Gypsies and Travellers: Empowerment and Inclusion in British Society ed. by Joanna Richardson and Andrew Ryder (review)

This edited collection is an important and timely contribution to the limited academic literature examining current challenges facing Gypsies and Travellers in the UK. Here the underpinning focus is on the Coalition government’s drive towards localism and ‘The Big Society’ which can be seen as an attempt to increase local majoritarian democracy and to drive down the costs associated with central regulation and big government.

It has been a very welcome opportunity for me to write this book review. My own research began during the debates surrounding the introduction of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in 1994, the legislation that ended the statutory duty to provide caravan sites for Gypsies and Travellers. The legislation was enacted against opposition from some unlikely allies, including the Country Landowners Association and the Council for The Protection of Rural England. In many ways the removal of this duty placed on local authorities is a precursor to the localism agenda that we see today. It went hand in hand with an objection raised by local residents in council planning meetings that travelling people were being favoured by special planning rules. During one appeal against a planned site in Anstey, Leicestershire I witnessed the extent of local opposition, often bordering on vitriolic hostility. The opposition was organised and effective. Absent from much of this process was the input of the travelling community. This is unfortunate but not at all surprising. It is of course much harder to hate the Other when you realise that they are just like you, seeking a secure and stable life for their family. The highly publicised Dale Farm eviction in 2011 further illustrates how localism can exclude and marginalise minority communities. It also demonstrates how common sense can be lost in such a framework. The Dale Farm site, as Lord Avebury reminds us, was constructed on a former scrap-yard, in a county where 47.4 per cent of travelling people had no authorised place to reside, at an estimated cost of £18 million.

The lessons that can be learned from these experiences are reflected in the concerns expressed by many of the authors in this timely contribution. In his foreword, Lord Avebury, a tireless campaigner for the rights of travelling people, argues that the key to reducing community tensions and enforcement costs, as well as improving the lives of travelling people, is through the provision of Gypsy and Traveller sites and the allocation of land for site development. Without this guarantee, it is difficult to see how much needed advances can be made in health and education.

However, this book is not simply a fresh rehearsal of old arguments. Part One examines the impact of Coalition policies in several critical areas; including accommodation, health and education, whereas Part Two focuses on the empowerment of Gypsy and Traveller communities. All too often the voices of travelling people are absent from academic literature but this work offers contributions from two important Gypsy-traveller voices, Richard O’Neill and Maggie Bendell-Smith. Their contributions, along with those of important Gypsy Traveller campaigners such as Brian Foster and David Smith, provide insight into the practical consequences of new policy directions.

In ‘Setting the Context: Gypsies and Travellers in British Society’ pp. 3–10, Richardson and Ryder demonstrate how developments in law and policy can unintentionally impact on Gypsy and Traveller communities. They note how the repeal of the statutory duty to provide sites left up to one-third of travelling families without any legal right of abode. Many of the strategies adopted in an attempt to address the site shortage, including Planning Circular 01/06, were subsequently abandoned by the Coalition government. The impact of the Localism Act on community relations does not appear to have been fully considered in policy circles, a fact that could in part be explained by the absence of input from the travelling community on...