Did we give you the kilt and the bagpipe, and in return you gave us silence ?
This isn’t a metaphor. It’s a reckoning.
For generations, Scottish Gypsy/Travellers were persecuted not only through public disdain but through deliberate, state-backed efforts to erase who we are. In March 2025, the Scottish Government finally admitted it: what happened to us was cultural genocide.
But with all due respect—some of us didn’t need your apology to know that.
The Tinker Experiment: Assimilation as Annihilation
From the 1940s to the 1980s, the Scottish state, alongside churches and social work departments, carried out what became known as the Tinker Experiment. On the surface, it looked like support—offering “settled” housing to Traveller families. But scratch beneath that, and the truth is violent.
Families were moved into substandard, isolated huts. Refusal meant one thing: your children could be taken.
And for thousands—they were.
These weren’t isolated incidents. This was systemic: a long-term strategy to destroy a nomadic, oral, culturally rich people by separating them from the very things that made them whole.
The Shadow of Wolfgang Abel
This wasn’t just misguided policy. It was ideological.
In 1938, Wolfgang Abel, a Nazi eugenicist later linked to SS racial programs, was invited to Scotland to observe and document Gypsy/Travellers. He’d already been classifying Roma and Sinti families across Europe for “scientific” study—many of whom would later be murdered in the Holocaust.
So why was he allowed here?
Why did Scotland open its doors to someone building the racial arguments that underpinned genocide?
And what influence did his visit have on what came next?
Did My Family?
Did my family flee to England to escape the whispers of Wolfgang Abel?
Did they become refugees—not from distant wars or famines—but from the cold, calculated policies designed to erase us?
Did they carry with them the burden of silence, the weight of stolen language, the shame forced upon them by a state that saw our very existence as a problem?
My Family: Refugees from Silence
We crossed borders seeking safety from more than physical violence.
We fled a system that measured us, profiled us, and deemed us unworthy.
A system that didn’t just take our homes—but took our children, our words, and our pride.
Yet even in England, the damage followed.
I grew up hearing my words mocked by others—”that’s not real Romanes”—and I had no answer because the language I spoke was silenced by history.
It wasn’t until my fourth decade that I learned those words were Scottish Cant, a resilient code of survival erased by those who feared our strength.
Because of this, I carried a silence that was never mine to bear.
First Nations Echoes: Across Oceans, The Same Methods
You don’t have to look far to see this wasn’t unique.
In the United States, First Nations children were stolen from their families and placed in boarding schools designed to “kill the Indian, save the man.” Their language was beaten out of them. Their identities scrubbed clean. They returned home—if they returned—strangers to their own people.
The tactics were different.
But the goal was the same.
In both cases: take the children. Kill the language. Control the land. Destroy the future.
We were not failed by the system.
We were the target of the system.
Do We Deserve Reparations?
Yes.
Without question.
Because others have received them:
- First Nations peoples in the U.S. have seen land returned, educational reparations, and state-funded cultural revival programs.
- The Windrush Generation were compensated for unlawful deportations and systemic racism.
- Survivors of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries received formal apologies and financial redress.
So why not us?
What Would Reparations Look Like?
We’re not asking for favours.
We’re asking for what is owed.
Reparations must include:
- A full and public state-funded apology, delivered with survivors, not just to them
- Financial compensation for families who suffered forced removal and assimilation
- Investment in cultural and language revival, especially for Scottish Cant and Traveller storytelling traditions
- Traveller-led education, housing, and mental health reform
- Curriculum change—teach our history, don’t bury it
- Memorials and legal protections for traditional halting sites like Bobbin Mill
Reparations are not handouts.
They are debt repayments for generations of harm.
The Final Question
So again, let me ask:
- Did we give you the kilt and bagpipes, and in return you burned our stopping places?
- Did we share our stories and crafts, only for our children to be stripped from our arms?
- Did we build Scotland’s culture, only to be banished from its identity?
You didn’t just break us.
You tried to build a silence inside us.
Now, will you help us speak back?
