Travellers are often reported as the subject of explicit political and cultural discrimination, with politicians being elected on promises to block Traveller housing in local communities and individuals frequently refusing service in pubs, shops and hotels.
Are the Travellers in England from this group?
For the most part. Although other traveller communities are Roma or just people who went to a rave in 1991 and never came home.
Is this serious or a joke?
It’s a humorous way of phrasing it, but a small percentage of GRT in the U.K. are New Age Travellers and are distinct from Travellers and Roma/Romani: they aren’t from any particular ethnic background, they’re people who have just decided they prefer a more itinerant or non-conventional life and often live on canal boats and in converted vans and buses. The New Age movement originated in the 1960s and 1970s, they frequently travelled between and met up at music festivals - the sort of people who might previously have been called hippies and tend to choose the lifestyle because they want to be off-grid, self-reliant, and free from “The Man” rather than because it’s their cultural background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age_travellers
Interesting
Yes
I'd say 50/50 Irish and Roma.
I thought England had its own indigenous Travellers as well, making three independent groups.
Scotland have their own travellers but in England they are usually ethnically either Irish travellers or Romani.
But England does have Funfair Travellers or Showmen who aren’t quite an ethnic group but identify as a cultural group. They tend to marry within the community so they are almost a sub-ethnic group.
I went to school in Glasgow with kids who were Scottish travellers or who came from Scottish traveller families. One of them only attended our school for a year; I remember he was quite handy with his fists and that his eyes seemed to be very close together. All of them had really funny accents (rich coming from a Glaswegian I know) that seemed to be from all over the place (obviously, they were travellers :D).
A good percentage of ireland's olympic medals are from traveller boxers.
The funny accents is so real, same in Ireland, feels like beyond just an accent tho, like they talk differently idk
England has a load of travellers and they consider themselves english.
New-age travelers. The remnant of the hippy culture. They aren't an ethnic group - yet.
There are also showmen as well as Scottish highland and lowland travellers who are distinct from Irish travellers.
Think they're referring to Romanichal and Kale), or English and Welsh Gypsies if you'd rather.
You also have English gypsies.
Are English gypsies made up of Irish Travellers and Roma, or some other third group?
Yeah neither, they are a district group,
There are also New Age travellers, but that’s a cultural movement not an ethnic group.
Irish Travellers and Roma are different and don't intermix
Sometimes they do. I'm from a mixed family
Holy shit, more than half of Travellers die before the age of 39. 10% of Traveller children die before the age of 2 compared to 1% of the rest of the population. 80% don't make it past 65 and they are 6x more likely to commit suicide. Those are some crazy numbers, tf.
They have terrible educational outcomes too. Frequently worst in the UK and Ireland.
While the institutions play a part the bigger issue is the culture of pulling the kids out around 13 and actively denying the girls an education where possible.
When I worked in restaurants and would wait tables the traveller families that would come in were feared by the other staff. Me I had no issue, so fuck it. I'd go help them out.
The lack of education really showed. They were all great tippers (tipping isn't really required in Ireland) but they didn't want to be bothered counting change. So they'd just say to keep the change. They'd pay for a 35.50 tab with a 50 instead of me giving them back anything. So I'm getting a 14.50 quid tip for nothing. Any non travellers that did tip would leave you a 2 euro coin at most.
Even things like reading the menu could cause issues. "What's mozzarella?" Came up a couple times. Never had a bad experience with them, never lived any of the horrible horror stories you hear off people from them. Always paid their way, always courteous, never more rude than anyone else.
It's a mixed bag, the brother used to work for a local hotel and there was stories ranging from brawls in the carpark to them getting apocalyptically drunk and when cut off throwing pint glasses around the bar, one of the families I went to school with were grand despite the culture doing everything to block them, the other you'd give a wide berth.
Yeah it’s a mixed bag like any other group - I used to regularly deal with travellers who would shoplift, but I’ve also met some sound ones.
In fairness getting apocalyptically drunk is not unique to travelers in Ireland
It was more the hurling pint glasses round the bar part there that was the issue.
Rounding up to 'keep the change' is cultural.
There are always outliers and they never really prove much
I went to school with some of them and they’d attend maybe 5 days a month, girls are actively taken out of school even when they want to pursue further education
It's a beautiful culture
>6x more likely to commit suicide
11% of all traveller deaths are from suicide. And there isn't a huge disparity between male and female suicide rates. I'd say the female suicide rate is actually higher than the male rate in my area, but that's purely anecdotal.
Traveller women have exceptionally hard lives. They get very little education, are expected not to work, are expected to marry young and have lots of kids, are 30 times more likely to experience domestic violence than a settled, non-Traveller woman, and about 50% of them experience literacy difficulties. I totally understand why they feel helpless
I’ve had three uncles kill themselves, two by hanging, one by gunshot. My father’s always suffered from a terrible depression too. It’s a terrible thing for us.
It doesn't have to be like that.
Also considering the child mortality rate they may have had a child, or more die.
What a horrible thing to have to live with
And, not to get too conspiracy-y, "suicide" is a very easy cause of death to write if you have a dead body that nobody with any actual sway wants to bother with.
Genetic factors in the child death rate are scary. Doctors come from all over Europe to study the effects of inbreeding.
Holy shit indeed. Regardless of how one might feel about them, hopefully one can see that is a humanitarian tragedy. I wish that there was a way to help them, but some people don't want help for one reason or another, and I am not sure what we as a society can do for people on the fringes like these. It's sad, but you can't save everyone; it's easier and more effective to focus on curbing other problems in people who do want help and to participate in society.
The problem is that an insular nomadic culture is no longer compatible with modern day society.
The majority of travellers in Ireland live in settled accommodation. Only about 25% are nomadic.
Nor is a misogynistic culture that denies girls an education and encourages teenage marriage palatable to modern society.
Yet it’s somehow tolerated because “culture”.
And this isn’t unique to Irish travellers, the same issue has seen girls in South Asian cultures in the UK similarly overlooked and neglected and not protected.
I think that there can certainly be some kind of online education if there's an actual effort to both build the infrastructure for reliable internet and trust with the GRT community to engage with it.
Internet isn’t the issue, literacy is. Your parents can’t develop your love of reading and learning if they can’t read. The internet is no use if your parents can’t read and you can’t either.
But that isn’t a problem unique to the traveller community. There are lots of families in more deprived parts of this country where the adults are barely literate; I know because I’ve taught such families.
It’s the combination of all of these factors that makes the difference.
It's far bigger issue among Travellers. About 50% of all Travellers in Ireland have literacy difficulties
Yes absolutely it is. I’m simply saying that literacy alone isn’t the problem, and is something we have experience tackling in other communities. But the nomadic nature of the traveller community makes it difficult to implement those common strategies.
In a sense it is. They are the only community in the UK we’re most of the people in a child’s life will be either functionally illiterate or just straight up illiterate. They are also the only community who is actively against education, most kids leave by 13 if they even went that regularly
I don’t disagree with this statement, my point was more regarding the specificity of ‘parents’ in the previous one and the idea that if your parents can’t read then you cannot develop a love of reading or apparently gain anything useful from the internet.
Yeah that’s not what I said. You are far less likely to read at a competent level and even enjoy reading if you aren’t read to as a child.
Internet isn't nearly as much of a problem in rural Ireland as it used to be. Between line of sight connections, Starlink, fibre and 5G coverage it's pretty well catered.
I live about 5km from the nearest streetlight (or road with a name Google knows about) and have 2gb ftth.
The willingness to engage with education would be a pretty major obstacle though.
You say that but there are more than a couple distinctly modern nomadic cultures. Often falling out along similar lines to the historic groups.
The problem as I see it is there’s intergenerational promotion of their lifestyle (leaving school early/distrust of authority/cousins marrying with kids by 18) , and outside attempts to break it are just met with resistance, once they’re a few years old they’ve already been raised to treat their problems with aggression,
The hard solution I think is there needs to be a generation where authorities come down hard on them, prosecute all crime, ensure girls aren’t taken out of school, take animals off them when they treat them terribly (which is really to say just hold them to the same standards as the rest of society)
The education thing to me should fall under child abuse. Like not letting your school aged children get an education is abusive. You’re setting them up for a difficult life for no reason.
The practical issue with your suggestion is something that I think plays a part in most of the issues facing traveller communities and is as obvious as it is hard to solve: it's the simple fact that these communties travel, but that both authorities and damned near every service that could help them are based in fixed locations.
This means that there is no continuity of care, support or policing for traveller communities, which makes it a lot harder to address problems. If the same team of social workers sees multiple instances of a child being neglected, it is easier to intervene than when three different teams all saw one incident, for example. Similarly, it's a lot easier for authorities to keep tabs on trouble-makers in a community and crack down on them if necessary if they actually know who to look out for, rather than a new group they don't know coming in every few weeks.
Seems like if anyone wants problems in these communities to genuinely improve, that's the first hurdle you'd need to tackle. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I emphatically do not mean by forcing travellers to live settled lives. That's not going to work if people aren't willing and is only going to (justifiably) deepen distrust.
This has been the European solution for roughly a hundred years. It hasn’t been working out very well. Meanwhile in the land of the free Gypsies allowed to live however they want tend to assimilate, and the pervasive violence and crime from them is almost unknown.
A reputation for crime is not entirelyunknown in the US.
They just make up a very tiny segment of the American population to the point of being invisible to most of the country. There’s only a million of them in a massive continent spanning country of 340 million. But in the few places where they do happen to be a significant enough minority for people to notice, they face similar issues.
Yeah, it's entirely understandable why people feel uncomfortable forcing a small ethnic minority to conform to normal ways of life, but fuck me is it sad to see kids that age that should be in school and realise they might have already "finished with school" at 14
It’s fascinating that this type of group can exist today, especially in a relatively small country such as Ireland. It’s equally as fascinating that we don’t know exactly why they exist.
It is interesting, a society within a society, those who refuse to integrate.
I guess the closest thing that we have in the US the Amish, but they are not nomadic, and they do not have nearly the same tarnished reputation of the Romani and Irish Travelers.
They are just religious and refuse to integrate, keeping to themselves. If anything, to me, they have a reputation for having eccentric hairstyles and beards, and being really good at building things and moving small houses by literally picking them up from their foundation and walking it to a new location.
People who live near Amish often have a very low opinion of them. Try posting about them in the PA forums. They could easily become hated in exactly the same way over time.
Amish have as much domestic violence and sexual assault as Travellers.
I rest my case yeronner.
Your Honour, I'm just a simple Hyper-Chicken from a backwoods asteroid but if it please the court I reckon I'll call the entire jury.
Ah. That is sad but makes sense in a way. Can't really have an opinion on someone, let alone hate them, if you don't even interact with them. Being in close proximity and actually having to deal with someone is another story than sitting away from afar and saying "I love everyone equally!"
My rule-of-thumb is that the most hated ethnic group in each area is the second-largest ethnic group. In rural PA, that's the Amish. In rural Ireland, that's Travelers.
People find it very easy to judge the prejudices of other people without realizing that the same tensions between say, black and white Americans are the same things that animate your local conflict between your group and the Squeebs (those horrible people).
Romani communities are a tiny drop compared to the large Extra-European ethnic groups in European countries that receive immigration (Maghrebis in France, Turks in Germany, Latinos in Spain, Desis in the UK etc...) and yet the latter are far from being hated to the same extent.
It truly is about lifestyle (although the why's of that lifestyle is a really complex issue beyond the scope of this comment).
Romani have been in Europe way longer than those other groups. Reputations develop over time
I mean if anything, having been in Europe for a long time should be in the immigrant group's favor.
(Because eventually they adopt the host's culture, or the host group adapts to them or the smaller ends up being completely assimilated into the majority etc)
I'm not even disagreeing with the commenter's "rule of thumb" it's just that Romanis are really specific compared to other minorities
No, they're around half a percent of the population, there are twice as many people of African origin in Ireland, ten times as many from Eastern Europe.
Irish travellers are by no means the second largest ethnic group pretty much anywhere in Ireland. There’s only about 30,000 of them in Ireland of over 5 million people
In reality people don't like travellers simply because the way they act, nothing to do with them being a minority. You don't see people hate on Filipino's, because they act normal, were as travellers go against the grain of society in every way possible, and they hate you.
No, they arent known for scamming. Which is why people dislike the other groups.
We dont want to ever become a low trust society or make excuses for it.
The amish are actually known for building hogh quality things for fair prices.
I was trying to think of other groups who are similar but I came up empty. The Roma are their own ethnicity whereas the Travelers are genetically Irish. The Amish have their own religion whereas the Travelers are Catholic (like the rest of Ireland). And unlike nomadic groups in Africa and Asia, Irish travelers aren’t following weather patterns or animal herds. They just kind of drift.
The rest of Ireland is nominally Catholic, mainly for rites of passage like communion and confirmation.
There are Irish Travellers in the US. Mostly Texas and South Carolina, I believe, but when I lived in Michigan I remember there being news stories associated with the group in NW Indiana/South Bend area.
There are Romani in the US, most of them have assimilated over the years but they still occasionally maintain the nomadic lifestyle reading fortunes and dancing with swords. The US also has a fairly large number of nomads in RVers, Vanlifers, and others who basically permanently live on Federal land.
They don’t just live in Ireland but also all over the UK and some parts of Europe.
And in the US too.
We know exactly why we exist. It's a result of colonialism. Traditionally Irish culture was more pastoral and nomadic than the culture of the Normans/English. You always had travelling tradesmen going from village to village, for example. When the English invaded and started imposing their more rigid idea of landholding (among other things) there was always going to be people who didn't go along with that and hung on to their traditional culture
So you already had communities of nomads in Ireland. As a result of English invasions you also had a lot of internally displaced refugees who ended up joining these communities when they lost their homes. There has been genetic study done on Irish Travellers which suggest the point which we genetically diverged from the settled population was around the time of Cromwell's invasion
So yeah, the reason we exist is colonialism and war. Our heritage is a mixture of refugees and those who resisted cultural imperialism, as well as those whose way to make a living involved moving frequently
Culture and reputation, they are known to destroy pubs and hotels that allow their gatherings as they will regularly turn into drunken brawls, they are known for scamming people on jobs they are hired for, becoming aggressive for a payout and dissapearing off never to return, horrific animal cruelty towards horses and dogs, just have to look at sulky races, they will destroy any area they park up in as there's no facilities for them, they will leave it strewn with household waste and human and animal excrement. There is also their callout culture and violent feuds, which can spill into settled areas if there is a family of travellers living in an estate.
Essentially, thanks to a large amount of their community refusing to integrate and acting as above, it has destroyed the chances of those wanting to integrate as their is very little trust towards them from the regular community.
On the plus side, there is Pavee point that is doing solid work in trying to break the above mentioned generation spiral, trying to improve the educational levels, modernise skill sets, keeping cultural skill sets alive such as tin working, and trying to free the women from basically just being a walking incubator.
They exist but since I was a child(born 1988) they have lost a lot of what would define them as different. Now it's customs, accent, looks but many are very hard to distinguish. Whereas when I was a child, most local towns had a few areas where travellers would pitch up and disappear. The kids rarely mixed. A lot have settled and so the influence of "'countrymens" culture has seeped in.
Interesting documentary on the travelers that made it to the US a while ago, unsure if origin but very similar stuff they do. Lot of unexplained flash wealth 🤣
Irish Traveller call out videos are an endless source of mirth for me.
Saw a series documenting these called "game of mobile homes"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR8cLYxTQx8
I have no idea what the fuck I just watched lmao, but it was entertaining.
The comments are hysterical, too!
This is fucking incredible wow
That was great but what the.
Shite in a bucket
“What does he think we are? Teeves!?”
There'll be no murderin' done around here, I don't mind tellin ya!
I grew up in France on a horse raising/trading farm. We had deals with Roma and travelers. My grandfather was quick with his fists and the shotgun. We never had trouble, the deals were often in gold and my grandfather went to a few funeral. A frum Jew at a Roma funeral. Found out as an adult, he had meet some in the camps of Germany where his uncle was and that post war, my grandmother had a get well place on the farm. Getting people back to their normal weight and able to get back on the road. It was a time where both groups played the violin the same way.
In Russian literature (Dostoyevsky I think off the top of my head) there is some societal view (not necessarily the author's but the society) that there is a similarity between Jewish and Gypsy culture.
I wonder where this comes from, is it a Slavic thing? We don't have it in Ireland at all, but our Travellers are the Iriah Travellers from the linked article who share no ancestry with the Roma.
Both are outsiders from main society.
My family is Jewish (genetically and culturally), but the etymology of our last name most likely refers to a Romani ethnic group. My theory is that the name was assigned based on outsider status without differentiating Jews and Romani.
Sometimes I forget that the word "peripatetic" has an original meaning beyond the euphemistic connotation it somehow has acquired in French of "prostitute"
A FYI for those wondering.
peripatetic
/ˌpɛrɪpəˈtɛtɪk/ adjective 1. travelling from place to place, in particular working or based in various places for relatively short periods.
"not always short though, sometimes might have been quite substantial"
“For those wondering”: wandering.
Where does French have that connotation?
I've never even heard that word in French.
I guess young girls running away from home and having no other job prospects, and it became associated with it. It's like how in English we have "streetwalker", kind of conjures the same image of a roaming prostitute.
The connotation makes sense, it's just not a word that is used much, if at all in most French-speaking areas.
*Péripatéticienne.
I've only ever encountered the word in two contexts: highschool philosophy class (refering to the Aristotelian school) and most commonly as an euphemism for streetwalkers (probably dated since I haven't seen any on the streets in more than a decade).
Définition
(Google images search as an approximation of what a word evokes)
Must be very region-specific.
In Spainish I've never seen the word used outside philosophy geeks naming their groups something like that
Tbf, talking while walking>>>>>
From Etymology Online:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/peripatetic
Since as expected many comments are quite negative, I'll give a shout out to Pecker Dunne, a great Irish folk musician who himself was a tinker / traveller. Here's an album to give a good idea:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_neR9jLWgFqCE70mH4_SMP99lVtZdJNbhI&si=aYgcsepn8H8ok1Ah
The majority of the comments Im seeing are people defending them. Even saw one saying how good of tippers they even are lmao
my dad used to always tell me you were allowed to hate travellers but not Romani people because travellers are just white people who live in caravans. although on reflection I'm not sure that's completely politically correct
Tried to do a bit of reading and the stories and anecdotes people tell about them are so insane and lurid that it’s kind of hard to believe. Most of it is somewhat plausible but if Redditors are to be believed they are possibly the least sympathetic minority group of all time to an insane extent.
I’m related to Irish travellers on my dad’s side but haven’t grown up in that community myself, although I obviously know a lot. Most of them are fine. They can be a bit loud and drink lots and every wedding ends with a fist fight but you could say that for a lot of British people too.
Unfortunately, I also know a whole bunch who don’t really give a shit about the law or the county they’re in or anything else really. They drink to excess, can barely read, steal stuff. They are fine when I’m talking to them like in general but I hear all the stuff they get up to and if one gets arrested again.
I think, like any group, you have good and bad - but I also think the high level of alcoholism and lack of using social resources I have personally seen on my dad’s side could definitely contribute to those early deaths. Not one of them would ever seek out medical help for it or even admit they have a problem. It’s a shame because the rest of the family are lovely, “normal” people who just like to live a slightly different lifestyle.
I appreciate some of the stories might seem extreme but they're honestly pretty much all true. There's a large traveller gathering in Cambridge every June during the Midsummer Fair and every year its chaos. Pubs stay closed, supermarkets beef up their security and locals stay well clear of that area of town. r/Cambridge is inundated every year with people reporting the crimes they've experienced/witnessed (assaults, shoplifting, vandalism, hate crimes, reckless driving).
The last year I was in Cambridge to experience it (2024) the standout crimes I heard of were a female jogger being called a 'wh**e c**t' and spat at and a gay couple being subjected to slurs and having a beer bottle hurled at them.
In England, at least, anyone not from a city tends to have a negative view, to say the least. A local example for me was when they took over a farmer’s field, and when he finally got them evicted, they spent the night breaking glass across the fields.
The police and government are inherently hostile to them and their way of life. It used to be common for farmers to let them stay on their land for some money for some days or a week or what have you. Around a hundred years ago European governments collectively made these agreements illegal, as well as fortune telling, horse trading, and regulated all their traditional jobs into illegality. The idea being they would be effectively coerced into assimilation.
It hasn’t been working out very well. Everything they do is illegal, including finding a place to sleep, so of course they don’t think twice about breaking ‘real’ laws.
My father who otherwise was a sane a rational person told my sister and I they kidnapped children for labour and food.
They are discriminated against understandly so.
They do have a major modern slavery problem, orphans with learning disabilities found in their convoys 30 years later having worked for "board and lodgings", etc.
Also illegal migrant being offered work and lodgings and then not allowed to leave.
Do not believe Redditors about hated ethnic groups. Do not ask Europeans about Roma or any type of travellers - the most liberal person suddenly turns into Adolf Hitler.
It's difficult for me - I grew up closer to Irish Travellers than most. Mostly to one family, but we were invited to christenings and whatnot; my mother helped the children with their homework and any paperwork from the school (the parents are illiterate). My sister and I babysat for a different Traveller family every now and again.
I have a lot of love for those two families, but Traveller culture is rotten and is the source of much of their misery. There's also, however, rampant discrimination against them, and that's the source of much of the rest of their misery. The kids were relentlessly picked on in school, by both other children and the teachers, and they were at automatically at fault for any altercation that might ensue. And the kids are at a disadvantage to start with when their parents are merely poor - let alone illiterate. This is the ethnic group with the lowest life expectancy in all of Europe.
And then there's the whole "getting married below the age of consent" thing. When my sister was 20 and babysitting for the one family, they asked her if she never regretted choosing not to have a family - like if you're not married by 20, you've clearly decided marriage isn't for you. Domestic abuse is *rampant* in that community. It's about as conservative and sexist as they come - individual results vary of course, but the broader Traveller culture is shit.
Our Traveller friends don't keep horses, so the abominable animal cruelty thing doesn't apply to them - but to hear them speak, it's clear that it would if they did. They don't be getting in fights or stealing (well, not *much* stealing).
The problem with it is that enough of the stereotypes are *actually part of Traveller culture* that people get ugliest prejudice confirmed all the time, even if they incorrectly apply it to *all Travellers*. No group is a monolith. But yeah - I get why Europeans are like that about them, even though I know it's wrong.
Im from Ireland and I think the truth is far more nuanced. 79% of traveller adults have criminal convictions, and the irish justice system is not a harsh one. The consanguinity levels are very high and they dont integrate with education, violence is also quite high within the group
Don't get me wrong there is discrimination but there are serious issue in this community and not acknowledging them does not help the community. There are plenty of high achieving travellers including a senator
A nomadic lifestyle would work well in Ireland 100 years ago but not now. A tinker was someone who would travel and knock on your door and and do you need odd jobs and repairs. That lifestyle just does not work nowadays
I'm a traveller, I've seen many in the community die to suicide. It's horrible how prejudiced people are in this modern day and age, how they can call us 'dirty knackers' when most of us havent done anything wrong. I don't steal. I don't live in a caravan. I work a normal job. I live a normal life away from the scumbags that give us our reputation. Yet people still group us together and discriminate.
I have a lot of otherwise lovely Irish relatives who are pretty hateful about Travelers. I’ve never really asked the reason as they seem unreasonable in their disdain and dislike. There is so much crazy stuff online that I’m unclear what is true. Thanks for posting this.
Went to a lovely country pub with my wife and baby over the summer. Had to leave quickly when 4-5 horse drawn carriages pulled up and a group of traveller men and teenage boys started verbally and physically moving people out of the pub to crowd the bar
Not to be rude but how do people know you're a traveller? I can only tell them apart by the accent and the fact that they do stereotypically traveller things like go door-to-door offering to repair driveways.
It's ok, people cant really guess because I have more of a general sounding Irish accent, not a traveller one. And right now, I'm thankful for that because the last thing I need is for people to refuse service and call me names.
I’m sorry, friend. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing some wonderful people of the Traveller community over the last fifty years. You do not deserve the abuse.
Thank you ❤️
If you don't live in a caravan and otherwise lead a "regular" life, aren't you just Irish? Sorry for my ignorance
Another person said this, but i am still a traveller as travellers are ethnically distinct from the Irish, no matter the way I live.
How so? Travellers have been separate from Irish society for a couple hundred years? Wouldn't that be culturally distinct but ethnically the same?
Here's the thing, nobody knows exactly. All we know is that travellers diverted from the settled Irish around 300-400 years ago, we have our own language (Cant), customs and traditions. Also, travellers were officially recognised by the government as an ethnic group in 2017.
Very interesting stuff! I only learnt about the Travellers recently and found it so peculiar for a small country like Ireland to have this sort of thing. Are there like museums or anything of the sort in Ireland? Perhaps not due to discrimination and the general sentiment towards Travellers eh?
You're spot on, and I think its a shame that theres no museums or anything dedicated to travellers history, because I think its worth documenting our culture and traditions.
Nobody is talking about you. Everyone is talking about the bottom of the barrel scum who use the fact they're travellers to both intimidate innocent people and run away from any repercussions.
I have 0 problem with peaceful travellers getting on with their lives.. but living close to halting sites and dealing with fucking scum robbing, threatening and scamming people.. I have no problem whatsoever calling them fucking knackers.
You like degz?
Good reminder that even though Europeans may be less racist to me, that's not true in an absolute sense
The classic joke is that r/Europe is MLK when they're talking about black people and Adolf Hitler when they're talking about the Roma.
Normally, I don't like to reply to comments in a place like this, but damn I was thinking the same way now after reading the comments here. 😅
It’s kind of odd. It’s interesting to see how some get unexpectedly defensive when the conversation turns to minority groups in Europe, such as travelers and Romani people.
Wouldn’t that be true if they were their own ethnic group? These seem to be Irish?
They're a distinct ethnic group that split off from the Irish 400 years ago.
Americans: Wow, Europe is so homogeneous outside the big cities! That must explain the low crime rates!
Europeans: An ancient hatred divides me and the guy at the next table in the pub due to What His Ancestors did in the Turnip Wars. We can never speak.
Also Americans: couldn’t have anything to do with fewer guns!
They are classified as their own ethnic group as of relatively recently.
Travellers are generally completely isolated from general Irish society and typically only marry/make friends within the community
The average Irish person has MUCH more in common with any other European than with an Irish traveller
Most of the families are now settled. Actual nomadic traveller families are a minority today.
N7 sulkie races are funny.
These are the guys that proudly scam people..
They have a horrific child abuse and slavery problem, for what it's worth their current reputation is completely their own fault.
That whole “European racists are pro-level compared to American racists” being actively proven by a number of comments here on a fucking encyclopedia entry
Remember that Irish Travellers and Irish people are completely indistinguishable to outsiders on a visual level. The subtleties of European racisms are completely lost on Americans.
Strongly disagree here, the Irish accent and Irish Traveller accent are completely different. They also have very much their own fashion and tend to stick out quite a lot.
Sure if you are Irish you can distinguish. An outsider could not.
I’m not Irish, I can definitely distinguish.
This is completely untrue. Any Irish person could easily identify a traveler
Irish people would not be outsiders in this context, Mr Reading Comprehension.
I’m Canadian-American and honestly, if even a quarter of the stories I see about travellers are true, I do kinda get it. They are only a teeny tiny fraction of the population in Ireland (a fraction of a percent) and yet traveller women are 20% of the female prison population and men are 10-15% of the male prison population.
It’s like they’re just culturally incompatible with modern society. From my perspective, they seem no different than redneck trailer park trash, but even less economically productive, somehow. It doesn’t seem to me as if there’s any structural or overarching structural oppression that’s causing this (I could be wrong), but rather something that’s wholly self-inflicted.
There’s also just flat out objectionable aspects of their culture. The amount of utter derision they have for non-travellers is absurd. However negatively you may think of them, it seems like they hold a lower opinion of you. If you aren’t them, you aren’t really a person at all.
I do have a personal story of an Irish traveller and it's true.
The problem is that they aren't just a travelling band of hippies. They exploit their status of not having assets to live as an organised crime.
An old person I know was romance scammed by an Irish traveller lady in her 50's. She changes her name, and looks like she genuinely wants to marry the guy out of love. Once the papers were signed she started selling off all the valuable things he owned behind his back, and it took him a while to realise what was happening because his health was deteriorating. She moved the money to one of her relatives, so she herself was penniless. Her daughter who had an actual office job and living normally would help her mum with law based matters to assist her.
This lady has been doing this to multiple vulnerable men, one was a slightly disabled man who disappeared from his caretaker only to reappear 2 years later penniless in Spain. She took him to Spain for marriage, made him buy a house, put the name of the house in her brother's name, and kicked him out.
The police knew about them but couldn't recover the money or do anything.
I'm a Brit.
And while I cannot speak to every traveller I've ever encountered, I don't recall having a particularly good interaction.
I do recall selling a car to one who was 20% short. He insisted he'd send the money to me in due course. (He didn't).
I also recall them setting up in a local park. When they left, the local council had to spend thousands cleaning up behind them - apparently, they don't believe in the flushing lavatory.
This is pretty much identical to any other story I hear when this is brought up. It’s roving bands of filthy, violent, antisocial rednecks that steal anything that isn’t bolted down.
Exactly.
I have no idea how representative these experiences are compared to the wider community. Maybe they're not.
But when they're the only experiences I've ever had, it's really difficult not to conclude that they are.
"if you aren't them, you aren't really a person at all"
Just a coincidence that you don't seem to think they are people, too?
Oh I think they’re people, just people with a back-asswards culture.
I wouldn’t do any harm to them, I just wouldn’t want to be around them. Can’t say the same about travellers.
Don’t think I’ve ever heard of random Irishmen going around ransacking traveller trailers because they don’t want to work.
A caravan fer me mam. Periwinkle blue
Frequently refusing service because they'll run out on the bill and threaten to firebomb the place.
Same for when a wedding or funeral is in town, The bars and clubs would rather close and lose a night or twos revenue than deal with the inevitable insurance claims and getting the Garda involved.
Yep, the pubs are always conveniently closed for a private function or for essential maintenance during traveller funerals
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Yuck
Yes it's all very boo-hoo these poor "travellers" have bad outcomes.
Until they move near your village.
The people are cunts. And not the good kind.
You need to experience them to believe them.
My grandmother called them Tinkers
As far as I'm aware, they used to be known for selling tin. This could be just total bullshit my family collectively hallucinated about the term's origins, but when I asked why people called them that, that was what I got.
There's some truth in it - back when they were a travelling community, like +100years ago when they had wagons and carriages, there was often a wagon that would repair pots and pans, kettles and other utensils made from tin or metal.
The term 'Tinker' - came from the 'Tink! Tink! Tink!' Sound that was always heard in the area from the carriages.
I grew up with travellers, many are cunts but I do know many people from a traveller background, or who are travelers and are Sound people, I have friends who are travellers and are just like us.
Reason I know this is because I'm a panel-beater by trade, and I've known the older generations who remember the carts and the old community ways - "A panel-beater? - your a Tinker too!" 😆
This is because many of them worked with tin. My Granny had a shop in a small village and the same travellers would park up out the road every year, all the villagers would bring them tin buckets and the likes to be repaired. My Granny used to give them strips of tin for the repairs as payment for the repairs they did for her. My Granny died in c.1973 so this is going back a long time.
I lived with my husbands Granny in another rural area, she died just this year at age 90. A mother and son traveller used park down the road for a while each year. She had to walk to get water about a mile away and she'd drop her children to the travellers to mind them while she got some work done. She spoke very highly of them and the son visited her in the last 20 years.
Much like the Romani post from a few weeks ago, this thread is going to get real racist, real fast.
In case you are curious: Your prediction came true
Dont think ive ever come across a more hated group of people
Do you like dags?
I found anecdotal evidence that honour based violence and forced marriage is well present in that community. Yet media sensationalism will undermine social issues, hierarchical violence in white, christian groups and only look at immigrant Arabic, Kurd, Turkish, South Asian, Muslim, Sikh, or Hindu incidents.
Socially similar as they are the most family collectivistic compared to all other Westerners (though I am not sure if Irish Travellers are considered Western)
These issues within the travel community are absolutely not undermined in Ireland and are frequently discussed
But this is a tiny group of 30,000 people in a country of 5 million so of course it is not global news
I have rarely been more harshly taken to task then when I proposed gently to my leftist friends that perhaps the centuries of crisis and criminalization might be more responsible for their behavior than anything else. Say what you will, these people are treated worse than street dogs.
I agree with you.
Im from Ireland and I think the truth is far more nuanced. 79% of traveller adults have criminal convictions, and the irish justic system is not a harsh one. The consanguinity levels are very high and they dont integrate with education.
Don't get me wrong there is discrimination but there are serious issue in this community and not acknowledging them does not help the community. There are plenty of high achieving travellers including a sentor
A nomadic lifestyle would work well in Ireland 100 years ago but not now. A tinker was someone who would travel and knock on your door and and do you need odd jobs and repairs. That lifestyle just does not work nowadays
Come to Ireland and ask any Irish man,woman or child about travellers and you’ll soon find out why they are hated so much.
People in this thread fookin ate Pikeys.
Irish people are also Indo-European.
Indo-Aryan is a subgroup of Indo-European referring to a group of languages from the Indian subcontinent.
Indo-Aryans are a sub-group of the Indo-Iranians, who separated from Indo-Europeans before the migrations to Europe. Indo-Aryans settled in India, so Romani are from a separate wave of Indo-European migrations to Europe.
Yes, but they aren't Indo-Aryan.
Indo-Aryan is "Indo-Indo-European". Emphasis on "Indo" more than "European".
I see the distinction now, I've seen the tems used interchangeably in the past.
Pikeys