller-sites-wales/

To round off this reporting phase, I then worked with openDemocracy to look at the location of and facilities on transit sites – where Travellers now are forced to stay if they are travelling for work or leisure, due to the government criminalising trespass. I wrote: “Two-thirds of the 60 short-term ‘transit’ sites in England – and just over half of the country’s 242 permanent sites – are within 100m of one or more…[environmental] hazards. Yet the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, which came into force in England and Wales at the end of June, forces GRT people into these sites by criminalising trespass and strengthening police powers against unauthorised roadside camps. For Travelling communities, this means that their homes and belongings can be seized, and those convicted fined or jailed.”

In 2023 I followed up with an investigation for The Ferret, looking at both the location of authorised sites in Scotland – and the concerns that residents had about their living conditions.

Thank you to all the residents who talked to me and who were so hospitable and generous with their time, to the local and national organisations who explained issues and supported, including Gate Herts, Leeds Gate, London Gypsies and Travellers, Travelling Ahead and Gypsies and Travellers Wales, as well as national organisations, the Traveller Movement, Friends, Families and Travellers and Moving for Change. Also to academics and experts, including Ryan Powell, Margaret Greenfields, Bill Forrester, Candy Sheridan, Stuart Carruthers, Adrian Jones and Jo Richardson.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Lastly, here’s a summary of my general research findings. If you cite it, please do credit myself and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

Around a quarter of the 300,000 UK Gypsy Traveller community live on Traveller sites. I examined three planning decisions in depth and around 20 for larger context, using desk-based methods. I also analysed local and national media coverage of site planning and submitted Freedom of Information requests (FOIs) to understand more about the planning history of sites, as well as  Environmental Information Requests (EIRs) to uncover environmental complaints and therefore conditions in and around sites in England, Scotland and Wales. I also carried out interviews with academics, policy makers,  representatives of community-led Traveller organisations and site residents. I visited three sites (one in development) and asked residents in two about environmental conditions in and around the sites and what they knew about the planning and general history of the site where they lived. All sites were local authority authorised and managed.

I also sent both FOIs and EIRs to just under 20 sites in England, Scotland and Wales. 

The planning FOI question was as follows, with specific information about when each site was built and/or refurbished, but otherwise the same for each site. 

I am doing a research project looking at the location of Traveller sites through England, Scotland and Wales and one of the sites I have identified is in xxx – postcode and address provided. 

If the scope of the request is too wide, I am happy to work with you.

The [name of site] was opened in x and refurbished in y [where that was the case]. 

I would like to see any debates or correspondence, either external or internal about the establishment of the site and subsequent works, as well as correspondence with local MPs and local councillors at the time the site was built.

I also sent an Environmental Information Regulation request to just over 20 sites in England, Scotland and Wales. Again, I asked a broadly similar question each time, although if I had specific information about a particular issue nearby, such as sewage, flooding or mine shafts, I did ask for additional information. 

I would like to know whether any residents of the sites have raised environmental concerns about the location of the site in which they live. This could include road noise, being sited near sewage works, flooding, vermin. Also, whether they have raised general environmental concerns or health concerns arising from the environment, including accidents or hospitalisation they believe is linked to the location of the site in which they reside.

I had to ask for internal reviews for a small number of FOIs/EIRs in order to obtain responses. 

This study is particularly timely as the Government has now criminalised roadside living and trespass, as part of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. Removing the ability of Travellers to camp roadside turns the spotlight firmly back to the conditions on and availability of official local authority permanent and transit sites.

Main Findings 

Councils – planning and health officials in particular – were well aware that the sites were placed in unpleasant and sometimes hazardous places. Objections – often couched in overtly racist tones – from local residents who did not want Travellers near the houses and neighbourhoods reduced the options available for site placement leaving Traveller communities with little choice but to accept poor locations. Councillors were often concerned with retaining their seat and so bowed to pressure, meaning that sites were placed in areas that would not be considered for bricks and mortar housing. 

  • Traveller sites were placed by council tips and recycling centres; sewage stations; busy road and railway lines; industrial estates; cemeteries and slaughterhouses. 
  • This isn’t just a historic planning legacy, as new sites which have recently been developed show that planning officers are still facing largely the same objections.
  • As a result of such objections, sites that were planned and established long ago, which councils and residents alike agreed are in unpleasant or dangerous places prove difficult to relocate to more suitable locations.
  • Some sites have been slated for closure for years, without a new site having been found, meaning that residents live in a planning limbo, waiting to be moved. 
  • This relocation limbo means that the fabric of the site deteriorates as the council does not want to spend too much money on improving a site that they have – on paper at least – said should be closed. 
  • Due to such delay, this often means that between three to four generations of some families have lived and continue to live on sites that are in dangerous and unpleasant places.
  • My research also found that over time site conditions had worsened as many sites were located in or near industrial areas that had expanded over time. 
  • The study revealed the terrible living conditions on sites that include vermin flies, dust, odour and noise. According to one site resident ‘ The main problem is we are living in an industrial area. And it’s the air quality, the smell, the dust and the sound…the recycling centre is just behind us – and the sound, the noise is a problem…and we also have a big problem with rats’. Another site resident said the conditions were so bad that,  ‘they wouldn’t expect anyone but a Traveller to live here”. 
  • The FOIs and EIRS found the most common complaints from site residents to local authorities were: 
  • Problems with vermin (mainly large rats)
  • Problems with insects (flies, wasps and flying ants)
  • Foul odours from nearby sewage stations/other industrial processes, including slaughterhouses
  • Fly-tipping nearby 
  • Noise from industrial processes – often going into the night or in the early morning
  • Busy traffic
  • Dust in the air from busy traffic/rail/industrial processes
  • Vibration from industrial processes and heavy lorries
  • Site visits and interviews revealed the main difficulties experienced by residents were: 
  • Poor maintenance of buildings onsite
  • Vermin at times over-running sites
  • Mould in utility blocks
  • Accidents due to poor maintenance of hard standing etc, with ‘slabs’ cracking due to perceived vibration from industrial processes
  • Lack of access to green space and play areas

Conclusion

While policy has changed on paper, and rhetoric has to some extent been toned down, the same patterns of segregation by planning exist in many areas. 

This report clearly demonstrates a pattern – past and present – in the planning processes for Gypsy and Traveller sites. 

The unholy trinity of political expediency, a planning system in hock to elected officials and objections by local settled people unites to make it more likely that nomadic community members, often local people themselves, are housed in hazardous or unpleasant places. Sites have been literally dumped by sewage stations, tips, busy roads and railways and this is not an accident. It is a national pattern that demonstrates the racism faced by Britain’s nomadic communities. Nowhere is Cantle’s (2001) idea of ‘parallel lives’ more clear where sites are hidden, isolated and separated from settled communities. The planning system facilitates marginalisation and exclusion over generations. Fifty years after the Caravan Sites Act was passed, sites are still being put in ‘hole and corner’ places, where no other community would be asked to live. 

The research findings suggest a number of changes are needed to ensure that sites are placed in locations that offer the possibility of integration into wider communities and safer environments. This starts with the planning system where racism and local resistance have ensured that sites are on the margins of settled areas and in places where no other groups are expected to live. 

2021 in review

Katharine QuarmbyLeave a comment

The pandemic dominated journalism this year and last, but I wanted to use this last post of 2021 to give a round-up of the work I’ve been lucky enough to carry out this year, what I’m doing next year – and to thank everyone with whom I’ve worked – whether as a collaborator, an editor or as an interviewee.

I’ve written on subjects ranging from disability, to environmental justice, to the history of forced migration, as well as the plight of Afghan nationals, both here and stuck in Afghanistan, in a rapidly deteriorating situation. I’ve worked increasingly on the rights of Gypsy and Traveller communities, in a year in which the right to live a nomadic life has been put under extreme threat by the Johnson administration – and looked at the effect of hostility on community members. I wrote a long-read about the ten year anniversary since the eviction of Dale Farm, considering its lasting legacy.

I was also lucky enough to be asked to work with the veteran disability rights campaigner, Alicia Wood, in co-creating a new website, Dying to Matter, which aims to memorialise the deaths of those dying in institutional care. Our launch article was my long-read about the death of Danny Tozer. It’s a hard read, and I want to thank Danny’s family for being so generous with their time. I hope it’s a fitting tribute to a much loved son. Do visit the website if you’d like to read more, or post a memorial of a loved family member who died in care. We will start to post them as soon as possible.

Friendship and family has been a real comfort this year. Books too, so I’m including a link to some of the books I’ve reviewed. I enjoyed books by Pat Barker, Nigel Farndale and Meg Keneally, among many others.

I also reviewed three books that, in different ways, explored the rich experience of disability and family – by Jan Grue, Jessica Moxham and Melanie Pearson. All recommended.

Talking of books, I spent much of my spare time this year finishing off my first novel, The Low Road, which tells the story of two young women who were convicted of grand larceny and eventually transported to Botany Bay in the 1820’s. It is based on a true story I uncovered in my Norfolk home town – more news on the book next year. This year I also looked at the history of transportation in a long read for Byline Times, asking why it has largely been forgotten in the UK, whilst it is remembered in Australia.

Turning to next year, I’ll be continuing with my work on environmental justice and looking at how health intersects with planning and housing for my project for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. You can read more about that work in my previous post from just a month or so ago.

I’ve also teased out some of the intersections between low traffic neighbourhoods, environmental justice and marginalised communities, in an article for the Times – I hope to look at this area of work again, in my wider work on what environmental injustice looks and feels like.

My dad and me, as a very young adopted child

I’ve also returned to my own roots, thinking through my own family history of trans-racial adoption and asking more urgent questions about this government’s handling of children at risk of harm, abuse and neglect, and interrogating whether the profit motive is a fit one for boosting protection within our care system. I looked in detail at concerns around transparency, independence of the ongoing review of care and accountability in my latest article. In other articles for Byline Times I looked at the recent murders of two small children and asked about what good system change would look like.

Lastly, I want to point up an article I wrote for the Guardian in December 2020, just over a year ago. It looked at the effect of hate crime on Gypsy, Roma, Traveller and other related communities, including the high levels of suicide.

I hope that next year will be a happier, easier one for everybody. This year has been hard. Unfortunately it has convinced me even more that we need investigative journalism more than ever, as we live through dark times, with political mismanagement, to say the least.

Some thoughts on human rights reporting and its discontents

Katharine QuarmbyLeave a comment

This is a longer version of the blog I wrote for the Oxford Human Rights Hub, which you can see here, on the hierarchy of human rights and human rights reporting: 

Is There a Hierarchy of Human Rights and Human Rights Reporting?

This followed on from my talk for Wadham College, Oxford University, on human rights journalism generally, and how it is evolving in the age of the Internet. 

http://www.wadham.ox.ac.uk/news/2014/march/an-uncertain-future-for-human-rights-reporting

Whilst I applaud so much of the human rights reporting that takes place in the world, it paints on a large canvas. We think of it being about combating the death penalty, pointing out human rights violations in combat zones and protecting the rights of asylum seekers – all noble aims that I fully support. But when human rights journalism – and human rights – inconvenience us or affect our property rights, things become a little more uncomfortable. So here’s my thoughts on that – comments please. 

Is there a hierarchy of human rights and human rights reporting?

Looking back over my many years of writing and making films about human rights issues, I’m struck by which stories and groups get the most publicity and which stories are more difficult to fund, write and make. I believe that just as there is a hierarchy of rights, as discussed by human rights scholars for many decades, there is also a hierarchy of human rights reporting.

 

War reporting and the human rights violations that occur in conflict zones, are seen as what one might call ‘classic’ human rights journalism. It’s dangerous work. Last year, the International Federation of Journalists estimated that over 100 journalists and media workers were directly killed because of their work – and around half of that number were engaged in human rights reporting.

 

http://www.ifj.org/en/articles/108-journalists-killed-in-2013-to-test-un-day-to-end-impunity-francais-espanol

 

I was one of the many journalists who travelled to Rwanda after the genocide that killed at least 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. (It’s noteworthy that the killing of the Pygmy people, the Twa, was far less covered.) I was there in 1997, to record the aftermath, with BBC Panorama and the film we made, Valentina’s Story, produced by Mike Robinson and reported by Fergal Keane, is a classic piece of human rights reporting. It drew attention to the genocide through the eyes of one child survivor. In 1999 I went back with Fergal, as a BBC Newsnight producer, to make two more classic human rights films, gathering evidence on rights violations during the genocide that could be forwarded to the Arusha War Crimes Tribunal. This kind of journalism is done today by dedicated correspondents throughout the world – from CNN to Al Jazeera, to the BBC and to PBS, in war and conflict zones as various as the Central Africa Republic, Syria and many areas of the Middle East. It’s crucial that such journalism continues.

 

I have moved on to smaller scale, intimate human rights journalism that I also consider important, but which is far less well funded and at times controversial. I think this is because the very rights of those under fire are seen as questionable and not mainstream – even by those inside the human rights field. This means that the funding for reporting on them, and the importance ascribed to them is far less – what one might call inconvenient and unpopular human rights journalism. I think this is a pity.

 

In 2012 I looked at how human rights organisations wrote and campaigned on disability rights for Amnesty International’s magazine. I found that few saw them as central to their work – in fact, in the drop-down menu of rights on the Amnesty International’s website, disability was not mentioned as a category – unlike childrens’ rights, gay and lesbian rights, women’s rights and refugee rights. Happily, at the annual general meeting last year, it was overwhelmingly decided to remedy this. Disabled peoples’ rights are still seen as segregated from other rights – as if human rights groups mirror some of the divisions between disabled people and non-disabled people in Britain today. During the Leveson Inquiry, similarly, despite a campaign by disabled people and their organisations, none were called to give oral evidence on how they were treated in the media, something I and many others wrote and campaigned about at the time.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/08/leveson-willful-blindness-disabled-people

 

 Leveson did, however, take oral evidence from women’s rights organizations, transgender organizations, and refugee organisations – something I completely agreed with – but I did not agree with the lack of oral evidence from disabled peoples’ organisations. Eventually, some campaigners (I was one of them) were invited to give written evidence, but it is disappointing that this division was so evident in such a key inquiry, when the stereotyping of disabled people by certain sections of the media, especially around benefit cuts, is clearly evidenced to have caused a worsening of public attitudes towards them.

 

http://www.inclusionlondon.co.uk/bad-news-for-disabled-people-report-reveals-extent-of-media-misrepresentation

 

This lack of understanding of the discrimination faced by disabled people meant that it took many years for me and others to get the real and pressing issue of disability hate crime recognized. The key intervention of Lord Ken Macdonald, then the Director of Public Prosecutions, who called disability hate crime a ‘scar on the conscience’ of the criminal justice system was one of the reasons why that change happened – but it was a long time coming, and human rights organisations are still playing catch-up when it comes to integrating disability rights into a wider rights agenda.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7655244.stm

 

Disability rights can be seen as inconvenient to the general public (think of wheelchair spaces on buses, and how they become contested spaces with parents with pushchairs, for example) and this attitude is mirrored in journalism itself.

 

Lastly, we come on to unpopular human rights journalism – and this is where I would place the rights of Britain’s nomads, which come into conflict with another highly cherished set of British rights – property rights. Essentially the rights of Britain’s nomads to enjoy a life free from discrimination, to enjoy the right to family life, the right to education, the right to vote, the right to a decent standard of living and housing come into conflict with British planning law. This was played out in Court 76 of the High Court on October 12, 2011, as I reported for the Economist, when the Dale Farm Irish Traveller residents lost a crucial legal battle against their eviction.  I wrote at the time: “Dale Farm has become a symbol of an increasingly bitter dispute about the rights of Gypsies and Travellers, around a fifth of whom have nowhere legal to live. Basildon council argues that it is simply enforcing planning law, by which all citizens must abide. This was echoed by Mr Justice Ouseley. He said that there must be “public respect for and confidence in” planning law, and that although Basildon council had not identified alternative pitches where the travellers could live, those deemed homeless had been offered “bricks and mortar” accommodation. The decision by Dale Farm residents to decline such housing, due to their “cultural aversion” to it, he said, was their own responsibility. He pointed out that the Travellers were breaching the law by remaining on site.”

 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/blighty/2011/10/dale-farm

 

The eviction of Dale Farm left some 86 families without a secure home, and cost Basildon Council millions of pounds. Many of the families still live roadside, in poor conditions. Basildon was right in legal terms, but who has won? Children are no longer in school, mothers are on anti-depressants, families do not have running water and local tax-payers are footing an enormous bill. There has to be a better way of honouring property rights than creating a situation in which the human rights of these particular Traveller families are so completely ignored, three years on. But such views are unpopular, and the rights of Britain’s nomads are questioned, constantly. Those who seek to defend their rights find it hard to get commissions. This is unpopular human rights journalism – but it is important, all the same.

 

I am grateful for all the journalism I’ve been able to do, over so many years – from Rwanda to Dale Farm, to small-scale human rights stories for Private Eye. That’s our job and it’s worthwhile – at all its levels: popular, unpopular, inconvenient and small scale. But the hierarchy does make me uncomfortable.

 

 

 

 

 

The UN Rapporteur’s mission to the UK, unpopular groups – and a round-up of more reviews

Katharine Quarmby1 Comment

I suppose it’s not that surprising that some Conservative MPs have been spluttering over breakfast as they read that Raquel Rolnik, the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, has been over here in the UK, examining whether we are providing adequate housing to particular groups – among them disabled people, homeless Roma, Gypsies and Travellers.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2411881/UN-officials-sent-check-bedroom-tax-houses-provide-adequate-standard-living.html

While MPs spilt their cornflakes I must admit I had a very pleasant (but frugal!) breakfast with Ms Rolnik and her team, along with Candy Sheridan, the Irish Traveller spokeswoman who rose to prominence challenging the eviction at Dale Farm – but who has spent months since patiently chronicling living conditions roadside there, as well as elsewhere, for her community, as well as that of Romani Gypsies. I was there because of my book, which came out just a month ago, which chronicles the parlous state of housing for the communities. Indeed, of the four families I followed in some depth, over the last few years, only one has secure accommodation. All four have experienced eviction within the last two years. This Wednesday I will attend Ms Rolnik’s press conference – not forgetting, of course, another important story she is covering – the bedroom tax – which is hitting disabled people, and their carers, harder than most. 

And a quick round-up of other news. A very welcome appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, along with afore-mentioned Candy Sheridan, and Romani Janie Codona, to talk about the book. You can listen to the interview with Jenni Murray here: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b038xx76

And big thanks to the great (poet and journalist) Damian le Bas for a typically thoughtful review of my book here, on the Travellers Times website, in which he writes: “Katharine Quarmby has done an excellent job in observing the current situation around Gypsies and Travellers on the ground. I grew up immersed in the actual grass roots politics of the British countryside, in a time when Parish Councils would still think nothing of posting flyers encouraging people to mobilise in order to get the Gypsies out of the village.

In truth, little has changed below the surface: lingering behind the media-savvy talk of the green belt, “inappropriate development” and poorly-chosen sites is the brute fact of communities who struggle to understand each other, and who therefore tend to snap back into a confrontational pose whenever the going gets tough. Quarmby acknowledges that Travellers pulling onto village greens and cricket pitches is bad news for everyone involved, and observations like this should let readers know that rather than being blindly pro-Traveller she, like all of us, genuinely wants to see the situation improve.

My only concern is that the very people who would most benefit from reading this book have already made up their minds, but where there’s the slightest trace of empathy across the garden fence or the barbed wire bounds of the Gypsy site, there always will be the hope of a better future.” I couldn’t have put it better myself – full review here. 

http://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/list.aspx?c=00619ef1-21e2-40aa-8d5e-f7c38586d32f&n=45b62be3-5976-4ce6-ae82-0f4f3606ce99&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Another very perceptive review here, by the wonderful social affairs journalist Fran Abrams here, in the New Statesman, in which she kindly calls the book an “an important book that raises bigger issues about socially isolated and alienated groups everywhere. It underlines a truth – that a sense of “otherness” brings with it a dividend: it binds families and it binds communities.”

Read the full review here: http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/08/road-again

No Place to Call Home – book reviews

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A round-up of reviews here. 

Ian Birrell, who also reviewed my last book, Scapegoat: why we are failing disabled people, posted a very thoughtful review in the Observer. He concluded that it was “An important book by an impressive journalist” although he did feel there was a bit too much reporting from Dale Farm which does form the spine of the narrative. But he did feel it painted a rightfully bleak picture of the bleak social exclusion in which so many Romanies and Travellers lives – although there’s lots of fun to be had as well in the communities! Read the full review here: 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/26/no-place-home-quarmby-review

In the Guardian, Rose George said that the book was “forcefully written” and concludes: “As an exposure of the modern troubles of these unique, tight-knit communities of Travellers, it sets you travelling on the right road.” Interestingly, she felt that I was sentimental at times about the communities. I disagree, of course; I feel that I let their feelings show, as fellow human beings. But it’s a fair review: 

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/16/no-place-call-home-travellers?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

The Times review, by Fay Schlesinger, can only be seen behind the paywall, but to sum up, the reporter concurs that it is difficult to report from both sides of the conflict as one side inevitably feels hard done by. She runs through the history in the book and does a fair summary of the book, concluding that while I attempt to write a dispassionate history of both sides of the conflict, I end up on the side of the Travellers (you must judge that for yourselves of course!). If you have a subscription you can read it here: 

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/non-fiction/article3841137.ece

The review by the Herald, in Scotland, is a very thoughtful run-through of the main issues facing Gypsies, Roma and Travellers today and historically, concluding: “Even in households where anti-Semitism and Islamophobia would be unacceptable, slurs against Gypsies and Travellers are still allowed to propagate, which is why Quarmby’s book deserves to be given due prominence. Without greater under-standing there will be more, and bloodier, Dale Farms will follow.” It rightly, in my mind, states that racism against travelling people is the last accepted form of racism in this country. 

You can read the full review here: 

http://www.heraldscotland.com/books-poetry/reviews/katharine-quarmby-no-place-to-call-home-oneworld.21901309

No Place to Call Home – publication

Katharine QuarmbyLeave a comment

No Place to Call Home will be published next Thursday – after pretty much 18 months work on it, and not much else, and some years before that, of course, spending time with the Romani Gypsy and Traveller communities (and, in later times, getting to know some of the newly arrived Roma as well). 

The Observer newspaper ran an extract from one of the chapters, about one of the most difficult conflicts around Gypsies and the settled community I have covered, in the Midlands last Sunday. You can read it here: 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/04/gypsies-belong-here-meriden-travellers

That particular conflict continues, with an ongoing inquiry, which the Communities Secretary himself has called in as a decision on which he will personally decide. 

Looking back over the last seven years, since I first visited a Traveller site, what have I learnt? I’ve met wonderful, friendly and warm-hearted people both from the Gypsy and Traveller communities and the settled community, and I’ve witnessed many officials, council workers, some politicians, campaigners and police officers trying to make things better for all concerned. I’ve also witnessed racism, hostility, and a wish to ratchet up conflict, rather than reach a solution that benefits everybody. 

I’d like to see a conflict resolution model applied to the vexed issue of accommodation for the communities, and for people without a home to be treated with more compassion. As one young disabled, homeless Gypsy told me recently, “We would die rather than move onto a cricket pitch, most of us would. You would have to be really desperate to do something like that.” We need better solutions than that to a homelessness problem that is benefitting nobody – I think everyone can at least agree on that. So maybe that’s the place to start from – because everyone, in the end, wants a place they can call home.