Irish Travellers and Romany Gypsies

This article was written by Eion Gibbs, whom I met in Bucharest in April 2015. He was at the tail-end of a great walk across Europe, from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, a ten-month epic in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh Fermor. After the furore I caused by expressing my opinion about the Romany Gypsies (in this article), I asked Eion to share his experiences of meeting this minority along the roads of Central and Eastern Europe. To my surprise and delight he offered me this article first, about his impressions from the UK…

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“It’s those bloody Tinks, they’ve been at it again.” The farmer growled, peering at the meandering scar of muddy tracks. Dotted around the field were craters where a handbrake turn must have been attempted.

“Damn Rockers.” He snorted and stalked off.

I had never met a member of the “Rocker” gang but I’d heard about them in warning tones and seen the aftermath of their latest joyride. I was about 7 years old and had a strange impression of what they must look like. Demonic probably sums it up! They occupied the same part of my imagination as fairy tales. Dangerous, lawless and elusive folk who, if you were unfortunate enough to encounter, you’d be lucky to get out alive.

The “Rockers” were part of the Irish Travellers that had found their way to the Highlands of Scotland and were the foundation of my earliest preconception of that lifestyle. They were wholeheartedly disliked by the local population and the first to be blamed if anything went missing, from cement mıxers and the lead from roofs to heavy machinery and livestock. The fact that I never came across one reinforced my fantasy of them as wild and nocturnal beings. To me they came alive in the mysterious small hours of the night when the rest of the world was doing the respectable thing and sleeping tucked up in bed.

Soon I went away from home to a boarding school in England until I was 18; the existence of the Irish Travellers largely forgotten.

Then, in 2010, Channel 4 aired a programme called “Big Fat Gypsy Wedding”. Unsurprisingly, it was morbidly sensational for the British public. The light was going to be shone on a community that everyone knew about but knew nothing of. Sure, they had sweeping generalisations, but they wanted self-satisfying validation. The creators played up to this tremendously.

You can practically hear them in the editing room cherry picking the most gasp-inducing clips: “Yeah, put that bit about bare knuckle boxing being a basic part of everyday life in.” And: “Cut it after she says she can’t wait to get married as soon as she turns 16.” The public adored tutting at this apparently savage culture from their armchairs once a week, watching it in open-mouthed disbelief as if it were a Victorian freak show.

Understandably there was anger from the clearer thinkers and the traveller communities themselves at how they had been represented. Jane Jackson of the Rural Media Company said: “It’s posing as a documentary. The voiceover is saying we’re going to let into the secrets of the traveller community – and it [is] just not true… They’re made to look totally feckless, not really to be taken seriously as an ethnic group.” A spokesman for the Romany Gypsies called Billy Welch was irritated by the lack of distinction between the separate communities, taking offence to the title not discerning between Irish Travellers and Romany Gypsies. “They called the show “Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” and you’ve yet to see a Romany Gypsy in it.”

The programme never had any intention of differentiating between anything. It accurately plucked the most alien traditions to the British public’s perspective and centred on them almost exclusively. Why? To reward viewers for their preconceptions, to give people something to gawk at, and feel superior to, and to act as a form of macabre entertainment.

Now, before I distance myself too much by taking the easy high road, condemning the conceited population, I will admit that I was one of them. I sat with friends and absorbed the programme at face value. We’d giggle at the absurdities and take Channel 4’s representation as the undisputed truth. That lifestyle was to my mind an existence of only violence, petty theft, early marriage and alcoholism. Nothing more. I had nothing else to go on. It was all I’d seen, all I’d heard, it was everything. In hindsight, how unfortunate. How sad that misconceptions are used to distance even further an already ostracised community.

Then something interesting happened. The Irish Traveller Paddy Doherty, a regular on “Big Fat Gypsy Wedding”, entered into the 8th series of Celebrity Big Brother. Not only that, but he won! In a programme where the winner is that person with the most public support, what does this say? Paddy never received a nomination for eviction and came out ahead of other celebrities such as Kerry Katona, Jedward and Sally Bercow. Admittedly they’re not Hollywood A-listers but they were adored personalities.

To my mind, Paddy won because the public expected a lion but ended up with a pussycat and were grateful for it. They felt the hot breath of a powerful beast (his former career was bare knuckle boxing) and waited for the bite, but received a wet lick instead. Paddy admitted at some point that the toughness in “Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” had all been a show, no doubt greatly encouraged by the director. Adoration is the illegitimate child of relief, so, in a twist, it turns out people can enjoy not having their preconceptions reinforced and don’t mind standing corrected… but only in rather a specific way!

He even went on to star in another television show as a result of an unlikely friendship with Sally Bercow, who is the wife of the speaker of the House of Commons. It was called “When Paddy Met Sally” (urgh!) and was a strain of “Wife Swap” where they both lived in each other’s worlds for awhile and adhered to their individual rules. A heartwarming bridge between two different worlds was formed by an unexpected friendship. One that would never have happened in a million years if it wasn’t for the strange tides of the media.

Alas, while Paddy rose as the viewer’s darling, he could not bring his old community with him. Instead, it seems he’s been adopted. Our loved TV personality with a quirky and increasingly hazy origin. I’ve dwelt on television for too long now but it is important. For good or bad, it is the modern day dispenser of preconceptions and it has given me many of mine.

So with this frankly rather absurd view of what Irish Travellers and Romany Gypsies were like, I set off on a yearlong walk from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul, confident of a re-education.

To be continued: Next week Eion will share his impressions from meeting Romany Gypsies in Eastern Europe (especially Romania and Bulgaria).