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Misli, Crush, Misli: Irish Travellers and Nomadism

MISLI, CRUSH, MISLI1

IRISH TRAVELLERS AND NOMADISM

Mark Donahue

Robbie McVeigh

Maureen Ward

A research report for the Irish Traveller Movement and Traveller Movement (Northern Ireland)

“You’ve got to move fast to keep up with the times
For these days a man cannot dander
There's a bylaw to say you must be on your way
And another to say you can't wander”

Ewan MacColl – ‘Thirty Foot Trailer’

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Nomadism in international comparative context

3. Nomadism in Ireland – history, ethnicity and the law

4. Contemporary nomadism in Ireland

5. Anti-nomadism: racism and sedentarism

6. Nomads rights as human rights

7. Servicing Nomadism in Ireland

8. Conclusions

9. Recommendations

10. Bibliography

Preface

On 10th April 2002, the President of Ireland signed into law the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill (No 2), 2001. She convened a meeting of the Council of State to discuss the proposed legislation following representations from Traveller organizations but decided not to refer the matter to the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality. Section 24 of the Act makes trespass on land a criminal offence for the first time. The Irish Government argued that the section is intended to deal with ‘large-scale unauthorised Traveller encampments by traders, Travellers from abroad and others not indigenous to an area and Travellers who have other homes’ (Logue 2002). Traveller organizations, however, vociferously criticized the new law on the basis that it allows local authorities to evict Travellers indiscriminately without having to fulfill their responsibilities to provide halting sites or other suitable accommodation.

This kind of negative government intervention has been mirrored in the north of Ireland. In September 2003, the Department of Social Development published a consultation document Proposed Control of Unauthorized Encampments. While the document addresses other issues in passing, the key focus of the document is Travellers and Traveller sites. In conducting its own equality impact assessment of the proposed legislation, the DSD concluded, ‘that the proposal to introduce legislation to control unauthorised encampments as set out above is likely to have an adverse impact on Irish Travellers’ (our emphasis). Despite this straightforward assessment of the negative impact of the proposed measures, the DSD proceeds to support the introduction of the legislation.

This new proposal was only the latest intervention in a long tradition of governments, in Ireland and elsewhere, attempting to curtail Traveller nomadism. Over the years governments around the world have tried to put a stop to Travellers travelling in many different ways - from genocide to transportation and from enslavement to branding.2 In this sense, anti-nomadism is a centuries old European tradition.3

Almost every human right – cultural, social, political and economic – has been disregarded in this misplaced effort to get rid of Travellers and other nomadic peoples around the world. In spite of - and sometimes because of – all this negative activity, many peoples have continued to pursue a nomadic way of life. In Ireland, Irish Traveller nomadism continues to survive despite a concerted effort over the past forty years by government in Ireland, north and south of the border, to encourage Travellers to ‘settle’ and ‘assimilate’. This report argues that government in Ireland should now explicitly repudiate this assimilationist policy and do its best to ensure that the tradition of Traveller nomadism is respected and facilitated. This report seeks to make a contribution in this context. Traveller nomadism is a part of Irish identity, north and south, which should be cherished rather than eradicated. There is no reason why nomadic people and sedentary people cannot live and work happily side by side in Ireland or anywhere else. This outcome, however, must be premised on an acceptance of the legitimacy and equality of nomadism as a way of life. Moreover, Traveller nomadism must be serviced by government in order to give practical effect to the principle of the equality of nomadism.

Chapter One:

Introduction

I've done my life travelling and a happier time I never had.  It was the greatest in the world.  You had everything - comfort, life and pleasure, and something to always do.  You could get up in the morning in the tent and hear the blackbird and thrush in the trees whistling.  The good days are gone, a mhic - at that time on the roads you were safe.  There was no blackguards then.  I'm bet and not able to travel now.  If I was younger I wouldn't stop three minutes in this house.…  The young people will be ashamed of being a Traveller in the future. However, no matter what you put on them - if it was silk, you'd still know them.  It's hard to burn wildness out of a wild bird's nose - you'll tame them for a while, but they'll fly away again.

Paddy McDonnell. 

This research is the result of a collaboration between the Irish Traveller Movement and the Traveller Movement (NI). The aims of the research were defined in the research proposal as follows:

The research will take place countrywide in a number of identified areas in cooperation with local Traveller projects and will examine:

  1. the historical practice of nomadism in Ireland and the development of state responses to nomadism,
  2. the patterns and extent of the contemporary practice of nomadism by the Irish Traveller community,
  3. how the accommodation, education, heath, and economic needs of Travellers as a nomadic group can be addressed,4
  4. the current aspirations of Travellers regarding the practice of nomadism.

Nomadism has been seen as the defining aspect of Irish Traveller identity. Traveller activist, Michael McDonagh, writes:

When Travellers speak of travelling, we mean something different from what country people [settled people] usually understand by it…. Country people travel to get from A to B. But for Travellers, the physical fact of moving is just one aspect of a nomadic mind-set that permeates every aspect of our lives. Nomadism entails a way of looking at the world, a different way of perceiving things, a different attitude to accommodation, to work and to life in general. (1994: 95)

Statutory responses to Irish Traveller issues have also begun to accept the centrality of nomadism. For example, the 1995 Task Force Report argued:

Traveller nomadism, as with its counterparts across Europe, takes a range of forms. It includes those who are constantly on the move, those who move out from a fixed base for a part of any year, and those who are sedentary fro many years and then move on. Traveller Nomadism contributes to the social organization of the community as it provides for contact and communication within a dispersed community. It plays an important economic role in providing Travellers with access to markets broad enough to make marginal economic activities viable. It also plays a psychological role….’ (1995: 72)

Our research addresses the question of what this Irish Traveller nomadism means in the 21st century. It engages with the argument that nomadism is something that is of little importance to Travellers. Traveller nomadism is sometimes regarded as an invention of settled people - reflecting a romantic projection of settled people working with Travellers. The research draws on the unique expertise of national and local Traveller support organizations across Ireland to achieve an accurate sense of what is happening on the ground across the country.

There are two defining features of discussions of Irish Traveller nomadism. The first is that nomadism is assumed to be ‘dying out’. The second is that it refuses, in fact, to ‘die out’. An assumption about the ‘end’ of Traveller nomadism is shared by most settled people and many Travellers. Thus, whether people are supportive of nomadism or hostile to it, whether they see its demise as a good thing or a bad thing, whether they regard it a the loss of a great tradition or the beginning of a possibility for Traveller ‘civilisation’, they are all certain that nomadism is on it way out. It is, in colloquial terms, ‘the end of the road’. This received wisdom runs through Irish popular culture - Pecker Dunne famously sings that he is, ‘the last of the Travellin’ people’; a host of settled musicians have insisted that the ‘days of the Traveller are numbered’. Over forty years ago in his seminal radio ballad ‘Thirty Foot Trailer’ Ewan MacColl sang:

The auld ways are changin ye cannae deny
The day o the traiveller's over
There's naewhaur tae gang an there's naewhaur tae bide
Sae farewell tae the life o the rover

Against all this received wisdom however, is the reality that nomadism refuses to ‘die out’. Traveller nomadism remains a defining feature of many Irish Traveller lives. It takes new forms certainly; it endures terrible pressures certainly; but it doesn’t ‘die out’. The tents disappear – but Travellers keep travelling; the barrel tops disappear – but Travellers keep travelling; the trailers disappear – but Travellers keep travelling. This reality should warn us that the periodic assertion of the demise of Traveller nomadism is somewhat premature. This survival of Irish Traveller nomadism has been reinforced by another recent social phenomenon – the ‘new Travellers’. The development of a whole range of people who wanted to become nomadic, people who had no cultural legacy of nomadism, provided another challenge to the notion of the inevitability of sedentarization.

Many Travellers, of course, also continue to assert the centrality of travelling to Traveller culture:

Travellers need to move – if it is only six weeks or whatever – they need to move. It doesn’t matter where they are based, in what kind of houses, or sites, or transit sites or group housing schemes, they have to move. There will always be travelling in our culture and it will have to be catered for in accommodation. (Younger Traveller Man: Tullamore)

Alongside this reality, however, is the parallel truth that Irish Traveller nomadism has changed profoundly over the past 50 years. This causes some commentators to question the whole notion of Traveller nomadism. For example, activist and author Sinead ní Shuinéar argues:

My current thinking on this topic is that "mobility" is a far more useful, less either/or notion than nomadism. The general trend towards stable base coincides with general trend towards acquisition of motorised transport, mobile phones, availability of cheap flights et al. ­ Mobility is higher than ever it was. Second and third generation "settled" Travellers spend incredible amounts of time zipping around the country (and indeed these islands, and beyond). They just think nothing of driving for three or four hours to a funeral, market, fair, whatever. And it's ongoing, not the occasional big deal.  One of the huge objections routinely put forward by "local residents" when trailers appear is that the people in them are simply holidaymakers, as they actually have houses somewhere else­ and this is frequently true. So are they "nomads"? (personal communication)

Ni Shuinéar’s question is important. Many Travellers are more mobile than Travellers have ever been but this remains very different from ‘traditional’ models of Irish Traveller nomadism. In the most recent ‘census’ by the Traveller Accommodation Unit of the (southern Irish) Department of the Environment, enumerated around 5000 Traveller families of whom only around 1000 were identified as being ‘on the roadside’. Furthermore, of those, ‘on the roadside’, only 223 were identified as ‘transient’. In other words, only 20% of Travellers are living on traditional roadside halting sites and only 5% are nomadic in the sense of being defined as ‘transient’.5 From this perspective, nomadic Travellers form a small minority of the whole Irish Traveller population.6 Moreover, for some Travellers there has been a long history of what might be termed compulsory or forced nomadism – the notion of being ‘moved on’ or ‘go, move, shift’ to which we allude in our title. This kind of movement was is forced upon Travellers at times when they have no wish to move (ITM 2002: 23-24). Alongside this forced movement, however, is widespread voluntary movement among most Travellers. The increasing mobility that ní Shuinéar describes above is often premised upon the existence of a secure base from which to travel. This kind of Traveller mobility is increasing rather than decreasing. For example, the Irish Traveller Movement estimates that around 25% of all Travellers are mobile at any given moment.

Any consideration of contemporary nomadism, therefore, has to engage with the interplay between the continued importance of mobility for all Travellers and the much smaller numbers of Irish Travellers who conform to traditional notions of what it is to be a nomad. It also has to engage with the contrasting rights of a right to travel and a right not to be forced to travel against one’s will. This picture is further complicated by the reality that the ‘tradition’ of nomadism continues to be central in legal and sociological notions of what it means to be a Traveller. Moreover, the tradition of nomadism continues to be very important to most Irish Travellers sense of self – whether they themselves are nomadic or not. This obviously begs the question of how Irish Traveller identity is connected to nomadism.

Who are Irish Travellers?

Irish Travellers are the largest minority ethnic group in Ireland as a whole. They are the largest minority ethnic group in the south of Ireland and the second largest minority ethnic group in the north of Ireland (after the Chinese). The number of Travellers has increased over the last three decades but they remain a small proportion of the total Irish population: about 0.5% of the Irish population as a whole; approaching 1% of the population in the south of Ireland; and around 0.1% in the north of Ireland.

Irish Travellers are an indigenous, nomadic group. Travellers have been variously identified as ‘gypsies’, ‘itinerants’, ‘tinkers’, ‘travelling merchants’, but they identify themselves as Minceir in Gammon, the Travellers language, or ‘Travelling People’ or ‘Irish Travellers’ in English. The words ‘tinkler’ and ‘tynkerie’ (from the Irish word ‘ceard’ for smith and ‘tinceard’ for tinsmith) appear in Irish records from the 12th Century onwards. Historically, Travellers were regarded as having an important economic function even if there was sometimes a sense of otherness and social distance between Travellers and settled people. The notion of travelling and nomadism being an deviant and outmoded lifestyle is, however, a relatively recent one. In the past, while there were sometimes tensions between sedentary and nomadic forms of existence in Ireland, the two could coexist symbiotically in relative harmony (McVeigh 1997).7 Recognizable anti-Traveller stereotypes have been around for many years (Burke 1999). They appear in Dáil debates as early as the 1940s. For example, in 1944 Deputy O'Donnell made a series of references in the Dáil that might easily be transposed to current debates:

[I refer to] the tramps and others known as gypsies who go round in caravans touring the country. The Irish people generally, both rural and town folks, are very friendly disposed to them but they have become a bit of a nuisance. As Deputy Linehan remarked, some 30 or 40 years ago they were quite useful citizens—tinsmiths and metal workers. I myself remember their being at that work. I can tell of a particular case where five caravans came to a town and set up near it. About eight or ten people then came along begging. The Irish people are very kind to poorer people but these beggars are a nuisance. During the day when the men are in the fields the farmer's wife or daughter is at home and these beggars make a raid on the place. They ask for a grain of tea or sugar or a bit of bacon and are never satisfied. One would not mind that so much but they hold up the lady of the house in that way and, in the meantime, the hen roost and the hay loft are raided and any loose feeding round about the house is stolen…. Those tramps on the roads here … do not seem to bother very much about birth control. I saw three generations of such children; they marry very young and breed like rabbits and consumption is unknown amongst them. I remember a time when I had some five acres of potatoes to be picked and there was rain impending. I asked some of those men to come in but there was nothing doing. I heard one of the lads return from town later and his father said to him, as he had not had a successful day: “I will make you go in there and pick spuds.” In the town of Cahir market day on a Friday is a gala day. I was going in on the bus on a ten-mile journey one Saturday morning. Seven of them got in and paid 9d. each to get into town. The return journey cost them 10/6. Their peregrinations around the town came to my notice. I never saw a more drunken crowd leave it. They created scenes and their language was terrible. I suggest to the Minister that the Roosevelt method might do something in the way of making such people useful citizens. With regard to those people, their horses, mules and asses grazing on the road carry on their osculations with farmers' animals. Many diseases in animals may be traced to that. Farmers consider it much better to give these people supplies of milk because otherwise they will go out at night and milk the cows. The tinsmiths and the metal workers have practically ceased to exist. These young boys and girls do not go to school and there is no earthly chance of doing anything with them. (Dáil Éireann, Volume 93, 19 April, 1944)

There were also deputies prepared to defend ‘Travelling People’.8 Witness Deputy O’Leary in the same debate:

I have listened to Deputies attacking dance halls, picture houses and travelling people on the roads. Those travelling people buy donkeys from small farmers in the district, and in the course of their journeys at the present time they do very useful work making galvanised buckets, when buckets are not to be had in the hardware shops. They are not as dangerous as certain speakers made them out to be. They are human beings and they have to live. They have their own way of living and I do not see why attacks should be made upon them from all sides. They are living in their own way and they never interfere with others. They may brawl amongst themselves, but they never interfere with anyone outside their own circles. Every one of us must make a living—we are not all lucky—and I think it is very unfair that all Parties should be attacking these people. They are horse dealers and many farmers buy horses from them. They are very useful for the farmers. They go down to Cork and buy donkeys which they sell to people around County Wexford, to cottage people and others who want donkeys. It is very hard to get them, and, but for these people, they would not be available. They go to Connemara and buy ponies. They are not all beggars —some of them are wealthy men. (Dáil Éireann, Volume 93, 19 April, 1944)

The two definitive changes in Irish Traveller experience since the Second World War have been urbanization and sedentarization. The Traveller population has urbanized over the past 50 years (like much of the settled population), as most Travellers have gradually moved from a rural to an urban environment and from a nomadic to a more sedentary way of life. In the south of Ireland, this has seen a massive increase in the numbers and visibility of Travellers in Cork, Galway and especially Dublin. While there were always Travellers in Dublin and traveling to and from Dublin, there is now a large urbanized Traveller population across the greater Dublin area. Equally, while there always were Travellers in Belfast, the 1960s and 1970s saw increasing numbers of Travellers living in Belfast. This process of urbanization was also mirrored elsewhere in the north in places like Derry and Newry. Since the Second World War there has also been a series of ‘moral panics’ in Ireland about nomadic people. Travellers have been subject to racist and even genocidal abuse over recent years.

The Irish Traveller population has therefore undergone a profound and traumatic transformation because of the decline of traditional rural-based economic activities and a related decline in the economic function of nomadism. This process was not in any sense the responsibility of Travellers. Nor, indeed, was there much that Travellers could do about the decline of the traditional Traveller economy. This encouraged high levels of migration to urban centres as well as high levels of emigration, particularly to Britain. The importance of this transformation has been identified by many different observers (Gmelch 1977). Seeing the urbanization and sedentarization of Travellers solely in terms of loss, however, denies the reality that the economic base of nomadism has been adapted and developed in response to the new demands of the urban environment in positive and exciting ways. The Traveller economy in the USA is testament to the success of Traveller commercial nomadism in one of the most unrestricted markets in the world (McDonagh and McVeigh 1996).

The process of urbanization and sedentarization has undoubtedly changed Travellers in significant ways. First, this movement is almost certainly permanent for a sizeable proportion of the whole Traveller population. This means that Travellers and Traveller sites - whether legal or illegal, serviced or unserviced – are now a permanent part of the make-up of towns and cities of Ireland. Second, it has profoundly changed both the possibility and the actuality of nomadism. Travelling from and within an urban environment is very different from traveling from and within a rural one. Urbanization and sedentarization has raised important questions about the future of nomadism. Third, urbanization generated new forms of conflict between settled people and Travellers. A specific anti-Traveller racism developed which was more widespread and more focused than any of the tensions involved in rural nomadism. This saw an explosion in anti-Traveller sentiment from the 1960s onward alongside a more specific pathologisation of nomadism. The state began to intervene in this context for the first time with the Commission on Itinerancy which reported in 1963. This marked the beginning of an explicit settlement policy – in which the state encouraged Travellers to abandon nomadism and ‘assimilate’ into sedentary Irish society. In a parallel development, the community and voluntary sector began to intervene for the first time with the development of the Itinerant Settlement Movement. This movement was, of course, also explicitly sedentarist – the key to ‘helping’ Travellers was to ‘settle’ them.

The impact the Itinerant Settlement Movement remains questionable given that it was a phenomenon of the community and voluntary sector. Sedentarization informed Government policy from the 1960s onwards and there was at least some voluntary movement into housing by Travellers in this period, so nomadism might well have changed profoundly anyway without the ISM. Two facts are indisputable, however. First, the vast majority of Irish Travellers were nomadic people - in the sense that they carried their dwellings and their possessions with them as the traveled from camping site to camping site - before the advent of the Itinerant Settlement Movement. Second, forty years later, the majority of Travellers are no longer nomadic in this sense. Most older Travellers still have a sense of this transition:

There was no halting sites that time. At that time I don’t believe we would have wanted them. My people belonging to me – Lord have mercy upon them – they wouldn’t stay in houses, they wouldn’t. If they got a house – if the Council gave them a house – they’d move away. They wouldn’t want to be settled in the one place. They wanted to keep on the move. We were nearly as bad ourselves, we wanted to be moving…. I liked moving then but now I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t like to go back again. I wouldn’t mind going away for a couple of months but wouldn’t like to go away altogether. (Older Traveller Woman: Tullamore)

The 1980s marked a sea-change in attitudes towards Travellers from both the state and civil society in Ireland, north and south. Gradually, and sometimes painfully, there was increasing acceptance of the reality that Travellers had rights – not just as citizens but also specifically as Travellers. In the 1990s, in response to activism – from Travellers and the Traveller Support Movement, Travellers began to be protected from discrimination in law. This legislation is, however, far from clear on who Travellers are and how their relationship with nomadism should be defined. For example, there is a marked difference between the (southern Irish) 1988 Housing Act which regards Travellers as a people who are nomadic (regardless of ethnicity) and the (northern Irish) 1997 Race Relations Order which defines Travellers as a racial group (almost regardless of nomadism). Neither is nomadism, or ‘a nomadic way of life’ defined in this legislation. Nevertheless, the important aspect of the legislation is that it collectively accepts that nomadism is in some way definitive of being a Traveller.

All this legislation, of course, should mean that there is a new willingness right across the statutory sector - as well as the community and voluntary sector - to address and redress Traveller disadvantage in the Ireland including rights and other issues associated with nomadism. The legislation places both institutions and individuals under a legal obligation not to discriminate against Travellers. Thus, whether people change their attitudes and practices positively in a new spirit of anti-racism and equality or negatively, under the threat of legal sanction, this should a particularly propitious time to encourage discussion and action around Traveller nomadism across the island of Ireland.

Methodology

This research uses a range of secondary sources to draw the broader picture of nomadism. Our primary research, however, is dependent primarily on the expertise of the Traveller Support Movement. The primary information was generated by a questionnaire sent to the Irish Traveller Movement and the Traveller Movement (NI) networks across Ireland asking them to assess the contemporary forms of nomadism in their local areas. This information was supplemented by focus groups discussions in the north and south of Ireland - in Belfast and Dublin and Tullamore - as well as a specific focus group discussion with the Travellers of Rathkeale.

This method recognized explicitly the unique knowledge of the Traveller Support sector, north and south. There are specific methodological challenges in terms of doing research on or with nomadic groups. Research is often explicitly or implicitly ‘sedentarist’ in that it assumes that a given research group is sedentary. (One obvious example of this is the use of the electoral register to sample public opinion.) Our research recognizes the challenge of doing research with a nomadic group as well as the need for innovative and flexible research methodologies to overcome this challenge. It bears emphasis that this could not have been done without the Traveller Support Movement.

The research also places heavy emphasis on the notion of ‘situating’ Irish Travellers and Irish Traveller nomadism in international context. This is important conceptually, of course, but also practically, as we look at how Irish Traveller mobility should be understood and facilitated. Traveller nomadism in Ireland has often been seen as an aberration - a bizarre and unique social phenomenon. Because of this, we spend a fair proportion of our work putting this experience in international context. This is quite deliberate. The consideration of other comparative dynamics in both nomadism and anti-nomadism is crucial to understanding the specificity of nomadism in its Irish context. It is important that the common themes of international nomadism are used to understand Traveller experience. Moreover, it is clear that the dynamics of contemporary nomadism in Ireland cannot be understood with reference to Ireland or Irish Travellers alone.

Finally, we recognise that there is a wider intellectual project which uses the idea of nomads and nomadism as a key metaphor for social theory. The French theorists Deleuze and Guattari defined their approach as nomadology. They argued that:

History is always written from the sedentary point of view and in the name of a unitary State apparatus, at least a possible one, even when the topic is nomads. What is lacking is a Nomadology, the opposite of a history’ (1988: 23).

Deleuze and Guatari’s ‘Treatise on Nomadology’ is taken as a starting point for a whole new intellectual paradigm – there are a range of books and university courses based on the concept of nomadology. It has to be said that this kind of avant garde theorizing, however interesting, often appears very distant from the prosaic challenges of contemporary Irish Traveller lives. Nevertheless, this approach does at least defy the hegemony of sedentarism in social research. It also reminds us that the nomad and nomadism continues to be a powerful positive metaphor for many contemporary sedentary people. Understanding nomadism is important in itself but it is also a key to understanding what it means to be sedentary.

Chapter Two: Nomadism in international comparative context

Adam lay with his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, "With the help of the LORD I have brought forth a man." Later she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth."…. So Cain went out from the Lord's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.9

Genesis 4, New International Version.

Nomadism is a cultural universal. At one time in human history, everybody in the world was nomadic. Indeed, for most of human history, there has been no separation of ‘home’ and ‘work’ – people carried their dwellings and their possessions with them constantly. In this sense, contemporary nomadism emerges from a vast history and prehistory which is unlike any other. Moreover, for the large majority of human existence, people have been entirely nomadic. At first everyone belonged to hunter/gatherer societies which were continuously mobile, later other peoples developed pastoral nomadism with movement related very specifically to an animal herd – like sheep or goats or reindeer or buffalo – that provided the core elements of subsistence. Both of these modes of existence were completely nomadic. An alternative mode of existence – sedentarism or being ‘settled’ – only emerges relatively recently in human history. The next stage in this history is the period at which sedentary and nomadic societies face each other on a relatively equal basis. Once again, this is a key episode in human history. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it appears as the biblical tensions between Cain and Able and between Esau and Jacob. Later the difference between Jews and Arabs is explained in a similar way. In Arab culture this nomadic/sedentary difference continues to be even more central in notions of identity. Socially, Arabs are often divided into two groups: the settled Arab (divided in turn into fellahin or ‘villagers’, and hadar or ‘townspeople’) and the nomadic Bedouin. Ibn Khaldun famously developed a whole philosophy of history which explains Arab society in terms of the nomadic/sedentary tension.

Obviously the earliest nomadic societies developed independent of settled communities.10 They had no necessary relationship to any settled community. Later, however, commercial nomadism developed as a specific possibility in the context of sedentary societies. This point is important. It means that commercial nomads, unlike pastoral nomads, are usually dependent on a relationship with the sedentary society with which they interact. At best this involves a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit to sedentary and nomad alike; at worst, it means that commercial nomads are highly vulnerable to both prejudices and economic shifts within sedentary society.

Nomadism is thus a core element in human identity – it is not some kind of aberrant, minority social behaviour. As the very existence of the journal Nomadic Peoples testifies, there are nomadic communities all over the world.11 Neither, however, is nomadism some fantastic identity abstracted from its economic base. For most of its history, nomadism is based on its efficacy in producing the conditions of existence of the group involved. In technical terms, nomadism is based on a particular mode of production; in less technical terms, nomads were and are nomads because this is the best or only way to survive. For most of human history and prehistory, being sedentary was recipe for starvation – people were nomadic because this was the only way to live. This is not to deny or underplay the spiritual importance of nomadism but it is to insist that nomadism is about practical and prosaic survival as much about the arcane and abstract spiritual commitments to movement that sometimes figure heavily in sedentary descriptions of nomadism.

As Acton points out the ‘logic’ of a commercial nomadism economy is ultimately much the same as any other:

Gypsies are subject to the same universal constraints of economics as other [people]; any way of life must enable [people] to ‘make a living’; and, faced with two options, [people] will, ceterus paribus, choose the more profitable. Economic life shapes culture. Gypsy economic life is distinguished by the peculiar importance within it of two institutions, self-employment and nomadism; but these together form part of a general tradition of adaptability - geographical, occupational, and social - which is highly ‘rational’ in the classical economic sense. Both Gypsies and their clients, customers or employers normally act so as to maximize their net marginal rewards…. The Gypsies are much nearer the classical model of economic man than many others, and certainly than the Gajo [non-Gypsy] social scientists whose concepts of ‘rational behaviour’ derive from that model. When that rationality is perceived, when we have finally abandoned the picture of the Gypsy as some primitive creature moved by mystic and unanalysable impulses, then we can begin to explain and predict voluntary behaviour and make informed policy decisions. (1974: 245-7)

While commercial nomadism is a distinct ‘mode of production’ characterized by self-employment and adaptability, it is still a mode of production. In this sense, commercial nomadism is no different from any other way of life in that its basic necessity is ‘making a living’. The social and cultural superstructures that connect with these are in themselves dependent on an economic base.

Commercial nomadism does, however, contrast with the sedentary (or ‘settled’) mode of economic organization engaged in by the vast majority of European citizens. In this sense, the Traveller economy is ‘outside’ dominant or ‘mainstream’ economic activity that is based on sedentary modes of production. It also contrasts with the pastoral nomadism of peoples dependent on herding and the nomadism of hunter/gatherer peoples. Indeed, commercial nomads sometimes have a relationship with pastoral nomads not unlike their contemporary relationship with sedentary societies (Acton 1974: 260). In the Irish context, Irish Traveller commercial nomadism probably developed alongside pastoral nomadism, long before the arrival of sedentary modes of existence. In this sense, Irish Traveller nomadism is more likely to predate Irish ‘settled’ existence by centuries rather than ‘evolve’ from it.

Contemporary Nomadism in International Context

As we have seen, nomadism is a vast historical tradition. Likewise, contemporary Traveller nomadism is specific neither to Ireland nor Irish Travellers. There are many surviving hunter gatherer and pastoral nomadic groups around the world. Most of these are under increasing pressure from sedentary society but they continue to exist. These groups share some aspects in common with commercial nomads like Irish Travellers and many of the stereotypes about them are all too recognizable to anyone familiar with anti-Traveller racism. Irish Travellers have a closer relationship and identity, however, with other commercial nomads – principally Romà of course, but also a whole range of other Travellers groups (Kenrick 1994). Acton recognizes a specificity to commercial nomadism at a local, regional and transnational level:

Where the size of the average village in a society is too small to sustain or train a full-time smith or entertainers of its own, the existence of nomads is as rational as the existence of rural travelling libraries today. In Persia one even has the example of … commercial nomads living in economic symbiosis with the pastoral nomads who are themselves living in a different kind of symbiosis with the settled society. And seasonal labour of all kinds continues to be needed in advanced industrial society…. If, then, we see economic nomadism as giving a very rational life style in many societies to some sections of certain groups of specialized self-employed or independent workers, we will no longer be surprised when we find similar cultural and economic patterns existing amongst many groups of Romani-speaking people throughout the Indo-European world. Nomadic self-employment and ethnic differentiation tend mutually to reinforce one another…. (1974: 260-1)

Within commercial nomadism, economic flexibility is often directly connected to movement:

Economics are an important determinant of nomadism or sedentarism. Moving brings adaptability, flexibility, and autonomy in maintaining economic independence. The scope and frequency of the moves will depend on the trade(s) being practiced at any given moment. (Liégeois 1994: 95)

The collapse in the traditional Traveller economy and an associated shift towards urbanization and welfare dependency in Ireland was also part of a wider European process:

In most countries, 1945-60 was the period of most significant change: the rural exodus, which decimated an established clientele and destroyed a symbiotic relationship in which rural and nomadic families exchanged goods and services. In many countries ... Gypsies’ characteristic trades (as pedlars, craftsmen, musicians) has ensured their relative acceptance as suppliers of services.. Economic development brought profound change ... Other factors were the growth in mass-produced goods, which took over many traditional markets, and motorisation, which change the practices associated with nomadism: faster, more frequent journey radiating from a fixed, or semi-fixed base. (Liégeois 1994: 97)

These changes were accompanied by a tightening of bureaucracy around trading and camping which placed ever more restrictive regulations on the life and work of nomads and contributed to a growing crisis in commercial nomadism across Europe.

The ‘New Traveller’ phenomenon in Britain and Ireland illustrates that people can become nomadic even on a economic base of welfare dependency and despite the legal and extra-legal repression of nomadic identity (McVeigh 1997; Clark 1997). Welfare dependency can therefore in circumstances support nomadism. Generally, however, commercial nomadism is a viable economic base with substantial potential for development. Moreover, past experience suggests that it is going to continue whatever its treatment by sedentary structures of Government and economic development. These structures can either work with the commercial nomadic peoples to make the economy better for everyone or they can ignore this base and abandon it to survive in increasingly difficult circumstances.

Irish Traveller nomadism should be approached from this perspective and situated in terms of its wider context of commercial nomadism. There is, of course, a specificity to the Irish Traveller nomadism and some generalizations are more applicable than others. Nevertheless it is striking that points which hold for commercial nomads across Europe are representative of the situation of nomadic Irish Travellers. This perspective helps shift the analysis away from racialized explanations for the movement of Travellers - where nomadism is explained in cultural or even genetic terms - towards explanations firmly grounded in the social context of contemporary nomadism and the widespread economic crisis in the Traveller economy.

Chapter Three: Nomadism in Ireland – history, ethnicity and the law

Mr. Palmer asked the Minister for Justice if he is aware of the doubt as to whether there are any laws, by-laws or regulations by which bands of travelling tinkers, gypsies and lino sellers, all equipped with cars and caravans of various types, may be prevented from camping for a period longer than one night in the vicinity of towns, villages, entrances to private houses and hotels, sea beaches, listed beauty spots and tourist resorts; and, if so, whether he will introduce proposals for legislation by which such obstructions and nuisances may be prevented. (Major-General) Mac Eoin

Minister for Justice: The police have no power to interfere with persons camping out, so long as they do not obstruct the public highway. If such persons trespass on private property, the matter is one for the owners or occupiers of the property. I appreciate that these bands of vagrants are a great nuisance and if I could see any satisfactory way of dealing with them I should not hesitate to introduce proposals for legislation. At present, however, I do not see any satisfactory solution of the problem.

Dáil Éireann, 21 July, 1949.

There has been nomadism in Ireland as long as there have been people in Ireland. Despite this reality, there is a common misperception that nomadism in Ireland suddenly developed at some arbitrary point in Irish history for some (usually unexplained) reason. Thus a recent article the New York Times could tell us:

In modern Ireland, where immigrants and refugees from Africa, Asia and Central Europe are rapidly becoming part of the cultural landscape, the Irish travelers, who began wandering here more than 800 years ago, remain the principal social outcasts. Disparagingly called "tinkers," a reference to their former role as tinsmiths, repairing pots and pans as they moved from town to town, they are all too often publicly perceived as a tribe of thieves. (18/11/2001, our emphasis)

This illustrates graphically the common perception that Travellers emerged from somewhere and ‘began wandering’. In fact, it was settled people who emerged here ‘more than 800 years ago’ and ‘began settling’. It is as much ‘becoming sedentary’ as ‘becoming nomadic’ that has to explained as a new social phenomenon.12 

In Ireland itself, the Irish Traveller nomadism is part of a broader tradition and network of ‘people of the roads’. The central importance of figures like the spailpíní fánach, the ‘rambling shúiler’, scoláirí bochta, and the bacach buí in traditional Irish culture, are all testament to the history of nomadism and traveling in Irish society:

So numerous were the beggars who travelled along the roads from 1447 down to the middle of the nineteenth century that laws were passed to cope with them.… The famine of 1845-7 uprooted hundreds of thousands of people from their homes…. Descendants of these poor people, of both sexes, continued to journey from house to house, looking for alms and shelter, although in much smaller numbers, down to the early years of the present century. Many house had a special bed or straw mat for these more-or-less regular visitors, who were always welcome owing to the news which they brought from distant parts, entertaining the company at night with their stories…. Itinerants (tincéara or travellers as they prefer to be called) … are still to be found along the roads in the summer, or encamped on vacant spaces at the edge of towns and cities in winter.… Peddlers of various kinds, selling pins, laces, thread, tobacco, tea and other goods, have travelled along the Irish roads for centuries, but are now rarely seen. There were also travellers who bought or collected eggs, old clothes, rags, feathers and other goods. Similarly, tradesmen such as tailors, stone-masons, spailpíní (travelling labourers) and others went from place to place in search of work.… Finally, there have been, through the centuries, thousands of itinerant musicians of various kinds, ranging from the old harpers … to fiddlers, dancers, dance-masters, those who sang or sold ballads, and popular entertainers of other kinds. (O Súilleabháin 1968: 109-10)

These ‘people of the roads’ included not only ‘ethnic nomads’ like Travellers and Gypsies but a whole range of nomadic and itinerant salespeople - some travelling individually, others in nuclear and extended family units. This is captured in Florence Mary McDowell’s autobiography, Other Days Around Me. There she provides an account of what she calls the, ‘unending stream of itinerants of one sort and another who brought variety to daily life and a glimpse of other worlds’ to the north of Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century (1966: 100). McDowell identifies two different ethnic groups of Travellers:

The Tinkers preferred selling new wares to mending old ones; but occasionally they would come into the kitchen and, heating the soldering-iron in the fire there, would sizzle the quick-running solder on to pot or can. They brought with them their own smell of wild living - of sweat and porter and rancid clothing, of poaching of nights and sleeping rough, while permeating all was the smell of their smoky way-side fires. First cousin to the Tinker was the Gipsy, but his assertion both would have violently resisted. The Tinkers were travelling men but citizens. They earned their keep by skill and salesmanship and, like the cottagers, accused the Gipsies of theft, lying, laziness, general lawlessness and Cursing…. The Gipsies always arrived during the week before the Ballyclare May Fair, having travelled Ireland from fair to fair since the previous May. The main business was dealing in horse-flesh, which included for business purposes, ponies and donkeys. (1966: 108)

McDowell’s work provides one example of the range of itinerant and nomadic enterprises which were historically central to rural life in Ireland.13 Likewise. O’Baoighill’s account of Na Lucht Siúil in Donegal records the social importance of this tradition:

Shiúladh an chuid is mó acu agus bheadh asal agus trucaill le cuid eile acu. Corruair bheadh scaifte acu le chéile ach an chuid is mó den am ní bheadh ach duine amháin ann. Nuair a d’fhanadh siad i dteach ar bith chruinníodh scaifte daoine go dtí an teach sin le héisteacht leo ag inse scéalta.14 (2000: 423-424)

There is, however, a specificity to the Irish Traveller nomadism which deserves a focused discussion. Moreover, this tradition has survived while other ‘people of the roads’ have all but disappeared in Ireland. This specificity holds broadly true in terms of what Irish Travellers do in Ireland itself - north and south. But it also holds true for Irish Travellers outside of Ireland, sometimes for many generations - in Britain, in continental Europe and in the USA. In other words, Travellers in Ireland are part of a broader tradition of nomadism in Ireland but they are also part of a broader Irish Traveller nomadism which extends well beyond Ireland - across Europe and North America.

As we have seen, these Irish Travellers are commercial nomads – they have constantly interacted with the sedentary communities within which they traveled. This defined the experience of Travellers but it also left a marked legacy on the sedentary population. For example:

In the 1800s large groups of travelling people used to come to Gleann Cholm Cille.  Among them, there were master tin-smiths who made and mended household goods known as pandaís, and highly accomplished musicians.  At times over forty of them would come together and they would stay for over a month, making tin goods and playing music.  Such was their love of music that they made tin fiddles for children to practise on.  These metal instruments were cheaper than the standard wooden fiddles and much easier to mend if damaged! In the early 1900s a dispute arose between the Catholic curate and a large group of travellers camped in the glen.  The priest drove them out of the area and they never came back in such numbers.  Still, some families continued to come, particularly those with an interest in music, most notably the McConnells, Rourkes and Dohertys.  They greatly enriched the local repertoire and also helped to spread Gleann Cholm Cille tunes throughout the county.  As time went by, however, plastic removed the demand for tin goods and the decline of housedances ended the centuries-old tradition of travelling musicians.  By the 1970s few travellers visited the area.  They had left their mark on the music of the glen, however, and their unique tin fiddles are still in use. (Gleann an Cheol 2000)

In this sense, Irish culture should properly be seen as an outcome of a complex interaction between sedentary and nomadic ways of life. This is much more holistic approach than the sedentary narratives that usually erase the nomadic dimensions of Irish history.

Commercial nomadism or ‘trading’ in the Traveller economy

Traditionally Irish Travellers were commercial nomads who traded in the rural agricultural economy. What they traded was less definitive than the way in which they traded. They bought and sold or bartered with the farming community. Two of the defining activities of the traditional Traveller economy – tinsmithing and horse-dealing – have all but ended as commercial enterprises, although they remain a core part of Traveller cultural identity. Contemporary Traveller trading, however, continues to illustrate the ways in which most Travellers made a living in the past. Many Travellers have survived economic changes in the rural economy and progressed to exploit niches in a mostly urban environment by trading in a whole range of goods and services - in goods like antique furniture, farm gates, bed clothing, video and electrical equipment, tyres and carpets (Task Force 1996: 242-3). Trading is done by selling from the roadside, door-to-door selling or by selling from stalls in the markets. The Task Force identified two main types of trading: transient trading which involves selling from the roadside and door-to-door and market trading which involves selling from stalls in the casual trading areas.

With transient trading, overheads are significantly different from those of settled business people. While Travellers involved in trading do not routinely have property costs, and current costs such as employees’ wages, electricity and heating, they require quality vans and caravans and significant cash resources to buy and sell in bulk where and when opportunities arise. They also have considerable fuel costs. The Task Force argued that, ‘it is generally acknowledged that there are difficulties involved in Transient Traders fully participating in the taxation and social insurance systems as presently structured’ (1996: 243). Despite these challenges, this form of commercial nomadism remains generally successful:

These Traveller Traders have exploited niches in the modem economy such as antique dealing, trading in farm gates and such. Existing groups already dominate the niches identified and it is unlikely that new groups could set up to compete with them. However, they have shown that Transient Trading as currently practised is feasible and profitable. Transient Trading is a model of entrepreneurial skill to encourage extended family groups to identify other niches and exploit them. To succeed in Transient Trading requires: identifying feasible niches to exploit; significant resources to buy and sell and diversify when opportunities arise; capital to get quality vans and caravans; a large united extended family group for support, division of work and company while moving around; access to parking space and facilities. (1996: 244)

The Travellers most involved in trading usually travel in extended family groups. The three main groups are based in Rathkeale, Wexford and Sligo and these form around 150 of all the families engaged in ‘transient trading’. These Travellers trade as extended family groups (from about seven or eight families up to forty families) and they are generally economically successful. The Annual Count of Traveller Families carried out by the Department of the Environment defines around 5% of all Travellers as ‘Traders’. In reality, however, there is no appropriate distinction between ‘traders’ and other Travellers, trading is a form of commercial nomadism that all Travellers may participate in, some very successfully, others less successfully. It is not a separate ethnic or cultural identity.

There have been particular tensions between Travellers involved in trading and the settled community, north and south of the border (Task Force 1996: 244). The increasing use of the notion of ‘indigenous Travellers’ simultaneously creates an excluded category of non-indigenous Travellers who are denied any right at all to accommodation or site provision in a given area. The concept is, of course, meaningless to Travellers and has little reference to any reality. All Irish Travellers are indigenous to Ireland while no Irish people – settled or Traveller – can be identified as ‘indigenous’ to a county or a district council area in any meaningful legal sense. Moreover, Traveller nomadism means that Travellers are less identified with locality than settled people. For example, many Traveller ‘traders’ work in the north of Ireland as much as the south of Ireland - in this sense, the whole of Ireland is an integrated market for transient trading. The trading Traveller economy is already an example of the much-heralded ‘island economy’ - the border is almost meaningless in terms of this particular economic activity.

Irish Traveller nomadism outside of Ireland

Irish Travellers, like other Irish people, have a long history of emigration to different countries around the world. Traveller nomadism remained a key part of people’s identities following emigration. There is, however, very little research work on Irish Traveller nomadism around the world. Nor indeed is there any consideration of the specific impact of emigration on nomadism. Traveller activist Michael McDonagh has recorded how much of the migration to England in the 1960s was to take advantage of participation in construction of motorways and so on. There is some evidence of Travellers developing work in new opportunities around informal economy like car window washing and suchlike. There is also movement beyond Britain to continental Europe - this work is increasing and deserves discrete attention but as yet there is no developed analysis or research on the Traveller nomadism in continental Europe.

There is more detail on Traveller identity in the USA and many authors mention aspects of Traveller nomadism in passing (Salo1986). Harper (1977; 1971; 1973) and Andereck also provide useful detail on aspects of Traveller nomadism. Some Travellers from Ireland also travel for part of the year in the US (McDonagh and McVeigh 1996: 1). This is an example of the continuing internationalization of Traveller nomadism and the Irish Traveller economy. After emigrating in the mid-nineteenth century, the original Traveller emigrants to the USA practiced tinsmithing and peddling. They gradually entered the mule-trading business. They moved to the southern states in response to demand for horses and mules in southern agriculture. Initially they spent the winter in the South trading livestock and returned to the North for the summer. The decline in demand for horses and mules in the North encourage them to migrate to the South permanently. Travellers bought mules in the stockyards in Atlanta, Nashville, Fort Worth, and Memphis and went off on predetermined circuits selling exchanging and buying mules. Diversification into spray-painting, linoleum trading and ‘blacktopping’ or tarmacadaming continued after the war. Spray-painting, linoleum-selling and asphalting are now the chief occupations of Travellers (Andereck 1992).

The similarity of the experience between Ireland and the USA is striking - despite the years of separation and huge economic transformations since that separation. Of course, much of this derives from the continued commercial nomadism of both groups. Nevertheless, it is striking that the economy of the two groups developed separately but in parallel through horse and mule trading to trading in linoleum and tools, spray-painting and black-topping. With commercial nomadism, however, the whole family is the unit of economic activity and gender divisions in employment are less absolute than in sedentary economic activity.

The continuing success of the Traveller economy in the USA means that the Traveller community is generally affluent. Given the common Irish stereotypes of Travellers as ‘dole scroungers’ living in a ‘subculture of poverty’ it is especially ironic to find that accounts of US Traveller identity have been characterized in terms of wealth and the absence of dependence on welfare. Murphy Village is now characterized by huge and expensive houses - many of which have limited practical function since the population continues to be nomadic. Thus, while Travellers in the USA are often stereotyped, these stereotypes are more likely to be couched in terms of wealth rather than poverty.

Nomadism continues to play an important part in Traveller identity in the USA. As US Traveller, Richard Waters writes:

I'm a Northern Irish Traveller and our people tended to immigrate here later than the families now known as the Southern Irish Travellers. My own grandparents' families arrived here during the 1870s and the 1880s. Oddly enough, considering the climate, many of those (Northern) predecessors also favored north-western New York State as the initial jump-off point for their exit from ordinary Irish Immigrant status to their debut in the New Country as a fully operational Irish Traveller (albeit incognito) organism. Personally, I suspect (and this is pure speculation) that the opportunities offered by the famed Erie Canal enabled the new US Irish Travellers to accumulate, in exchange for their labor, a little money and a free passage for their family away from the cities packed with settled Irish toward rural markets for their accustomed services. This possibility would at least account for their choosing as an initial center of operations a site like North Tonawanda, NY with such harsh winters. I don't think that there can be too much of a comparison made between nomadism in Ireland and the USA. There were overwhelming forces involved in the change of locale: repulsion and attraction. The repulsive force involved settled Irish immigrants; it was too much to expect Irish Travelers to continue to serve as a despised underclass to people who were themselves treated as an underclass, people Irish Travellers considered content, even eager to serve as another man's wage-slave.  The old social order, as seen from the Irish Traveller's point of view, was turned upside down.  Irish Travellers separated themselves completely from other Irish here, even those few who remained near the cities. The attractive force was like a huge vacuum; coming from a country where families had followed the same circuits perhaps a few hundred km long for generations, to a rapidly expanding nation where ten million square kilometers of settlement were creating huge markets demanding minker, pavee and, especially, curree-moocher skills. To steal from Hemingway: it was a moveable feast. In general, the Northern Travellers are the most truly nomadic today and there has been no research done on us to the best of my knowledge. The Southern, Western and Mississippi Travellers are the best studied but are more occupationally than true nomadic; mostly the families don't travel much. I doubt that there would be much cooperation given on routes of march by any group, though, to any researchers. The formerly live-and-let-live attitudes of the police and the general public have turned into a televised witch-hunt in recent years. Nomads are out of fashion here and Travellers even more secretive than usual. As they say: even paranoids can have real enemies now and then. (Richard Waters, personal communication 13th December 2001).15

The contrast between the USA and Ireland appears even more remarkable in the context of commonsense Irish notions about the outmoded nature of Irish Traveller nomadism. The undeniable success of the US Traveller economy suggests that the relative failure of the Traveller economy in Ireland has less to do with its inherent qualities than with the hostile and unsupportive climate in which it is forced to survive (McDonagh and McVeigh 1996).

The History of Irish Traveller nomadism

As we have seen already, nomadism is as old as the human presence in Ireland. This pre-history and history, however, is largely undocumented. The character of Irish Traveller nomadism is, however, addressed in several more recent accounts. Most of these are autobiographies by Irish Travellers. Nan Joyce’s autobiography gives a sense of the Traveller nomadism in the post-war period:

Ireland was very poor then, especially the Free State, you couldn’t get copper or brass or tin or anything like that so the Travellers used to smuggle it in their wagons. They’d bring it into the Free State in big hundred weight bales and they’d make tins and pots and lovely copper ornaments an buckets…. In the summer we’d go travelling. We’d leave up the heavy wagons because it was easier on the horses, they just had to pull the car, and we’d sleep in tents. They were made from green covers with hazel branches for wattles. In the morning we’d roll up the sides, and fold the bedding , fresh air would get in and the place would be cleaned up spotless. (2000: 3-4)

Nan also records how even at that time Travellers were subject to forced movement:

We used to be hunted out of the Bog Meadows. We’d go from the Catholic side to the Protestant side, then to the Falls Road, up to Andersonstown, out the Holywood Road, up the Glengormley Road, the Whiterock and the Shaws Road. We kept moving because we had to, there were big fines for camping…. We’d have to pack up everything in the middle of the night, and at that time we had no motor van or car, it was a horse and wagon. You couldn’t say to the police that you weren’t shifting because you’d be kicked around the road, the men would be beaten with batons, they’d even be brought into the barracks and locked up. You got no fair play at all if you were a Traveller…. We travelled around Portadown and Lurgan, to Ballymena and Newry, we travelled all of the North over and over again. (2000: 39-40)

This forced movement was accompanied by a developing crisis in the traditional Traveller economy in Ireland in the post-war period.

This traditional Traveller economy supported Travellers without any external supplement for decades. This is not to romanticize its historical success - some Travellers were relatively affluent, but many lived in poverty and hardship - but it is to recognize its autonomy. The Traveller economy existed in a symbiotic relationship with the settled rural economy but it was economically self-sufficient. This changed for most Travellers in the aftermath of the 2nd World War as the Traveller economy entered a period of prolonged crisis and decline. The crisis in the Traveller economy in the post-war period marked a profound transition for most Travellers as they were forced to move from a rural to an urban environment. This migration created a series of illegal and unserviced sites in areas like Finglas, Tallaght and West Belfast. It also marked a profound change in the nature of Irish Traveller nomadism. In particular, Travellers came under the scrutiny of the state in an sustained manner for the first time.

Nomadism and the state in Ireland

Irish Travellers have been directly affected by anti-nomadism and anti-Traveller racism of both states on the island (Noonan 1998; Mayall 1995; Hawes and Perez 1996; McLaughlin 1995). As Noonan argues:

Significantly, the first interest shown by the state of Northern Ireland in what was characterized as the ‘problem’ of Travellers occurred during the post-war period. To those committed to economic modernisation, the presence of a community committed to a nomadic lifestyle (and a lack of attachment to land as property) and to independence from wage labour (one of the central features of industrials capitalist economies), Travellers (in both rural and urban setting) symbolized anachronistic and deviant values. (1998: 154)

As we have seen there were also concerns around Travellers and nomadism in the south of Ireland from the 1920s onwards – these focused on education and public health issues. The state in the south began to intervene for the first time in a structured way, however, with the Commission on Itinerancy which was established in 1961 and reported in 1963. The conclusions of the Commission were explicitly sedentarist – it saw the end of Traveller nomadism as a positive goal. This position had mediated slightly by the time of the report of the Travelling People Review Body in 1983. By the time of the completion of the Task Force on the Travelling Community 1995 the discourse had changed, at least superficially. As we have seen, the Task Force recognised that nomadism was a key part of Traveller culture and that, ‘the distinct culture and identity of the Traveller community be recognized and taken into account’. (1995: 76). The Task Force report, however, still contained a minority report that was explicitly anti-nomadic (1995: 289-291). Four dissenting members argued:

The emphasis which has been given to the element of nomadism in the lives of the traveller community begs the assumption that there will be no significant change in the nomadic way of life for the foreseeable future…. The formulation of Government policy to the year 2000 and beyond should include consideration of alternatives to the nomadic way of life in view of:- the disadvantages of the current lifestyle of the traveller community; the changing pattern of work opportunities available to the traveller community; the increasing conflict with the settled community which arises mainly from the consequences of the nomadic lifestyle; the inordinate cost to the exchequer of catering for this way of life. Nomadism in the context to today’s traveller lifestyle is a contentious and emotive issue but any lifestyle which places that community at a significant disadvantage in virtually every walk of life and which is inordinately expensive on the taxpaying community to maintain for the questionable benefit of a small section of the population must be regularly reviewed in the interest of society as a whole and particularly in the interests of that community. (1995: 289)

In general, therefore, the history of the relationships between Travellers and both states in Ireland has evolved through neglect, then active assimilationism, towards a position which, formally at least, recognises the distinctiveness of Traveller identity (as well as the importance of nomadism within that identity). While there has been an increasing acceptance of Traveller ethnicity, none of these phases has been particularly sympathetic to nomadism in practice. Moreover, nomadism continues to be the element of Traveller identity which is identified as being most problematic for settled people in general and for the state in particular. The continuing presence of boulders preventing camping around the country is perhaps the most graphic symbol of continuing opposition to nomadism at local and national level but this physical barrier to nomadism has been accompanied by a range of other measures which might be termed institutional sedentarism. These behaviours have served to ‘normalize and reproduce sedentary modes of existence and pathologies and repress nomadic modes of existence’ in Ireland (McVeigh 1997: 9). This process reached a new nadir in Section 24 of the Housing Act 2002 . This legislation has already had a disturbing impact in terms of Traveller equality. It has also had a more specific and immediate impact in terms of Traveller nomadism:

It has affected Travellers in a very bad way – it has taken away their culture from them. All the camps are blocked up. They don’t have the freedom to travel – that freedom has been taken off them. Who has the right to do that to anyone? There’s some of them doing it anyway. They are charged, they are fined, they are getting their caravans taken off them. They are left homeless because of the law. (Younger Woman: Tullamore)

In 2002, the Citizen Traveller campaign, which had been promoting positive images of Travellers was ‘wound up’ by the Irish government which provided its funding. RTE reported this decision thus:

The Government-appointed Travellers' support group, which aimed to contribute to a greater understanding between Traveller and settled communities, is to be wound up. A review of the workings of the Citizen Traveller Campaign had been ordered by the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell. That followed what the Department of Justice described as concerns over its management and direction. The findings of that review have been published and it concluded that the Campaign didn't fully embrace the objectives it had been set. Instead of trying to contribute to greater understanding between the traveller and the settled communities, the Campaign focused exclusively on the traveller perspective. Tonight, the Minister for Justice said the best way forward is an orderly winding up of the project. However, Minister McDowell said he would be consulting with interested parties before deciding on a replacement for Citizen Traveller (RTE Interactive News 2002).

It was widely perceived that the catalyst for this abrupt change in Government support for the Citizen Traveller campaign was a controversial advertisement against the anti-nomadic effects of the Housing Act. This Citizen Traveller advertisement had argued: ‘Suddenly, in caring Ireland, to be a Traveller is a terrible crime. The racist and unworkable law on trespass criminalizes 1200 unaccommodated Traveller families’ (The Traveller 2002: 11). Certainly the advertisement caused widespread and vocal concern among representatives of the coalition parties in the Irish Government. Once again, the key interface between Government and Travellers was specifically associated with tensions connected to Traveller nomadism.

The ‘Consultation paper for control of unauthorised encampments’

On 25th September 2003, John Spellar MP, the British Minister with responsibility for Social Development in the north of Ireland launched a ‘consultation paper on the control of unauthorized encampments’ (DSD 2003). Announcing details of the consultation exercise, Spellar said:

Unauthorised encampments have long been a cause of complaint from both members of the public and elected representatives. This consultation paper stems from a report by a Working Party set up by the then Minister for Social Development, Maurice Morrow, to consider the whole issue of unauthorised encampments. The Working Party looked at the extent and causes of unauthorised encampments. They also considered the effectiveness of current legislation and the position in GB and the Republic of Ireland. They found that current legislation is inadequate and recommended that enforcement powers should be strengthened. The Department for Social Development has accepted the recommendations in the report and this is an opportunity for interested parties to let the Department know what they think about these proposals. (DSD 2003a)

The consultation document was accompanied by an equality impact assessment as required by Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act. This concludes, ‘that the proposal to introduce legislation to control unauthorised encampments as set out above is likely to have an adverse impact on Irish Travellers’ (our emphasis). Despite this bald assessment of the negative impact of the proposed measures, the DSD proceeds to support the introduction of the legislation. In other words, the government department already knows that this legislation will discriminate against Travellers but is proposing to push it through despite its racist and sedentarist implications. There can be few starker examples of government anti-nomadism in practice.

There is little doubt that the proposed legislation will be indirectly discriminatory against Travellers within the meaning of Race Relations legislation unless sufficient and adequate accommodation provision is made available. The consultation document provides no details of how transit sites will be located, designed or managed. This raises concerns that inadequate and inappropriate sites could be located without consultation with or consent from Travellers with the effect that they are not culturally suitable and won't be used. Travellers choosing to camp outside the officially sanctioned sites, suitable or not, will then presumably be prosecuted as criminals under the new measures. The use of criminal rather than civil law is disproportionate and will mirror some of the shocking and distressing consequences of the criminalization of trespass in the south of Ireland.

The proposed lead role for PSNI in enforcing the new measures is likely to preclude any improvement of the already strained relationship between Travellers and police and do nothing to support the promised move towards a ‘new beginning to policing’. The PSNI still have not fully implemented the ACPO guidelines on race equality and have no effective strategy for provision of anti-racist training for members.

The final ignominy is that consultation paper suggests that Traveller representative groups are expected to be involved in a partnership to enforce the legislation. These organisations were not invited to be members of the secretive working party which examined the issue of illegal camping – there was no hint of partnership at that stage of the process.

Nomadism and the community sector – from settlement to partnership

In Ireland, the community and voluntary sector began to intervene in a concerted fashion in the situation of Travellers for the first time with the development of the Itinerant Settlement Movement. This movement was explicitly sedentarist – it was defined by its commitment to ‘settlement’ - the key to ‘helping’ Travellers was to ‘settle’ them. This movement took its lead from the southern Commission on Itinerancy and its report of 1963. It developed earlier and with greater impact in the south of Ireland – the north adopted the same paradigm but it was generally a ‘Catholic’ social phenomena. The northern state generally ignored the itinerant settlement movement, perhaps precisely because it was a southern ‘Catholic’ phenomenon.

Itinerant settlement was more than just another aspect of the dominant thinking on Travellers – it was the paradigm within which Travellers were to be ‘helped’. In other words, there was no justice or equality for Travellers separate from the process of ending their nomadism. This changed in the 1980s as elements within the Traveller support movement began to critique the notion of settlement as a ‘solution’ to Traveller equality issues. Once again this process developed first in the south of Ireland and was echoed in the north. A new paradigm evolved which repudiated the notion of settlement and began to articulate Traveller inequality in the context of the concepts of anti-Traveller racism and Traveller ethnicity. This change was first symbolized by the Traveller-only organisation Minceir Misli and later associated with organisations like Pavee Point (formerly DTEDG) in Dublin. Groups like these regarded nomadism as a crucially important and positive part of Traveller identity. The legacy of assimilationism has largely faded, although there are still individuals within the Traveller Support Movement who subscribe to the notion that ‘settlement’ is the best ‘solution’ to the problems of Travellers.

The Legal Context – Travellers and nomadism in Law in Ireland

While anti-nomadism informed attitudes and practices towards Travellers from the 2nd World War, legislative protection from anti-Traveller discrimination developed more recently. In the north, the Race Relations Order (1997), the Report of the PSI Working Group and the Housing Bill (2000) all marked a movement towards acceptance of Traveller ethnicity and, more specifically, an acceptance of the legitimacy of nomadism within that identity.16 In the south, Traveller ethnicity has been less explicitly recognised, but the right of Travellers not to be discriminated against as Travellers has been integrated into broader equality measures. This situation has been further confused by a recent statement in the Dáil by Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell in response to a question about the refusal to recognise Travellers as an ethnic group in the preparation report on the UN Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination.17 The Minister’s statement implies the anomalous situation in which Travellers are explicitly recognised as an ethnic/racial group in law (and in British Government reports to the CERD) in the north of Ireland but not in the south. Despite this recent confusion, however, legislative interventions, north and south, have almost ended the prevarication around Traveller ethnicity and the related debate on the question of whether or not Travellers experience racism . Anti-Traveller discrimination generates the largest volume of work for the Equality Commission in the north and the Equality Authority in the south. Moreover, Travellers are routinely acknowledged and accepted as an ethnic group that can experience racism by most state institutions, north and south.

All this equality legislation and practice, however, has not contributed particularly to clarity around the notion of Traveller nomadism. Since the Dáil passed the Housing Act of 1988, Travellers and nomadism have been defined in a series of different and conflicting ways in both parts of Ireland (see Table One). The legislation in combination is far from clear on who Travellers are and how their relationship with nomadism should be defined. Thus Travellers are variously: ‘a class of persons who traditionally pursue or have pursued a nomadic way of life’; ‘the travelling community’; ‘the Traveller community’; ‘people with a shared history, culture and traditions including, historically, a nomadic way of life on the island of Ireland’. Nomadism, or ‘a nomadic way of life’ is not defined but it is taken to be definitive of being a Traveller. In other words, being nomadic (or at least part of a nomadic tradition) and being a Traveller have been accepted as inseparable in Irish legislation. There is, however, a continuum from the 1988 Housing Act of a people who are nomadic (regardless of ethnicity) to the 1997 Race Relations Order of a people who are a racial group (regardless of nomadism, except as a an historical legacy).

Table One: Statutory protection from discrimination and definitions of Travellers in Legislation, north and south

South

Housing Act 1988 – Section 13

Provision of sites for travellers.

13.—(1) This section applies to persons belonging to the class of persons who traditionally pursue or have pursued a nomadic way of life.

Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 – Section One

Interpretation.

1.—(1) In this Act— “hatred" means hatred against a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or national origins, membership of the travelling community or sexual orientation;

Employment Equality Act 1998 – Section Six

Discrimination for the purposes of this Act.

6.—(1) For the purposes of this Act, discrimination shall be taken to occur where, on any of the grounds in subsection (2) (in this Act referred to as "the discriminatory grounds"), one person is treated less favourably than another is, has been or would be treated.

(2) As between any 2 persons, the discriminatory grounds (and the descriptions of those grounds for the purposes of this Act) are….

(h) that they are of different race, colour, nationality or ethnic or national origins (in this Act referred to as "the ground of race"),

(i) that one is a member of the Traveller community and the other is not (in this Act referred to as "the Traveller community ground").

Equal Status Act 2000 – Section Two

Interpretation.

“Traveller community'' means the community of people who are commonly called Travellers and who are identified (both by themselves and others) as people with a shared history, culture and traditions including, historically, a nomadic way of life on the island of Ireland.

Housing (Traveller Accommodation) Act 1998 - To make provision for the accommodation needs of Travellers, to provided for the appointment of a National Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committee and Local Traveller Accommodation Consultative Committees and to provide for related matters…. "traveller" means a person to whom section 13 of the Act of 1988 (as amended by this Act) applies. [The amendment did not change the definition of ‘traveller’ from the 1988 Act cited above]

NORTH

Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997:

In this Order “racial grounds” ... includes the grounds of belonging to the Irish Traveller community, that is to say the community of people commonly so called who are identified (both by themselves and by others) as people with a shared history, culture and traditions including, historically, a nomadic way of life on the island of Ireland [and] “racial group” includes the Irish Traveller community. (1997: 9)

Northern Ireland Act 1998 – Section 75

Statutory duty on public authorities.

75. - (1) A public authority shall in carrying out its functions relating to Northern Ireland have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity-

(a) between persons of different religious belief, political opinion, racial group, age, marital status or sexual orientation;

(2) Without prejudice to its obligations under subsection (1), a public authority shall in carrying out its functions relating to Northern Ireland have regard to the desirability of promoting good relations between persons of different religious belief, political opinion or racial group.

[In this Act] “racial group" has the same meaning as in the Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997.

Northern Ireland Bill of Rights (draft)

2. Everyone has the right to be nomadic or sedentary and a right to change from one mode of living to the other (p.27)

Housing Bill (2002) (draft)

Clause 122… Provision of caravan sites for members of the Irish Traveller community

28A.(1) The Executive may :

(a) provide caravan sites for the accommodation of caravans of members of the Irish Traveller community, and

(b) manage those sites or lease them to some other person.

(2) For the purposes of paragraph (1), the Executive may, under Article 87, acquire land,

(a) on which to construct caravan sites,

(b) which is in use as a caravan site, or

(c) which has been laid out as a caravan site.

(3) The Executive may make such provision as appears to it desirable in connection with caravan sites provided under this Article and, in particular, may provide for the use of those occupying such sites, any services or facilities for their health or convenience that appear to it to be appropriate….

(7) In this Article,

(a) “caravan” and “caravan site” have the same meaning as in the Caravans Act (Northern Ireland) 1963; and

(b) any reference to the Irish Traveller community shall be construed in accordance with Article 5(2)(a) of the Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 (NI 6).”.

Chapter Four: Contemporary Nomadism in Ireland

I would hate to be settled. You have no choices at all – school and then university and then a job. We are free to go where we want and do what we want. Being a Traveller is the best thing in the world. Young Traveller woman, Rathkeale.

This chapter draws on the knowledge of the Traveller Support Movement across Ireland to paint a picture of contemporary Traveller nomadism in Ireland.18 In one sense there is nothing new about this reliance on local Traveller organisations – research in both the statutory and non-statutory sectors has relied heavily on the expertise and goodwill of the Traveller Support Movement for years. In another sense, however, it is a more formal recognition that this is usually the only way in which do meaningful research with or on Travellers. It is an acknowledgment of the key expertise of these social partners, whose partnership is often taken for granted.

There is also some basic demographic data for the South of Ireland from the Traveller Accommodation Unit of the Department of the Environment. There is no equivalent data from the Department of the Environment in the north – there has been no Traveller census since 1993 (DoE 1993). The nearest equivalent figures are contained in the Housing Executive’s Travellers Accomodation Needs Assessment in Northern Ireland (2002). It bears emphasis that the methodologies employed north and south are different. The figures are generally agreed to be fair approximations of the accommodation patterns of the Traveller population across the country, given the difficulties of doing any census of a nomadic population. The figures for the south tell us a couple of things. First, the proportion of Travellers identified as ‘transient’ is fairly small – in 2001 only 214 families out of 5150 are identified as such. Thus only 5% of Travellers belong the category which appears to be most obviously associated with continuing nomadism. A further 803 (or around 15%) are identified as ‘indigenous’ but living on the roadside. Thus only 20% of Travellers are living on the roadside in the south of Ireland and only a quarter of these is defined as ‘transient’. The definition of ‘transient’ is of course imposed by non-Travellers, the statistics say nothing about the self-definition of Travellers and whether they regard themselves as nomadic or ‘transient’ or not. Nevertheless, the figures are broadly accurate in terms of general trends around accommodation. Thus defined, the numbers of ‘transient Travellers’ has also increased substantially over recent years – from 158 families in 1998 to 188 in 1999 to 223 in 2000 to 214 in 2001. This, however, is as likely to represent the inexactitude of the methodology as it is a marked increase in Traveller nomadism.

There is also, however, a more fundamental problem with this figure for ‘transient’ families. It represents a categorization of Travellers in terms of forms of accommodation used not patterns of movement. As we have already seen, ITM estimates that round a quarter of all Travellers are moving at a given time. This movement can take place from any type of accommodation base and, indeed, is more likely to occur from a secure housing base.

Table Two: Traveller Families in south of Ireland by Accommodation Category

‘ON THE ROADSIDE’

TOTAL TRAVELLER FAMILIES

‘Indigenous’

‘Transient’

Accommodated by or with assistance

of L.A. and on the Roadside

1999

2000

2001

1999

2000

2001

1999

2000

2001

Carlow

30

20

11

0

0

12

60

45

61

Cavan

5

5

1

0

0

0

49

48

49

Clare

37

39

43

0

4

20

107

119

142

Cork (City)

12

9

12

4

37

36

196

223

247

Cork (County)

28

20

23

17

10

12

168

151

161

Donegal

35

39

21

0

0

0

116

121

130

Dublin (City)

95

62

46

18

0

0

408

411

452

Dun Laoire/Rath.

23

29

19

0

0

0

96

103

121

Fingal

83

74

106

12

11

12

269

276

271

Galway (City)

26

25

12

0

0

0

193

197

199

Galway (County)

80

64

69

4

4

10

333

331

355

Kerry

13

12

12

3

3

0

225

228

204

Kildare

15

14

7

23

43

11

68

98

70

Kilkenny

8

7

6

4

6

4

65

72

70

Laois

15

21

22

0

0

0

65

80

91

Leitrim

0

0

0

0

0

1

24

22

33

Limerick (City)

7

4

2

4

3

0

66

70

63

Limerick (County)

53

32

31

3

7

10

220

196

208

Longford

6

8

8

12

8

1

158

162

162

Louth

11

13

6

0

0

0

157

170

177

Mayo

56

53

47

1

0

1

160

175

174

Meath

8

7

9

4

5

5

146

146

156

Monaghan

0

2

2

1

0

3

57

58

66

Offaly

56

55

46

22

4

5

156

145

145

Roscommon

9

2

0

0

1

11

47

44

53

Sligo

12

14

10

11

16

16

59

83

82

South Dublin

90

76

66

0

0

0

364

350

398

North Tipperary

29

27

23

7

4

5

113

115

121

South Tipperary

21

19

16

4

1

0

89

85

87

Waterford (City)

8

2

5

6

6

8

93

99

112

Waterford (County)

1

2

2

11

10

9

37

39

39

Westmeath

11

4

11

0

14

4

88

91

98

Wexford

110

88

83

0

3

0

230

230

239

Wicklow

26

22

26

17

23

18

108

115

114

TOTALS

1019

870

803

188

223

214

4790

4898

5150

Source: Traveller Accommodation Unit, Department of the Environment.

Table Three: Traveller Families in the north of Ireland in 2002 by Accommodation Category

Belfast

Derry

Newry

Dun-

gannon

Armagh

Other

Total

%

%

%

%

%

%

%

Social Housing

7

5

20

15

15

11

13

10

22

17

55

42

132

100

Serviced Site

<5

5

18

27

12

18

25

38

7

12

66

100

Side of the road

<5

3

9

27

8

24

16

47

34

100

Co-operated site

23

79

6

21

29

100

home

6

33

<5

6

5

28

<5

6

5

28

18

100

Other

5

14

<5

8

<5

11

25

68

37

100

Total

45

14

41

13

37

12

53

17

31

10

109

34

316

100

Source: Traveller Accommodation Needs Assessment 2002.

The figures for the north do not employ the same categories as the southern research. They tell us less about the geographic spread of nomadism but they give us much greater detail on attitudes towards nomadism as well as other dimensions of Traveller accommodation. They suggest that around 10% of Travellers are living ‘on the side of the road’ across the north:

More than two-fifths of respondents (42%)said their current accommodation was social housing (i.e. Housing Executive or Housing Associations). Twenty-one percent said they lived on a serviced site;11%said they lived by the side of the road and 9% lived on a co-operated site. Six percent of respondents said their tenure was privately rented accommodation and 4% were in grouped accommodation. The remaining 7% were in other types of accommodation. (2002: 21)

This research indicates around 20% of Travellers routinely travelling, with those living by the side of the road much more likely to travel than people in other accommodation:

One-fifth (20%)of respondents said that they travelled and the remaining 80% did not. When asked if they would travel if they had a secure base,28% said they would do so. Of those who travelled, almost two-fifths (39%:24) said they would normally travel for between one and three months per year and 32%(20)said they travelled for less than one month per year. When asked what season of the year they would normally travel,71%(44) said they would normally travel during the summer months.

Analysis by tenure shows differing incidences of travelling within each tenure type. Less than one-sixth (14%:9) in serviced sites said they travelled, compared with 79% (27)of those living by the side of the road. Twenty-one percent (6) of respondents living in co-operated sites said they travelled as did 11% (15)in social housing and 6% (<5) in privately rented accommodation. (2002: 29)

The Housing Executive research has much more detail on attitudes to travel and other dimensions of Traveller accommodation than the southern research. For example, they asked a question about travel from a ‘secure base’ which suggested that nomadism would increase if Travellers had more secure accommodation:

More than one-quarter (28%)of respondents said they would travel if they had a secure base (an increase of 8%).Reasons given for travelling were economic (26%:23), family related (57%:51)or ‘holiday ’ (31%:27).Of those who said they would travel if they had a secure base, more than one-third (34%:30)said they were planning or intending to travel within the following six months.

Although they employ different methodologies and categorizations, the northern and southern research suggest no huge difference between levels of movement and nomadism, north and south. Our research sought to explore in much more depth some of the nuances of and attitudes towards this movement. Our research with the Traveller support movement and with Traveller focus groups addressed a series of questions related to contemporary nomadism.

Proportion of Travellers travelling

We asked a question about how many and what proportion of the Travellers different groups work with are traveling during the year. As a general rule it seems that the more nomadic a Traveller family is, the less contact that they will have with the local support movement:

We try to keep contact with all Travellers who live or stop in Cork. However, for many of the more nomadic Travellers, this might consist of no more than patchy contact, once or twice a year, depending on how long they stop. We have a lot of contact with the Travellers who live in the group housing scheme and in the halting sites. It is through these contacts we have learned about the more nomadic Travellers. (Cork)

It is also the case that nomadic Travellers remain a partially ‘hidden’ population, despite the improvements in census taking over recent years:

There are 200 Traveller families in Cork according to official local authority figures. However it is our understanding that the families are counted on one day, so even though the figure includes transient Travellers living on unofficial roadside sites, it does not present the full picture of nomadism throughout the year. We also believe that the local authority misses many fo the unofficial sites . For example, the Traveller Visibility Group recently gave information to the Citizen Traveller Campaign that here are presently 22 unofficial roadside sites. The figure the local authority gave to Citizen Traveler is three sites. (Cork)

It is clear that there is still a huge level of movement among Travellers. Any census is premised upon situating the Travellers at the time that it is taken – Traveller nomadism is, however, the very antithesis of such sedentary notions of ‘fixed abode’. Travellers are never ‘from somewhere’ in this sense – they are coming from somewhere and going somewhere else.

Patterns of Movement

We asked a question about where Travellers that support groups were working with were coming from and going to. It is clear that most nomadism occurs within a defined pattern across a relatively small number of counties. Despite the stereotypes about aimless wandering, most traditional Traveller nomadism followed well-defined and cyclical routes. This continues with contemporary nomadism:

Traveller families in Tralee would normally go traveling for the summer when the children would finish up for the summer holidays. They go back to the same places every year they have with the last 20 or 25 years because the Travellers in Kerry do a lot of trading, they go to a lot of different fairs and markets…. They would go to all these fairs and in between all these fairs there would be small markets or car boot sales that they would go to and then after Puck Fair they would come back home for the Rose of Tralee which is on the end of August. They would not go traveling then after that because the children would be going back to school the following week. So they would just settled back in home and they would just do the odd fairs and markets during the winter but would not stay away from home any more than a week. At the markets they would sell stuff like toys, tools and household goods. (Kerry Travellers Development Project)

People tend to travel in a circle from Kilkenny to Waterford, to Cork to Limerick, to Tipperary and back to Kilkenny. Some families will travel to Tullamore. Climbing Croagh Patrick and visiting Knock are dreams fo many and some would manage to do that. Families do not travel normally to Britain or Europe. (Kilkenny)

The families travel each year to the same traditional campsites around Ireland. Traveller families that have children at school travel only when the children have holidays from school. (Galway Travellers Support Group)

They travel to places such as Cork, Galway, Clonmel, Belfast and Great Britain and Europe. The pattern is mainly of a seasonal nature, taking place during the summer season and to coincide with fairs and markets to facilitate the dealing of horse/vending and to attend religious occasions (Knock 15th August). Travel usually involves 6-7 groups traveling together (related and otherwise). One family in particular travel to mainland Europe for economic purposes. (Limerick)

There is also growing movement between Ireland and Britain and continental Europe but this still represents a relatively small proportion of the nomadic Traveller population:

The Glen Road families would be traveling to London, Derby, Glasgow, Derry and Dublin. Another family goes to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Derry. Another family travel and live in Germany, France, Denmark and Belgium and Holland – they are mostly tarmacing. There are two families who travel to Philadelphia in the USA. There wouldn’t be much movement between Travellers in the north and the south of Ireland except to Dublin. (Belfast Travellers Education and Development Group)

As we have seen, travelling always had a seasonal element to it. This is, however, becoming ever more pronounced. Most Travellers are likely to travel in the summer months. The increasing importance of education to many Travellers compounds this trend:

Several Traveller families living in Waterford City leave their residence for the summer. This usually starts in and about the beginning of the school holidays. Most families return for the beginning of the school year in September, but some families remain travelling until late October…. Some Travellers state, because the travelling is “in you”, they could not possibly stay for the summer in Waterford. 3-4 Families often start out travelling together, but numbers can increase along the way. Trips to Knock can consist of 10-30 caravans. Having company and not being lonely are important reasons for this, other reasons are a sense of security in numbers when hassled by the police or farmers, or having someone to keep an eye on the caravans of everyone in the group. (Waterford)

Travellers who live in the Newry town area, confine traveling to the summer months i.e. May-August, to ensure children receive sacraments in school. Only some of the families travel, visiting family in Eire, Scotland and other parts o