Why Gypsy Culture is Vital to the UK

It’s very difficult to write about something pertaining to a word that you’re not comfortable using, without using it. With that in mind, I’m going to get out over and done with in the name of clarity of terms, and then I promise it won’t turn up again: pikey. I didn’t enjoy typing that, I almost never say it and hearing it said around me sends shivers down my spine. You might feel the same way, or you might glaze over it, wondering why I’m making such a big deal. That might be because you aren’t aware that it’s a derogatory term for a person of traveller heritage, otherwise known as a gypsy.

The common misconception is that it’s just like chav, something you can throw at anyone with fashion or material tastes that you think tacky, it’s a dangerous mistake to make. The term actually derives from ‘turnpike’, referencing the mobile lifestyle of gypsies and you might not think that sounds so bad, but most racist epithets have reasonably innocent etymology and even most swear-words. Cunt, for instance, is an amalgam of a number of different derivations, several of which are the names of goddesses. I’m not one to suggest that anybody ever need censor themselves, it’s like George Carlin said, words are neutral, it’s the context that makes them good or bad, but when a term born out of prejudice is banded around without the history or impact being taken into account it creates a weak-point in our culture where one specific type of racism is somehow more admissible than all the rest.

I’m speaking from personal experience, to some degree. It was everywhere at my school, even the teachers said it sometimes, it wasn’t until I uttered it in the presence of my parents that I realised it wasn’t just another nonsense insult, a silly word you can throw around with no risk of offending anyone like pleb or ponce. Later in life I realised that it’s not purely down to misinterpretation, the UK is rife with anti-gypsy sentiment, but it’s treated like a kind of ‘soft-serve’ racism, the kind that somehow isn’t as bad as calling out Asians or Africans or whoever else. It’s a phenomenon I find both weird and disheartening, gypsies have been with us for over 500 years, their broad, patchwork culture has informed ours for all that time and in many ways, given the current climate, they have things better figured out than we ever will.

The first thing you have to bear in mind is that even ‘gypsy’ is a bit of a catch-all term. Most commonly it applies to those of Romany descent, but it gets used to describe Irish travellers as well, despite there being very little to actually connect the two besides the lifestyle. The former originally came from Northern India and since then they’ve spread all across Europe and America, splintering off into other groups like the Sinti and more recently the Ashkali. Their culture is rooted in religion, diligence, cleanliness and art, music in particular. Numerous influential classic composers and folk musicians were of Roma origin and gypsy jazz speaks for itself, having influenced the growth and expansion of jazz music at large for the better part of a century. Django Reinhardt, arguably the most famous Romany musician there is, is often credited as one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time. With the advent of electro-swing, music from that era is getting more exposure by way of sampling and bands like Gogol Bordello take a great deal of influence from it.

 

On the other side of the equation, Irish travellers are alleged to be an ethnic strain that split from other native Irish over one thousand years ago, having first settled around other parts of Europe in the 13th century. Nobody really knows anything more about how they started and what information there is is debatable. Like the Roma the Irish have a distinctly religious bearing to their heritage. There’s a rich musical background there as well but sport also plays a vital role, particularly boxing. Bartley Gorman (who partially inspired Tom Hardy’s voice for Bane), John Joe Nevin and Tyson Fury were all born to traveller families. That’s not to say there aren’t problems on both sides, poverty is the main one, as well as the fact that many laws here and around the rest of the Western world can make a nomadic existence very, very difficult. There are countless stories throughout contemporary history of gypsies and travellers being evicted, deported and even executed on mass. Even nowadays the mortality rate is inexcusably high, with many congenital problems and infectious diseases that are well-addressed within other facets of the population plaguing gypsy groups.

This situation is not helped by the wider representation of gypsies. When the BBC were taken to task about Jeremy Clarkson’s use of the aforementioned word on Top Gear, they trucked out the old ‘we didn’t know it was offensive’ excuse and nothing ever came of it. My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding might have started out in some vaguely well-meaning way, but it comes across as a kind of sideshow attraction, inviting viewers to scrutinize and even mock the disparities between gypsy lifestyle and their own (even though the people who feature in the shows don’t exactly represent the culture at large, not even close).

In some sense, nomadic lifestyle and hands-on agricultural trade are more valuable than they’ve been in a long time. Depending on how the election turns out, the UK might well remained mired in a kind of nationwide boiling-frog-syndrome, feeling the heat rising around us but refusing to acknowledge it. The housing market is heading head-first for a crash, with prices inflating to the point of the ridiculous, stiffing renters and comprehensively fucking buyers over. Take my parents, when their house first went on the market in 1988 it was worth £80,000. Now if they were to make it sale-ready and put it back on the market they’d be looking at valuing somewhere in the half-a-million ballpark. The house is more or less exactly the same barring a few cosmetic changes, but the kitchen cabinets aren’t gold and the taps in the bathroom dispense water, not orgasms and cocaine, it’s fantasy money and one day soon that penny is going to drop, hard.

While I can’t seriously suggest that we all abandon the property ladder and start living on the move, there’s definitely something to be said for a more reserved, less material existence where you take your life with you. Many gypsies would settle, if they could, but UK laws make it very difficult for them to stay in any one place for too long. Bearing that in mind, as well as everything else that I’ve talked about, a more educated, respectful attitude towards gypsies is long, long overdue. The UK is far from the worst place in the world for it, recently the Spanish dictionary actually listed ‘swindlers’ as an alternate definition and Eastern Europe has witnessed some awful, abhorrent acts of violence against gypsies, particularly in the past 30 years but so much of our cultural and agricultural infrastructure has roots in gypsy culture that it is unacceptable to me that there’s such a swath of willful, ignorant prejudice against them. Ukip might (and do, all the fucking time) bluster about closing our borders and most level-headed people are understandably vexed by it but somehow an entire subculture of people who have been a part of the UK for half-a-millennium or more are still being treated like they don’t belong. Time for change.

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