Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T09:13:17.453Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The ‘Final Solution’: Reformism, Ethnicity Denial and the Politics of Anti-Travellerism in Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2008

Robbie McVeigh*
Affiliation:

Abstract

The article identifies a resurgence of anti-Travellerism in post-Good Friday Agreement, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland – most obviously signalled by the ongoing Irish Government policy of ‘ethnicity denial’. It provides a comparative analysis of the different trajectories of state reformism with regard to Travellers in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland - from the promised ‘final solution’ to the ‘Traveller problem’ of the Commission on Itinerancy in 1963 through the high water mark of the 1995 Task Force Report. It finds a disturbing recrudescence of assimilationist, sedentarist and racist ideas and practices in contemporary state policies towards Travellers.

Type
Themed Section Care or Control? Gypsies, Travellers and the State
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agamben, Giorgio 1995, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
BBC News (2003), ‘Boys guilty of killing “Gypsy”‘, Friday, 28 November 2003.Google Scholar
BBC News (2005), ‘Traveller Hurt in Racist Attack’, Wednesday, 24 August 2005.Google Scholar
Equality Commission of Northern Ireland (2007), Section 75: Keeping it Effective, Belfast: ECNI.Google Scholar
Central Community Relations Unit 1992, Race Relations in Northern Ireland, Belfast: CCRU.Google Scholar
Committee to Monitor and Co-ordinate the Implementation of the Recommendations of the Task Force on the Traveller Community 2000, First Progress Report, Dublin: Department of Justice.Google Scholar
Committee to Monitor and Co-ordinate the Implementation of the Recommendations of the Task Force on the Traveller Community (2005), Second Progress Report, Dublin: Department of Justice.Google Scholar
Delaney, Paul 2001, ‘Representations of Travellers in the 1880s and 1900s’, Irish Studies Review, 9, 1, 5368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform 2001, Integration: A Two Way Process, Dublin: DJELR.Google Scholar
Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform 2005, Planning For Diversity: The National Action Plan Against Racism 2005 – 2008, Dublin: DJELR.Google Scholar
Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform 2006, Report of the High Level Group on Traveller Issues, Dublin: Department of Justice.Google Scholar
Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform 2007, ‘Minister Fahey announces New National Traveller Monitoring and Advisory Committee’, press release 5 April 2007.Google Scholar
Department of Social Development (DSD) (2004), ‘Equality impact assessment following consultation: legislation to control unauthorised encampments’, www.dsdni.gov.uk/index/publications/equality.htmGoogle Scholar
Department of Social Welfare 1963, Report of the Commission on Itinerancy, Dublin: Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Donahue, , McVeigh, Mark, Robbie, and Maureen, Ward (2006), ‘Misli, Crush, Misli: Travellers and Nomadism’, a research report for the Irish Traveller Movement and Traveller Movement (Northern Ireland), ITM, Dublin.Google Scholar
Fay, Ronnie (2007), ‘The Traveller community – reflections and challenges in public service delivery’, Spectrum, 14.Google Scholar
Hancock, Ian 2001, ‘Downplaying the Porrajmos: the trend to minimize the Romani Holocaust’, Journal of Genocide Research, 3, 1, 7985.Google Scholar
Irish Traveller Movement (2005), www.itmtrav.comGoogle Scholar
Lentin, Ronit and McVeigh, Robbie (2006), After Optimism? Racism and Globalisation in 21st Century Ireland, Dublin: MetroEireann.Google Scholar
MacLaughlin, Jim 1995, Travellers and Ireland: Whose Country, Whose History? Cork: Cork University Press.Google Scholar
McVeigh, Robbie and Rolston, Bill (2007), ‘From Good Friday to good relations: sectarianism, racism and the Northern Ireland state’, Race and Class, 48, 4, 123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McVeigh, Robbie 1992a, ‘The Specificity of Irish Racism.’ Race and Class, 33, 4.Google Scholar
McVeigh, Robbie 1992b, Racism and Travelling People in Northern Ireland, 17th Report of the Standing Advisory Commission for Human Rights, Belfast: HMSO.Google Scholar
McVeigh, Robbie 1996, The Racialisation of Irishness, Belfast: Centre for Research and Documentation.Google Scholar
McVeigh, Robbie 1997a, ‘Theorising sedentarism: the roots of anti-nomadism’, in Acton, Thomas (ed.), Gypsy Politics and Traveller Identity, Hertfordshire: University of Hertfordshire Press.Google Scholar
McVeigh, Robbie 1997b, ‘Irish Travellers and the logic of genocide’, in Peillon, Michel and Fahy, Tony (eds), Encounters with Modern Ireland, Dublin: IPA.Google Scholar
McVeigh, Robbie (2007), ‘Ethnicity denial and racism: the case of the Irish Government against Travellers’, Translocations, 2.Google Scholar
Ministry of Home Affairs 1948, ‘Report of Committee on gypsies and like itinerants’.Google Scholar
Ministry of Home Affairs 1955, ‘Report on “Itinerant Gypsies”’.Google Scholar
ní Shuinéar, Sinéad 1998, ‘“Solving itinerancy” – thirty-five years of Irish Government Commissions’, Paper presented at the ‘New Directions in Romani Studies’ Conference, Greenwich, 11 June 1998.Google Scholar
Ní Shuinéar, Sinéad (2002), ‘Othering the Irish (Traveller)’, in Lentin, Ronit and McVeigh, Robbie (eds), Racism and Antiracism in Ireland, Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications.Google Scholar
Noonan, Paul 1998, ‘Pathologisation and resistance: travellers, nomadism and the state’, in Hainsworth, Paul (ed.), Divided Society: Ethnic Minorities and Racism in Northern Ireland, London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
O'Connell, Rory (2007), ‘When banning Travellers from a hotel is not direct racial discrimination – the Court of Appeal version’, Just News, March 2007.Google Scholar
OFMDFM 2000, Final Report of the PSI Working Group on Travellers, Belfast: OFMDFM.Google Scholar
OFMDFM 2003, A Response to the PSI Working Group on Travellers, Belfast: OFMDFM.Google Scholar
OFMDFM 2005a, A Race Equality Strategy for Northern Ireland: A Racial Equality Strategy for Northern Ireland, Belfast: OFMDFM.Google Scholar
OFMDFM 2005b, A Shared Future – Policy and Strategic Framework for Good Relations in Northern Ireland, Belfast: OFMDFM.Google Scholar
Paris, C., Maginn, P. and Gray, P. 1995, Review of Policies affecting Travellers, Belfast: Department of the Environment.Google Scholar
RTÉ News 2002, ‘Citizen Traveller campaign to be wound up’, 4 November, www.rte.ie/news/2002/1104/travellers.htmlGoogle Scholar
RTÉ News 2006, ‘Nally found not guilty of manslaughter’, 14 December, www.rte.ie/news/2006/1214/nallyp.htmlGoogle Scholar
Synon, Mary Ellen 1996, ‘Time to get tough on tinker terror “culture”’, The Sunday Independent, 28 January.Google Scholar
Task Force 1995, Report of the Task Force on the Travelling Community, Dublin: Government Publication Office.Google Scholar