`Travellers problem' due to Christian bigotry

It was daring of Cathleen McDonogh, chaplain to the Travelling community, to write in this newspaper last Friday that prejudice against Travellers was contrary to the Christian faith. To substantiate her point she quoted from the Old Testament Book of Micah: "No mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?"

It was even more daring of Cathleen McDonogh to quote from the Old Testament against prejudice. For the Old Testament is dripping with prejudice against Canaanites, Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites, Girgashites, Amorites and Jebusites, all of whom, the "chosen people", were enjoined to massacre without mercy (see for instance Deuteronomy 20.17 and Joshua 11.20).

It is prejudiced against women (Micah himself is not devoid of deep prejudice against women, deploying the image of a prostitute to convey the notion of evil), against hunchbacks and dwarves (Leviticus 21.20) and against everybody whose religion did not conform to the Judaic orthodoxy.

The New Testament is a lot better. Slavery was fine, according to it. Indeed slaves are urged to obey their masters. Women get the same treatment, especially from St Paul, and other religions are regarded with intolerance.

So there is nothing un-Christian about prejudice against Travellers, or against refugees or even bankers or journalists or unionists. Indeed telling an odd lie to research survey interviewers would seem not to be un-Christian either.

In a survey published last week on attitudes towards Travellers it was claimed that 45 per cent of the population have a favourable disposition towards them. How conceivably could this be the case? The company that did the survey is one of the best in the business, Behaviour and Attitudes, so it is unlikely they made a mistake. Much more likely is that many respondents lied.

There are between 22,000 Travellers in Ireland at present. Of these one-third live in houses, one-third on halting sites and one-third on the side of the road. Of the 7,000 or so living on halting sites about 3,000 live on temporary halting sites, where conditions are almost as bad as for those living on the side of the road.

Therefore about half of all Travellers, about 11,000 in all, men, women and children, live in awful conditions. They have no sanitation facilities, no running water, no showers or baths. They have no place to put their rubbish, no fixture of tenure. They are liable to be moved on by court order at any time or by threatened or actual violence from the settled community.

Their education is sparse (while almost all attend primary school, only about 30 per cent get any secondary education). Their access to health facilities is limited. Apart from that they are treated as pariahs by the community at large. They are refused service in shops and pubs and hotels, not on the grounds that they are individually troublesome but because of prejudice against them as a group. The hurt caused to them as persons several times each day is deep.

I have met quite a few Travellers over the last few years and had I not been introduced to them as Travellers I would have been unaware that they were such. But apparently most people have a laser-beam Traveller-detection system which enables them to identify them at a distance. And the better their laser beams, apparently, the more virulent their prejudice.

Unfavourable attitudes towards Travellers were explored in the Behaviour and Attitudes survey. Nearly 60 per cent thought that they engendered rubbish/ pollution problems, and nearly 40 per cent thought that the presence of Travellers in an area devalued the property there. Other perceived "problems" with Travellers were wandering animals and unsightly scrap.

Most of these perceptions are correct. Travellers forced to live on the side of the road with no sanitation or water, with no waste disposal facilities and with nowhere to ply their trade, create rubbish, pollution and scrap as would any humans in similar conditions. With nowhere secure to be kept, animals tend to wander. And given the prejudice against Travellers generally it is not surprising that properties in areas inhabited by Travellers are devalued.

There is a prevailing view that the "Traveller problem" can be solved only through assimilation, through the incorporation of Travellers into the settled community and, over a few generations, their total assimilation. The view is buttressed by a belief that the Travellers' nomadic lifestyle and culture are unhealthy, unhygienic, violent, oppressive of women especially, uncivilised.

The attitude is inherently illiberal - a refusal to countenance the validity of another culture, another lifestyle. A culture that places higher value on family and communal ties than does the "settled" culture, a way of life that is inherently no more unhealthy, unhygienic, oppressive and violent than society generally. That culture is certainly no less civilised than the culture that seeks to dehumanise them.

For more than a decade now, local authorities have tried to provide properly re-sourced halting sites for Travellers around the country. It has been partly successful in that about 4,000 are accommodated on such sites. But the effort has failed to deal with the problems of the 11,000 who remain either on the side of the road or on temporary halting sites. And it has failed because of the vehement bigotry of local populations, especially in Dublin suburbs, and the refusal of local authorities to confront this bigotry.

The new Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act, 1998, requires local authorities to come up with halting sites by 2002 and when they fail to do so there may be resort to the judicial system which has been none too supportive of Travellers. The renewal of licences for pubs and hotels which have blatantly discriminated against Travellers gives little comfort to the hope that there might ultimately be a judicial resolution of the denial of basic rights to a section of our populace.

But it is almost beyond hope that the political system will resolve this because a system that caves in to taxi-drivers and publicans, let alone the rich, will not take on the massed columns of Christian bigots.

vbrowne@irish-times.ie