What Kemi Badenoch’s comments reveal about Britain’s treatment of Gypsy and Traveller communities
Today, I listened to comments from Kemi Badenoch regarding Gypsy and Traveller communities and policing.
I should have been shocked.
Instead, I found myself feeling something closer to disappointment.
Not because the comments were new. Sadly, they were not. They simply repeated a narrative that our communities have heard for generations: that Gypsy and Traveller people somehow exist outside the rules that everyone else must follow.
The suggestion that Gypsy and Traveller communities are “getting away with things that other people wouldn’t get away with” is not only deeply concerning – it is demonstrably false.
In fact, many people from our communities would argue the exact opposite.
We are more likely to be stopped. More likely to be moved on. More likely to face enforcement action. More likely to have our lives scrutinised by local authorities, police forces, planning departments and the media. We live under a level of public surveillance that most settled communities would find intolerable.
Yet somehow, despite this reality, the myth persists that Gypsy and Traveller people receive special treatment.
This is how structural racism works.
It does not always arrive as overt hatred. It does not always come wrapped in racial slurs. Sometimes it sounds reasonable. Sometimes it sounds like common sense. Sometimes it comes from politicians speaking with such confidence that people assume what they are saying must be true.
But confidence is not evidence.
What concerned me most was not simply the comments themselves, but what they revealed.
They revealed how deeply embedded anti-Gypsy racism remains within British society.
They revealed how acceptable it still is to speak about entire ethnic groups as though they are a social problem.
And they revealed how little understanding there is of our history, our cultures and the policies that have shaped our lives.
Romani Gypsies have lived in Britain for more than 600 years, arriving from Northern India and becoming an integral part of Britain’s social, economic and cultural history.
Irish Travellers are a recognised ethnic minority and are widely believed to be descendants of some of the oldest indigenous peoples of Ireland, carrying a distinct culture, language and identity that predates the modern Irish state.
Scottish Gypsy Travellers are similarly understood to descend from some of Scotland’s oldest travelling and indigenous populations, maintaining traditions, histories and cultural practices that have existed for centuries.
Together, these communities represent some of the oldest surviving minority cultures across Britain and Ireland.
Yet despite their deep roots, all have experienced centuries of discrimination, forced assimilation, exclusion and repeated attempts to erase their identities.
From laws designed to expel us, to policies intended to settle us, to the removal of children from their families, our communities have repeatedly been treated as a problem to be managed rather than peoples whose cultures deserved protection and respect.
Despite all of this, we are still here.
Our languages survive.
Our traditions survive.
Our identities survive.
That resilience deserves recognition.
Instead, we continue to be discussed through the language of suspicion and blame.
What makes these comments particularly disappointing is that they are directed towards ethnic minority communities whose histories are deeply intertwined with colonialism, displacement, assimilation and state intervention.
As somebody from a Global Majority background herself, Kemi Badenoch understands what it means to belong to a community that has experienced prejudice and discrimination.
That is precisely why these comments feel so disappointing.
The experience of racism should build solidarity.
It should help us recognise injustice wherever it appears.
It should never be used to legitimise prejudice against another ethnic minority.
Because this is not really about policing.
It is about narratives.
For centuries, colonial systems have worked by identifying communities as different, portraying them as problematic, creating laws that restrict their way of life and then blaming those same communities for the consequences.
Gypsy and Traveller communities know this pattern all too well.
Take planning, for example.
One of the recurring narratives used against our communities is the claim that we somehow abuse the planning system.
The reality is that retrospective planning applications are completely lawful.
They are available to everyone.
Developers use them.
Businesses use them.
Homeowners use them.
Farmers use them.
The planning system explicitly allows applications to be submitted retrospectively.
Yet when a Gypsy or Traveller family uses the same legal process, it is often presented as evidence of criminality or preferential treatment.
The law is apparently acceptable when everyone else uses it.
The outrage only seems to emerge when Gypsy and Traveller families do.
But perhaps the biggest omission from conversations like these is the question of why we are seeing more private Gypsy and Traveller sites in the first place.
The answer is remarkably simple.
Successive governments have spent decades making traditional nomadic lifestyles increasingly difficult.
Traditional stopping places have disappeared.
Roadside living has been subjected to ever greater enforcement.
Local authorities have consistently failed to provide sufficient sites.
The criminalisation of unauthorised encampments through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act has made roadside living even more precarious for many families.
The result should surprise nobody.
When families are denied places to stop, they look for places to settle.
When governments make roadside living impossible, people seek private land.
When authorised sites are unavailable, people try to create them.
The increase in planning applications and private family sites is not evidence of communities breaking the system.
It is evidence of communities adapting to a system that has left them with few alternatives.
The irony is that the very communities being criticised today are often responding rationally to policies designed to make their traditional way of life impossible. What is presented as a policing issue is, in reality, the predictable outcome of decades of planning failures, chronic site shortages and legislative hostility towards nomadic ways of life.
In many ways, the growth in private sites is a direct response to the very policies promoted by the political party Kemi Badenoch represents.
You cannot make nomadism impossible and then complain when people stop being nomadic.
You cannot close stopping places and then complain when families purchase land.
You cannot fail to provide enough sites and then express outrage when people attempt to provide them for themselves.
That is not a community failure.
It is a policy failure.
And perhaps that is the most frustrating part of all.
Rather than acknowledging decades of policy decisions that have created the current situation, politicians continue to frame Gypsy and Traveller communities as the problem.
If a politician stood before the country and suggested that Black communities, Jewish communities, Muslim communities or Irish communities routinely get away with things that other people would not, there would quite rightly be outrage.
The fact that similar claims can still be made about Gypsy and Traveller communities with relatively little challenge tells us everything we need to know about the place anti-Gypsy racism continues to occupy within public life.
The reality is that Gypsy and Traveller communities do not need politicians to speak about us.
We need politicians to listen.
Listen to the families waiting years for planning decisions because there are not enough authorised pitches.
Listen to the mothers fighting racism in schools.
Listen to the young people facing some of the worst educational outcomes in the country.
Listen to the elders who have spent a lifetime watching governments create problems and then blame our communities for living with the consequences.
Listen to the communities who have repeatedly proposed solutions such as negotiated stopping, better site provision, meaningful consultation and culturally competent policy making, only to be ignored while enforcement powers continue to expand.
Because the honest truth is this:
Gypsy and Traveller communities are not receiving special treatment.
For centuries we have been receiving different treatment.
The laws may have changed.
The language may have changed.
But the underlying assumptions often remain the same.
The assumption that our way of life is inherently problematic.
The assumption that our communities require control rather than understanding.
The assumption that when policy fails, it must somehow be our fault.
And until politicians are willing to confront those assumptions, they will continue to mistake the consequences of discrimination for evidence of privilege.
Six hundred years later, we are still fighting for the same thing we have always fought for.
Not special treatment.
Equal treatment.
