No, Criminals Do Not Give *ME or my Family* a Bad Name.

Words are powerful things. Some of us live by this statement, some people aren’t even aware of how powerful their words can be.  

Words can make us feel good, make us smile, make us laugh and also inspire us to do great things. However, we also know that they can hurt us, make us sad, make us cry and cause damage that can’t be undone.

There is one statement that I feel is doing something even worse than the above.

For those who don’t know much about me, I work as an advocate for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers, and I’ve come across a lot of people who aren’t afraid to let me know about their racist views about us.

(Warning – I’ve typed ‘horse’ loads here, soz).

In North Wales this week, I watched on in horror as a woman from South Wales made it a personal crusade to harass and intimidate Traveller families who live in North Wales in order to find and bully a Traveller man to sell her a horse that belonged to him. There was a video that went viral that showed the animal distressed and people were concerned for its health, rightfully so. It was later updated that the RSPCA and North Wales Police were happy with the animal’s welfare and were not removing the animal from the owner. (PSA – To make it clear, if anybody mistreats an animal and the authorities take it away, I am ALL FOR IT), however, it also isn’t acceptable at all to assemble a vigilante group to racially profile people from a distinctive ethnicity, to incite them to go into a site in a mob-style and then stalk their sites with the sole purpose to TAKE A FUCKING HORSE FROM THEM.

So here is where this gets pretty nasty. The ringleader (still rallying people from her self-funded horse sanctuary in South Wales) called on as many people as she could to drive around and search for this horse, leading people on a racially-profiled witch-hunt looking for sites in the area. Her videos are getting thousands of viewers, where she gave the names and details owners, (so much for data protection laws, eh?), incorrect information leading her group to other sites. These videos had thousands of shares, so you can imagine the kinds of things that were said on social media, (all of which have been sent to the police). Throughout Friday night, fifty people who met up and ‘protested’ in a retail car park at 11pm as this is where the Travellers had been parked up, (rather than the RSPCA themselves) they dispersed and drove around until 4am looking for sites as far as Prestatyn, (about 30 minutes drive from where they started).

Whilst down there, I spoke with police and a group of young guys who usually chill in that car park with their souped-up cars, but as one of them had a van, a number of these protesters said that they were a group of Gypsies, ran up to the van to open the doors as they believed that they heard a pony in the back of it. They all then posted pictures in a social media message group of each site that they were parked up by and not one person mentioned concerns about the safety of the innocent families and children who were going about their business and had no idea what was happening in the area.

A local Traveller told me they were concerned for their families safety and worried these ‘protestors’ would be turning up at their door in the middle of the night.

Currently, members of the group have now accused my little brother of having horse just because he’s been ‘identified’ as GRT in the Flintshire area. Seriously.

Individuals tried to post in the group to challenge the racism and encourage the group to question their actions. These posts weren’t approved. Anyone that commented on posts challenging racism or their actions were removed from the group and deleted whilst comments such as “I have a gun”, “Travellers should be burnt”, they should be “hung” all remained (these are just a very small amount of the disturbing comments).

Earlier, I mentioned about one statement that is starting to make me question its real use: “This person/these people are giving all Gypsies and Travellers a bad name”

The more I think about whenever I have heard of this line being used, (aside from it being used in a negative tone, in 100% of the time… obviously), the angrier I get when I start to pick it apart and look at the hypocrisy behind it.

There are estimated 300,000 GRT people in the UK, 1,443 of that number are in prison. This leaves over 83,000 non-GRT people in prison the UK, (April 2019). To make the number even smaller, the percentage of the UK GRT community in prison (as of Oct, 2018) is 0.481%. Yet why, in 2019 are people stating that people who cause anti-social incidents give the whole community a bad name. Has this ever been said about the majority ethnicity? I mean, by the same logic, do I worry that all English people are bad because of the actions of Jimmy Saville, Harold Shipman, Gary Glitter? Do the actions of bad give anybody else a bad name, or is that just us?

I believe that statement is to justify the oppressive mentality that each person who uses that sentence has, and are happy to continue using in order to keep the GRT community oppressed. I looked at the group in question and there a many GRT people having to justify themselves because or reading that line “all Travellers”, or “bad people are giving you and your family a bad name”.

The caption above is an example of a story shared today (21/4) and it leaves me with a very angry taste in my mouth. Why should I, or any good Traveller in Cardiff be ashamed? Are good people in Wales tainted because of the disgusting things Ian Watkins did, (don’t Google it if you don’t know, it is vile). Of course not! That wouldn’t be normal. Why do people lose all common sense why talking about GRT communities? The only people who should be ashamed are the individuals and it happens by proxy, (unfortunately), their immediate family. Not some random Traveller hundreds of miles away. Do not do the stupid thing and assume we know every Traveller or Gypsy in the country and therefore are accountable for the actions of somebody that we don’t know, because we are not.

I’m asking all people to stop allowing non-GRT to throw their issues with people that we don’t know onto us. Challenge those people who tell you that somebody, 300 miles away, that you don’t know is giving you a bad name. They are wrong and we have to end that mentality. The only person who should have a bad name, is the individual in question. Nobody else. I mean, I’m pretty sure nobody from Cambridgeshire has a bad name because of Oliver Cromwell… do they?

Words are a very powerful thing, we need to use ours to be even regarded as humans to non-GRT people, not that I care for what people think, I care for the safety of GRT people in the future.

#GypsyLivesMatter