Irish Travellers

Nomadic group in Ireland yearning for recognition

By Tom Hundley Tribune foreign correspondent

DUBLIN ?- Hughie Collins does not have fond memories of his school days.

"In the playground, there was always a yellow line. You weren't allowed to cross it. If you did, you were sent to the headmaster to be slapped," he recalled.

"And every Monday morning they made us take a shower, even though my mother used to wash us every Sunday evening," he said. "They said we were dirty. It was very humiliating when you got older and understood what was going on."

Collins, 39, is a Traveler, an Irish minority group that is widely misunderstood and often reviled by the majority in Ireland.

Travelers are a nomadic people. They are indigenous to Ireland but share many cultural traits with the Roma, or Gypsies, of Eastern Europe. And like the Roma, they frequently are stereotyped as thieves.

For many years, it was a common belief that the Travelers were peasants who set to wandering after being displaced by the Great Famine of the mid-19th Century. Research, however, traces their roots in Ireland back at least 10 centuries. There are about 30,000 Travelers in Ireland, an additional 10,000 in Britain and perhaps 10,000 in the U.S. Like the Roma, the Travelers have a higher infant mortality rate and much lower average life expectancy than the general population.

Unemployment among Travelers exceeds 70 percent. One reason is 63 percent of Traveler children drop out of school before age 15; only 6 percent manage the equivalent of a high school diploma. Until recently, Travelers who went to school were taught in separate classes and learned little. Illiteracy remains the norm.

"I got 10 years of schooling, but I still don't know how to read or write," said Collins, who works as a van driver and is enrolled in adult courses.

Ill feelings intensify

Ill feelings between the Travelers and the majority population came to a head last year during the trial of Padraig Nally, a County Mayo farmer charged with the murder of a Traveler named John Ward who apparently had broken into his house.

Nally, 61, shot the intruder in the hand and hip, then started beating him with a stick.

"It was like hitting a stone or a badger," Nally told police. "You could hit him, but not kill him."

As Ward, 42, tried to flee, Nally reloaded his gun and shot him dead from close range.

Nally was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 6 years in prison. Many in Ireland thought that was too harsh. Travelers groups said the case proved that the government's approach to dealing with Travelers was misguided and had fostered a climate of bigotry and hatred.

For years, social workers, health-care workers and childwelfare experts have looked askance at the nomadic habits of the Travelers. They argue that the lifestyle is incompatible with modern society and suggest that Travelers would be best served by policies that encouraged?-or forced?-them to settle and assimilate.

"A silent genocide," is how Martin Collins, assistant director of Pavee Point, a Travelers advocacy group, characterized this approach.

"I realize this is emotive language," said Collins, who is Hughie Collins'
cousin, "but it's the reality."

Martin Collins and others want the Irish government to follow the example of Britain and recognize the Travelers as a distinct ethnic group.

The government's view is that the Travelers do not constitute a distinct group in terms of race, culture or ethnicity.

Travelers disagree. They point out that they have their own language, known as Cant or Gammon. They also note that their affinity for nomadism, while gradually disappearing, is a deeply imbued cultural trait not shared with the rest of the population, whom Travelers refer to as "settled people."

?'It's genetic; it's biological'

"You're born into the Traveler community," Martin Collins said. "It's genetic; it's biological. A person from the settled community can't move into a caravan [trailer] and call himself a Traveler." Nor can a Traveler easily integrate into the settled population.

"There have been Travelers who wanted to assimilate because of racism, but they've done it very badly," said Rosaleen McDonagh, the first female Traveler to graduate from Dublin's elite Trinity College.

About a quarter of Ireland's Traveler families live in trailers. But most live in some form of public housing.

Nelly Collins, 63, the mother of Hughie Collins, lives with her husband in a small community of tidy cottages, all occupied by 40 families that share the name Collins or McDonagh. She has lived here for more than 20 years but still doesn't consider herself a "settled" person.

She's proud that her grandchildren go to school but regrets that the school teaches them nothing of their Traveler heritage or language.

And she admits she still gets an itch to travel.

"I would like to go back to the road for a few months in the summertime," she said. "It's in your blood. It's something you never forget."

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