Workers' Liberty

Feminists Against Borders will hold their first meeting, “Moving gender”, as part of the Gatwick No Borders Camp, Friday 21 September, 10am-1pm, Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Road, Croydon.

According to Understanding Prejudice, a major new study commissioned by the gay rights group Stonewall prejudice is rife in Britain. Two-thirds of white people in Britain admit to some prejudice, even if only casual or unintentional, against one or another or against several minority groups.

Roma and travellers across Europe mark 2 August as a day to recall the persecution of gypsies in Europe under the Nazis. On the night of August 2 and 3, l944, several thousand were massacred in the gypsy camp at Auschwitz.

By Cathy Nugent

During 2000, hysterical media debate about asylum seekers targetted gypsies, specifically Roma people from eastern Europe.

By Sally Alexander

“An unprecedented mass eviction of a whole community”: that’s how a Labour councillor described the “direct action” operation voted through by Basildon’s Tory council on 14 July.

The Tories have used the election campaign to pour scorn and hatred on gypsies and travellers. This has spurred the Sun newspaper into an explicitly racist "Stamp on the Camps" campaign against travellers, and there has been an increase in physical attacks on travellers.

By Rosalind Robson

For some months now the Tories and Labour have been trying to win votes by competing to see who can be the most “hardline” against asylum seekeers. More recently the Tories have added gypsies and travellers to their list of “undesirables”.

Around 300 travellers (mostly Roma gypsies) marched through London's West End on 9 April in protest at the mounting number of evictions from traveller sites. The march followed a church service remembering the victims of the porrajmos (the Holocaust), and of more recent ethnic cleansings and pogroms across Europe.

Earlier this month Michael Howard unveiled some spectacularly crude propaganda against travellers, alleging that Roma and other travelling people are given preferential treatment over the settled community when it comes to planning permission. This is because of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into

Travellers will march through central London on Saturday 9 April, calling for an end to evictions. Please join us by coming to St James’s Church, Piccadilly, at 12 noon for the Commemoration of Roma victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The following article by Jim Gibney is taken from Sinn Fein’s An Phoblacht/Republican News from 26 August. We don’t agree with very much of Sinn Fein’s politics, but on this issue — the rights of travellers — they have a good record.

By Sam Ruby

New Labour, after much lobbying, and despite the recommendations of a Commons Select Committee, has refused to introduce legislation compelling local councils to provide official sites for gypsies and travellers.