God forgive me, much as I deplore Traveller feuding, I couldn’t help but thrill at the courage of the outnumbered man in that fight. He ignored his wounds and continued to shout defiance and fight back at his attackers. He knew, like any Traveller man knows, that there is no shame in being beaten in a fight. But to run away from a fight would be a shame that he would never recover from. A Traveller who runs from a fight would bring shame on his family for generations to come. He would no longer be respected by other Traveller men. And, as the women’s screams in his ears would leave him in no doubt of as he fought, if he were to run away he would never again be considered to be a man worth marrying.
The fight ended abruptly as the two attackers broke off and ran, probably having seen the three male Gardaí emerge from the courthouse to break things up (I have seen female Gardaí act with courage and professionalism in situations like this but the breaking up of a vicious fight is something left to male Gardaí, because men know what is expected of them). The Gardaí went to the aid of the injured man. I heard them give him the perfunctory advice that they would be able to successfully prosecute if he was willing to testify against his attackers. Of course, he would not. To give state’s evidence against another Traveller would be as unthinkable as running from a fight.
Traveller feuds are one of the main reasons that Travellers end up in court. Travellers are up for lawbreaking to a degree that is hugely disproportionate to their numbers. No data are published on the number of Travellers in court or in prison, just as there is no data published on the nationality of offenders. That means that anyone who spends any time in courts, as I do, for one, is as good an authority on this as you are likely to get. If you want to check for yourself, spend a few days at your local district court. If you don’t want to go into the court, take a look at the list displayed in the court foyer for that day’s criminal (as distinct from civil) cases. Of the Irish surnames you will see, surnames common in the Traveller community will be clearly over-represented.
The prison population is disproportionately made up of Travellers, as you will find if you stand outside a prison and meet visitors, as I often do. Most recently, last December, I made a podcast from outside Cloverhill Prison in Clondalkin in Dublin. Of the Irish people I met that day, Travellers made up perhaps half of those. My podcast didn’t adequately reflect that. One weakness of the vox pop as a journalistic tool is that interviewees are largely self-selecting and Travellers don’t generally self-select when I introduce myself. “Give him no information”, they might say, and the word “information” is spat out as if it were something filthy. The non-Traveller Irish and the East Europeans, by contrast, are far more likely to stand and speak candidly about what it’s like having someone they love in prison.
It’s not just people who frequent courts and prison car parks, as I do, who believe that Travellers are inordinately involved in law-breaking. When shop security staff see a Traveller family come in they go on high alert. That’s something that Travellers will tell you that they find deeply offensive, and who can blame them? But people running businesses think statistically, as we all do when assessing risk. Not all Travellers shoplift but, they believe, more than an average number of them do. That’s why Travellers will be watched with suspicion in a way that non-Travellers will not be. Is that racism? I don’t think so. And to prove that I’ll ask you to consider what the reaction of shop security staff will be when they see a group of copious-skirted Roma Gypsy women coming in. It will be the same reaction as it is for Travellers. And for the same reason. If racism were the reason for this suspicion it would not be directed specifically at Travellers and Roma, but rather at all sorts of people who are ethnically different to the shop staff. Racism has nothing to do with it.
So why do Travellers commit so much crime? Racists find that sort of question easy to answer. Some races are bad, they will say. Racism has an answer for everything and an explanation for nothing. But culture, that is human behaviour, is never ethnically specific, in my view. I believe Travellers end up before the courts at higher than average rates for two sets of reasons: one, the destructive effect of long-term social welfare dependency, which Travellers, most of whom are on social welfare, share along with all others who live that way of life; and two, the destructive effect of behaviours and beliefs particular to Traveller culture.
I’ll take social welfare dependency first. For working people, the incarceration of the main breadwinner of a family is a catastrophe; the family falls from a working wage to the welfare payment known as Lone Parents Allowance (at one time Prisoners Wives Allowance). Not so for a family chronically on social welfare. They will barely notice a difference in their income. If dad goes to prison the state will continue to look after his wife and children as the state has always done. Over the years at courts of law, I have met couples who tell me that the man is now resolved to give up drink or drugs or fighting or whatever and not go back to prison again. That would be nice. But that man doesn’t have the same incentive to stay out of prison as a working man has. The man permanently on welfare was never going to provide for his children anyway. He and his wife may even tell you that, for the sake of a peaceful home life, the family will be better off without him.
Social welfare dependency undermines men who would wish to make an honest living. Mothers have the job of bearing children and raising them but social welfare dependency makes fathers worse than useless once they have fulfilled the biological function of becoming a father. Women raising children on social welfare will tell you that their “book” is far more reliable as a source of income than is a man. And best not to marry him because, if ever he leaves you, you might be expected to pursue him for maintenance; stay single and you will get your lone parents pay without question. And best not to have a father to your children who will want to play too much of a role in raising his kids because that way you could come under suspicion of cohabiting and which would again put your welfare payment in jeopardy. Most important of all, don’t have a man who will ever get a job; so long as you have a man who is content to stay on the dole, your welfare payment will be safe. The perverse incentives of the social welfare system penalise men who would wish to work. But crime might still pay.
All of this is true for Travellers and non-Travellers alike, so what is particular about Traveller culture that leads to crime? Top of the list has to be feuding.
I’ll tell you about David who I met on his way out of Mountjoy Prison last September. David is a tall, athletically-built young man. There was a spring in his step as he walked out of the prison gates. He was carrying a clear plastic bag with a few belongings in it. He came towards me, petted my dog, and was obviously elated as his first words to me were to ask directions to Cumberland Street. That, I know, is the location of the social welfare office to which people are sent to get their first payment on release from prison. Yes, David confirmed to me, he had just been let out. He had got a surprise visit to his cell just an hour before to tell him the good news. He had served two years and six months for a Section 3 assault and had been expecting to do at least six months more. David agreed to speak for my podcast as we walked together for the ten minutes or so it took us to get to Cumberland Street. https://www.buzzsprout.com/
A Section 3 assault is serious. It means blood has been spilled. The victim was his cousin. A family feud, said David. “I come from a Traveller family so it’s not in my blood to back down”. As is typical with such feuds, the root cause seemed unknown and unimportant. What mattered was that the feud be pursued and no insult from the other side be left unavenged.
David was also a bare-knuckle boxer, which is why, he explained to me, he has a cauliflower ear. His father would put him into fights where men would lay bets. I asked David how his poor mother felt about that. His reply was telling: “We let the women know nothing”.
That’s how the patriarchy works. In Traveller culture, men rule. David could barely read and could not write at all, he told me. That’s because his dad had always had priorities for his son’s life other than sending him to school (people you see up before the courts for keeping their kids out of school are almost always, in my experience,Travellers). So whatever concerns David’s mother might have had over her son being denied an education and being brutalised in fights, her concerns were never going to matter. What mattered to the patriarchy was that David should do what was expected of him as a Traveller man.
Feuding makes Travellers homeless. When you find young Traveller men sleeping rough it is often for the same reasons that apply to non-Travellers, that is, addiction, mental illness, a dangerous home situation or whatever. But Travellers, you will find, have an additional, particular reason to flee their family home which is to escape feuding. I think Traveller feuds might have once served a purpose in causing extended families to fracture and scatter and thus reduce close interbreeding, but that social function is surely redundant now. There is nothing in the Traveller feud honour code that does any good to anyone these days. Some traditions are not worth saving, as Bono sings in a different context.
We need to stop artificially preserving the Traveller way of life.
The state should stop providing Traveller-specific housing areas. That’s Apartheid. That’s keeping people on reservations.
If people want to live in Traveller-only areas let them pay for it. Otherwise apply for local authority housing or buy or rent on the market like everyone else. We are told that Traveller-specific accommodation is necessary to preserve the Traveller way of life. I expect that’s true. It certainly helps to preserve the power of the patriarchy within each reservation which is good news for the patriarchs but not necessarily good news for all who will have to live the restricted way of life prescribed by those patriarchs.
If people want to live a nomadic way of life, wandering with their caravan from halting site to halting site, let them pay for it. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I don’t think that such a way of life could continue without being propped up by social welfare payments, the bill for which has to be met by working people. A way of life that could not survive without social welfare support can’t be said to be a viable way of life.
For the sake of Travellers who may wish to escape the oppressive culture into which they have been born, and for the sake of those yet to be born, we should stop treating Travellers differently to all other citizens. And if this should lead to the death of the Traveller way of life, then the Traveller way of life should be allowed to die.