Ask Brian Hanly how his family weaving business, John Hanly & Co., got started in Tipperary. And the answer is a slice of Irish history.
We can go back to somewhere around the mid-eighteen hundreds with the family weaving in different parts of the country.
By the time the year 1890 rolled around, Ireland’s land war was in full swing. We’ve talked about this period before on the podcast. It saw a campaign of resistance to the exploitation of tenant farmers by landlords that led to massive redistribution of land. When the Hanly weavers of Lacken were issued with an eviction notice in the midst of it the founder of the Land League Michael Davitt saw an opportunity.
They were kicked out essentially of the premises that they were in there. So there was quite a big hoo ha. Michael Davitt who was one of the chief organizers of that movement used the eviction, the movement of the machinery, as a kind of a demonstration. Local people from Lacken helped move the machinery half way and people from this area went the other half to meet them and bring them back.
As the decades rolled on John Hanly weavers grew in strength. Hanly fabrics furnished the drapery shops of Killarney and Macroom and were soon being shipped to the gentlemen’s tailors of Italy and London. But modern times didn’t always bring prosperity.
When this country was going through that terrible phase that they call the Celtic Tiger 2004 and onwards. We found those quite difficult years. It was a struggle in some ways to keep going. The whole country was on an upward curve but we were going in the opposite direction and I suppose you start to doubt yourself and you wonder like Are you in the right game and should you be doing what you’re doing. Textile manufacturing in Western Europe aren’t two phrases that really go together. Everybody is producing in China everybody’s producing in Vietnam — low cost countries make it cheap sell it high. That’s what the whole model was. And that’s what was happening. And it’s, it’s hard to compete with that. But for whatever reason some time around that period of time “Made in Ireland” became really important, and people started recognising it for being a quality brand. And to be genuinely made in Ireland, like, we have a factory, we have machinery, we have skilled people doing it. There aren’t an awful lot of places that can say that.
Blankets, scarves, waistcoats, traditional flat caps — if you’d like a piece of Irish history and craftsmanship right from the heartlands of Tipperary, well, you know where to go. Head on over to BiddyMurphy.com, the kind sponsors of the Irish Passport Podcast and specialists in beautiful quality products that are genuinely made in Ireland. For now let’s get on with the podcast.
Hello. Welcome to Irish Passport. Let’s do it. Welcome to the Irish Passport. I’m Tim McInerney. I’m Naomi O’Leary. We’re friends. Cé he bhfuil tú Naomi? Go hana mhaith ar fad, Tim. This is your passport to Irish culture history and politics. I’m recording 1, 2, 3. OK.
Hello and welcome back, listeners, to The Irish Passport podcast.
Today we’re going to be talking about a topic that we planned since the very beginning of this podcast: the travelling community, an indigenous ethnic minority in Ireland whose unique and profoundly important role in Irish history and identity has long been overlooked.
Now lots of our international listeners might not know very much about the travelling community in Ireland. But as you say, Naomi, they are a central feature of Irish history, culture, and politics. For the most, part this has gone very much underappreciated. Historically, travellers have faced huge discrimination and continue to do so today. Later on we’ll have an interview with the filmmaker and actor John Connors, who says this:
It was state policy to assimilate travellers and to eradicate the Tinker culture. Politicians suggested things like sterilize them and castrate them to put them out on an island and, look tag them — later on, even, in the 80s, tag them like dogs.
We’ll also hear from feminist activist and education worker Eileen Flynn, who tells us this.
I am a traveller woman and I’m not just an activist for the community as a whole. I’m going to be that activist that fights for traveller women. I now work in the National Travel Women’s Forum and, you know, I love it to bits.
And we’ll hear from Julia O’Reilly. She spoke to us about the issue of literacy —something she overcame herself as a child after segregated schooling left her lagging behind her peers. This fuelled her desire to take on the education system by going in to local politics.
There is grants there, and support grants, and they always have been there. But were they used appropriately and properly will be my question to really look at because this doesn’t just come from nowhere.
Travellers have been a part of Irish culture going back hundreds of years. Nobody really knows exactly how long but it’s been a long time in the Irish language. They’re sometimes known as the “Lucht Siúil”, which means the walking people. They’re also known as the “Minkier” or the “Pavee”. This is a community with its own language its own traditions and a very strong sense of identity. But despite all this a lot of settled Irish people know very little about their way of life.
Statistics vary, but according to the 2016 Census there’s something in the region of 35000 members of the travelling community on the island of Ireland. So about equivalent to the population of a typical large town. But this population is broken up into countless small groups. The word traveller can be misleading. The traditional image of a traveller family would have been a group who travelled around the country in a wooden wagon. Nowadays of course many live in caravans and mobile homes sometimes moving sometimes fixed in one place perhaps in a council designated halting site. And of course, many travellers live in houses and apartments.
We’ll hear from our guests later on about the rich history of this community and how their culture and traditions in many ways preserve ancient ways of life from long ago in Ireland. But this heritage can sometimes clash with the majority norms and expectations of life in present day Ireland. In fact, for much of its history, the Irish state’s policy has essentially been to try and stop travellers from being travellers, and tending to view their way of life as an incorrect or deviation from from the norm. It’s a pretty bitter history at times especially given that many travellers fought in the struggle for Irish independence.
These policies and the assumptions behind them have contributed to the deep marginalisation and stigmatization of travellers that’s very prevalent in Irish society. They’re physically marginalised forced by laws and regulations to occupy marginal spaces, often on the edges of towns and cities, sometimes with really appalling provision of basic services like toilets and water — as we’ll hear later. Traveller children are frequently treated differently in school, sometimes segregated, and whatever social issues Ireland has — from mental health to unemployment to lack of housing — it tends to hit travellers first and hit them hardest. And all of this is reflected in a very real way by poverty social problems and a life expectancy that is shockingly lower than the general population.
For a country that loves history, the history of travellers is something of an unspoken one in Ireland. So let’s hear from our first guest a man who has done a lot to change that very thing. John Connors is an actor and screenwriter. He wrote Cardboard Gangsters, the most popular film in the Irish box office of 2017, and he’s also a documentary filmmaker and has made a series on traveller history for the national broadcaster RTÉ.
I met John on a beautiful site where he and his wider family live in north Dublin in homes surrounded by tumbling wildflowers and painted with traditional imagery from the history of the travelling community, like wagon wheels. I asked him first of all to tell us in his own words: what is a traveller?
Well the thing is about the word traveller doesn’t encompass who we are actually. It doesn’t do us any justice. Because that’s just about being nomadic which really nomadism was more of a vehicle and a protection for our culture which is essentially Gaelic Irish culture. And a lot of our, like even now you’re in my camp right where all my extended family is. And that’s just the ancient túath to a clan culture. That’s what it is, you know. And usually túas would have traveled and been semi-nomadic back in the day. When we’re travellers today I suppose we’re survivalists. I think I think the Irish Free State government has probably had a better dig at us than than the British did in ways because we were still pretty nomadic you know, you know — under British rule and then nomadic up until around the maybe 50s and 60s and Ireland, and then various different laws and policies were brought in to stop that from stop us from travelling. Today we’re still, yeah, we’re just a survivalist people who were holding on to some parts of Gaelic Ireland. And travellers wouldn’t be conscious of that. Like they wouldn’t be more related than most to Gaelic Ireland. They just are who they are. I suppose me now, looking in objectively for the past few years, making documentaries about this stuff and looking at actually who we are where does our identity come from. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to, you know. We carry so many different traditions and customs — and even language, and even English the way we speak — and there’s so many different things going on there and we’ve just carried on.
What I was totally unprepared for before I spoke to John was the romance that traveller life can hold. He wove a really vivid picture of a childhood running totally free and being told stories of traditional wagon life by his grandmother.
To be honest with you, for us it was like being in a time machine, because she’d be telling the stories of being on the wagon and being on the road and coming down to this little place where there’d be like no electric, no like nothing — this is like 1950 in rural Ireland and you know coming across a banshee and all — she would tell you these stories, you know. And all the you know the boys would stay out in the tents and the girls stay in the wagon and, you know, they’d camp up for a night and you know, they’d tell me all the different interactions they’ve been having locals and people they’d met along way, interesting people. We were just basically in a time machine when you were in that wagon, you know. And even just then in the camp in general in a trailer with a tin roof when the rain comes down it was brilliant — it’s beautiful like, it’s hypnotic — you just go to sleep, you know. And like she’d tell you stories that are clearly made up. We believed them at the time, like, you know. And then she’d like we were convinced — we were like thirteen, fourteen — my grandmother was a witch, you know. That’s what she told us. I can even remember me and my little brother was kind of giving my mother cheek and my mother — God help her, her nerves were very bad a few years after my father died — and we were literally just cheeky little bastards. My grandmother came in to kind of fix us one night came in with these really intense eyes. Her eyes were bolting out of her head and she said, “sit down there now.” “You know I’m a witch,” and we were like, “Granny, please, stop!” And she said, “Shush now. Let me tell you a story,” and then she proceeded to tell us a story while she was smoking a cigarette, but not dipping the ash whatsoever, so she smoked it to the very end. Only a witch can do that. “So they got these little boys who were messing with their mommy, and I chopped them up into little bits and I put them in a black bag and shoot them in there in the Liffey.” And that was it. And we never gave our mother cheek ever again, you know.
It became clear during our conversation just how much the history of the travellers is invisible in Ireland. There’s little understanding of who travellers are and where they come from. Perhaps the most prevalent history about them is actually false — and it’s something John managed to debunk in his RTÉ series.
The big narrative is that we came from the famine, OK. So we look to usually the archives and asking settled people where did travellers come from. And this would be in and around 1910-15 to 20 to 1925, around those times. And various different people. The most common answer was that they derived from the High Kings of Ireland. The Famine thing wasn’t really a thing, you know. Now, where the Famine thing came from was, during the Famine, travellers were so self-sufficient you had a lot of settled women who ended up going on with traveller men because they were able to survive on the land and they weren’t relying on the crops as much because they were essentially hunter gatherers still at that time, travellers were. So, you had a lot of intermarriage between travelling and settled and I see that my own family history, during the time. But the Famine and the myth got pushed big time by politicians in the 50s and 60s to justify the assimilation policies. So then you’d just be re-settling someone who’s already been settled and just be male vagabonds and, you know, bums, and we’re just trying to help them, as opposed to people who were —
Part of the culture, part of the nation…
Yeah. So, we figured out that. We did the DNA tests. And that was kind of the really important factor in figuring out our origin. So, we did the D.N.A. tests and we seen that the split has been between five and twelve hundred years ago. And most times as 500 years. So we said five four more years in around our time. What was the big significant events that happened in Ireland. There was the reconquest of Ireland. And martial law was brought in for nine decades. And a big part of martial law was, at that time, was settling people so they could stay in one place and pay taxes. And at that time two-thirds of the Irish population were nomadic or semi-nomadic. Right. We were called the wandering Irish by the British. We had a good tradition of being nomadic all across Ireland for centuries and centuries. So, the DNA has be kind of figured at that time that, when the martial law was brought in, large amounts of people started to settle out while other people were slaughtered — and that nomadic group of Irish people got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until they identified as traveller people, tinkers and travellers. That’s kind of the origin that comes from the reconquest of Ireland.
It’s really interesting what John said there about the myth that travellers period during the famine. You know, like, I don’t know about you, Naomi, but that’s something I was personally taught at school. And remember even thinking at the time that it sounded highly unlikely.
So, Tim, did you challenge your teacher?
Did I challenge her? No, I don’t think. I wouldn’t have dared to contradict that particular teacher.
I don’t remember being taught about travellers at all. As people who took to the roads during the famine or otherwise.
You bring up an interesting point. There was very very little that was taught about travellers. And that made that fact even more — it stood out even more at the time. Like, it didn’t make sense. The famine is not that long ago. A lot of great-grandparents of people in our generation would have remembered it, you know. So it didn’t — even do a child — it didn’t seem like a feasible explanation for a whole culture, you know, that could have sprung up in three generations. But I suppose the teachers just didn’t know better — and, to be fair, we all got taught a lot of stuff that wasn’t true. But it actually says a lot in this context. Like, those teachers were teaching that same false information to traveller children, too. And when you think about it like that, you know, it’s pretty unforgivable.
Something I found really interesting that John spoke to me about was the traveller language. So, it has different names. Sometimes it’s known as Shelta, sometimes Gammon, and sometimes Cant. And many Irish people won’t be familiar with this language at all.
Right yeah. This is such a fascinating aspect of traveller culture, and I knew very little about this before I started researching for this episode. What I’ve found — and I might be wrong about this now because it’s all very patchy — is that Gammon was only documented by ethnologists in the 1870s, which is very recently. They gave it that name, Shelta, and the first study of it was by an American folklorist called Charles Leland — and he claimed that he had found, I quote, “the fifth Celtic tongue”.
But of course by the time, you know, you get these historians speaking about it and documenting it, I mean, it was already very, very old already by that point, obviously.
Yeah, sure. Nobody knows quite how old it is, but definitely much, much older than that. People have theorized that it was originally a kind of slang within older versions of the Irish language. So that would mean that lots of it is probably much older than the Irish language as we know it. It uses back slang as well which you hear in Cockney rhyming slang in England or “verlan” in France. You know this kind of turning words back to front.
So yeah. That’s when you switch around the order of consonants like so in English the word boy would become “yob”. And in French the word “femme” for woman becomes “meuf”.
Yeah right exactly. And that’s common in loads of European languages. Anyway, this language evolved alongside Irish then. It began to incorporate loads of English words when English came to Ireland — mostly in the 19th century.
And some of those words made their way back into Hiberno-English, too. So, in lots of Ireland you’ll hear the words “feen” or “beour”, and the people who use them often might not even realize they’re using Gammon vocabulary.
Gammon or the Cant. It depends what like… some travellers, they may be from different from regions of Ireland. They’ll call it the Gammon or the Cant. Yeah there’s a there’s a connection there with the Cant and “caint” — talk in Irish. And languages are very much connected like, you’d even have like “cailín” would be “girl” in Irish and we’d say “lakín” or “garsún”, we’d say. And so there’s loads that are very similar and other words that are very different. There’s loads of different theories. I know there is a lot of words that pre-date the Irish language, you know, that we have in our language. So I remember we used to speak it even a lot more were kids up until the teenage years when we moved in to Darndale and we kind of became more integrated — that’s a good thing, but it’s kind of a shame as well, because you just stop using some words. Because it was coming through, like I remember at a certain point when I’d hit like 13, 14 I’d be trying to find an English word because we have some words that there’s no translation. And then we have words that there might be 10 translations, depending on the way you’d use it. And then there’s kind of, separate to the language, then there’s a slang — which nearly every family have a slang. You know, nearly every traveller family would have a slang. But then there’s also the way travellers would use English — and that’s a different way, as well. They’d use English in a different way. Like in any regular English word you could have, we could use that in a different way, you know what I mean. Different contex. It’s weird, it’s unusual. So it’s three different ways of talking meshed into one. And really if you were to see a group of travellers talking, you wouldn’t really know what they were saying unless you knew language or their talk a little bit, you know.
Could you give me an idea of what it sounds like?
[Speaking in Gammon]
What’s that mean?
I can’t tell you that.
It’s a secret. “Beour,” is that woman?
Yeah. So, like, you hear, like, “beour” and “feen”, right, in Cork and Limerick and kind of the West Coast, you know. And even now they’re starting to say it in Dublin. And people think that it’s kind of a slang, you know. And actually it came from our language. So it’s kind of…my grandmother gets really annoyed at that, you know. They think it’s just some random slang.
Now despite the richness of this culture, John told me about the really earnest attempt of successive Irish governments to essentially eradicate traveller culture through systemised integration schemes. For most of the 20th century the Irish government did not regard traveller culture as a piece of Irish society that needed cherishing or protecting. On the contrary, it was seen as a problem that needed to be fixed. This is still reflected in current politics and the location of, for example, plans to build a halting site is for sure, guaranteed, to always cause a political crisis. Travellers just didn’t fix the mould of what the quote unquote “proper Irish family” was supposed to look like. And a lot of people find this threatening. So, over the generations, Irish governments have implemented pretty brutal policies, one after another, leading to untold devastation for generations of travelling families.
Do you think there was a systematic attempt to destroy traveller culture in the New Ireland?
That’s not even debatable. It’s facts. That is a fact. And it’s not something… like you just look at the 1963 report on itinerancy. So, Charlie Haughey lead that… and look at the objectives, like the objectives literally say that. So our objective is to find a final solution for the itinerant problem and fully assimilate them into the settler community and absorb their culture. These are the exact language of that. And it’s like 20 years after, you know, World War II where you’re talking about a final solution. And that was state policy. It was state policy to assimilate travellers and eradicate tinker culture, and to save them from their itinerant habits. And even during that committee that they ran people, like, politicians, suggested things like sterilize them, and castrate them, and put them out on an island, and, look tag them. Later on, even in the 80s, tag them like dogs. These are all things that were contributing to that 1960s report. So that was state policy. There’s no denying that. The government then bribed travellers, because travellers are mostly rural people, to move to Dublin. If you were to move to Dublin you could get a fraction of the dole of what settled people can get, until you’re settled for 18 months. When you’re settled for 18 months you get the full dole, the same as what a settled person will get. Look exactly where we are: we’re in the very last stretch of the suburb. We’re on the edge of town. Right facing us is a motorway that takes you out, and then it’s the countryside there. So it’s always the edge of towns and there’s always a divide between you and a settled, person always a field between you and a settled person. So when you grow up in that, I mean, that in itself and and how that kind of seeps in mentally definitely doesn’t do any good between both communities, you know.
The state policy of cultural assimilation was a feature of 19th and 20th century style nationalism that we saw all over Europe, too. Until the 1960s, really, a lot of people, you know, connected the idea of modernity with cultural homogenization within a nation state and a lot of states claimed that inducting or reinforcing minority cultures into a common national culture was a liberating thing — something that could bring you up in life. This is where we get your standardised spelling, for instance, in languages being rolled out all over Europe. And the same reasoning, originally, lay behind at the oppression of lots of indigenous cultures in France or Spain or Italy. And at the base of all this, you know, when you look closely, you can really see that it’s that difference — it’s the difference in a language say, or, in a social ideal — that is, you know, by the nation state very easily seen as a threat to that nation’s identity itself.
It’s all quite ironic, particularly, in John’s case as he told me his family was historically deeply involved with the Irish independence movement and the foundation of that very state.
Well, in my grandmother’s family she would have been one of the first traveller activists. Her uncle, Joe Donohue, was probably the first ever. He himself, Joe, was a was a sniper in World War II. And then, when he left that he went and moved to Donegal and joined the IRA. He would’ve had the Dubliners, like Luke Kelly, Ronnie Drew, Banjo Barney… He had the Keenan’s, the Clancy’s, The Furies all over nearly every weekend. They’d be over jamming before they were famous, you know. He would have had them all over. He would have been a musician, himself. He was a great storyteller. And he had an involvement in the blowing up of Nelson’s pillar.
What’s the story there?
Well he was… apparently it was planned in his hut, where he would’ve had to been tricolour. Then again he was it was a one version of the IRA, whatever it was at that time and this would have been before the troubles, you know. So yeah, that was in the family. And then my grandfather, he has like a mad history going back to like the 1798 rebellion. Martin Ward, who would be my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, he fought in Vinegar Hill.
Health in the traveller community falls drastically below that of the settled population. In 2007 a report showed that —if you can believe this — over half of travellers do not live past the age of 39. And that’s in comparison to the average life expectancy of 81 years in Ireland.
God… Suicide is also a major issue — especially among traveller men. According to a 2010 report by the National Traveller Suicide Awareness Project, traveller men are six times more likely to kill themselves than men in the settled community in Ireland — which is something else. In 2017, the Irish Times interviewed a woman named Bridget Casey who had lost no less than 12 members of her family to suicide — which is just horrific.
John also lost his own father to suicide, and he mentioned this when I spoke to him.
In my own community it’s an epidemic. Like eleven percent of travellers die by suicide. It’s the highest suicide rate in the world bar capital of any community alive. Higher than people in war torn areas in Libya and Iraq. It’s an absolute emergency in my community, you know. And they’re the suicides that are counted. I know there so much more in my community that are not counted — I’d say it’d be more like 15 percent. That’s what I’m saying. The huge that’s like —where does that come from? Where does that come from? Where does that come from? You look at any people who are being oppressed, who are experiencing institutionalized racism where racism was part of a culture in that country, where it’s accepted — and even not accepted. You know, can have high suicide rates.
I chatted to John for well over an hour and we spoke about a huge range of things, including the culture of feuding — which I find particularly interesting to hear about. We’ll publish the full interview on our Patreon page, which is patreon.com/theirishpassport.
Naomi, now maybe we should tackle the issue of discrimination here head on. You know it’s something that raised its ugly head very recently during the last presidential election in Ireland when a candidate who you know would otherwise have been forgotten about by now called Peter Casey. He managed to turn himself from an electoral nonentity into coming in second place in that election by targeting travellers and making it into a campaign issue. Here’s a clip of Casey speaking to the Irish Independent podcast called the Floating Voter. If you want to give that a listen which started the whole controversy off.
Yeah I don’t believe that travellers should be given special status. You know, it’s why should they be given that status over and above yourself and myself, you know.
:
They are seen as a minority ethnicity.
That’s a load of nonsense. You know they’re not remaining Romani or whatever you know they’re not they’re not from Romania, here. They’re not, you know —they’re basically people that are camping in somebody else’s land, you know. It’s the poor farmer whose land that they camped on, you know. And who’d buy the land from him, you know? The neighbors and the houses all around… Do you think they’re sitting there going, “This is great for my property value, because I’ve now got three dozen caravans down the road,” you know, it’s just wrong, you know. And I think it needs to be… Somebody needs to step up and say, “This is nonsense.”
Once Casey made anti-traveller sentiment the defining issue of his campaign, he went from being an almost unknown candidate to getting 20 percent of the vote. He did that by using a very common populist rhetorical trick, which is speaking for the common man, and supposedly only expressing what ordinary decent people really think. To me it served as a kind of a test case that proved how discriminatory politics can really work in Ireland, as long as you pick the right scapegoat.
Right, absolutely. And you know in Ireland the simple fact is that if you live in the country, chances are you will have encountered a lot of negative stereotypes about travellers. And if you don’t live in Ireland it’s pretty likely that this is the first attitude to travellers that you’re going to encounter. Growing up in the country, anyway, there was a prevailing attitude that travellers were generally up to no good, you know, no matter what they were doing. But what’s more, as well, what was really tangible was that you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would ever challenge that received idea, you know. Even the most liberal minded people in Ireland still today often harbor some really deep prejudices on this line.
My experience has been that this is something of a quote unquote “acceptable bias” in Ireland. So, you will often have Irish people who were impeccably kind of right on on every other issue, but on this one they will defend anti-traveller views when they’re challenged. That’s my experience. I’ve also heard people express without any fear that they’re going to be challenged or contradicted very violent and disturbing opinions about travellers. Like, for example, I’ve heard people say casually that travellers should have all their children taken away so systematically to stamp the culture out, or even that they should be burnt out of the town to make a move on.
Yeah absolutely. Like that is true. You hear that. And in this year — this past year — the housing crisis and the presidential election kind of gave an excuse for some of that sentiment to come to the surface. A lot of stuff that you might not have heard for a while. A lot of people expressed a lot of resentment against travellers who were thought to have asked for special council housing because there is a nationwide crisis for everyone in housing right now. Somebody challenged me recently about this when I mentioned that we were making the episode. They basically said that ethnic minority status, you know, it’s all very well and good but travellers who demanded special housing circumstances, or even asked for them during an accommodation crisis were just expecting better treatment than everyone else. And therefore that ethnic status was a vector for inequality basically.
But in times of economic scarcity, with all of these existing grievances in place, perceptions like these can quickly become a hot button issue. And as we saw in that presidential election, incorrect reports about travellers supposedly demanding special privileges can spread extremely quickly once the false information is out there, it’s very difficult to retract it again.
Right. I mean something I said in our live show was, you know, when people are fighting over the crumbs that are thrown to them, you know you can be sure that you got the wrong enemy there. But you know that attitude as well, what struck me was that it shows—it kind of reveals an underlying disregard for traveller culture. It reveals that people don’t take it seriously as a culture, sometimes. Like, you know, this idea that ethnic minority status is fine until it actually means that measures can be taken to protect the culture it identifies. You know, until somebody has to compromise to protect that culture. Sadly the generalized anti-traveller bias means that a lot of the stuff that visitors to the country might hear about the community is just, I mean, not true.
And there’s a lot of misunderstanding as well because of course the housing policies of the state positioning halting sites, you know, on the edges of cities and towns kind of physically segregates people. And it’s created a kind of enduring cultural and communication gap where, you know, traveller people and settled people just might not know each other very well.
Yeah right. That physical infrastructure creates a curious dynamic, doesn’t it? Because it means that you know people will see travellers all the time, but very few people will get the chance to actually know a traveller properly, just — quite literally — because they’re on the other side of a motorway, let’s say. And, you know, that’s a situation where stereotypes can thrive very easily. Sometimes the only experience someone might have with a traveller is a negative one, and that will reinforce existing stereotypes. And then they may never have a chance for those assumptions to be challenged. So, like, it’s also a very real way to dismiss, I suppose, the actual social issues that are facing travellers today. You know, culture where stereotypes build up very easily and aren’t challenged — that feeds into attitudes, that, you know, sometimes the conditions that travellers live in, or the things that travellers are dealing with are all of their own making and that’s the end of the story.
We mentioned things like life expectancy and suicide rates, but the social inequalities that travellers face affect pretty much every aspect of life. It’s also been reported, for example, that travellers suffer the highest levels of infant mortality among any ethnic group in Ireland, as well as being at the bottom of education tables. David Stanton who is Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality has claimed that only 13 percent of travellers complete second level education in Ireland.
Now there’s loads of factors behind all these statistics and often it’s a vicious circle. Traveller education levels, for instance, have in many cases led to segregation of travellers in schools, as we heard, which in turn can often lead to very real educational needs being neglected. And then, of course, discriminatory treatment in schools only drives travellers further away a lot of the time from education — which can lead itself, sometimes, to even further segregatory measures.
We went over me and my brother and, like, all of a sudden we got put in this traveller class — away from all the settled class that we’re already in. We were like why… That’s our class, you know. So we got put in this traveller class. And we were like why are we in this traveller class? So they gave us Huggy Bear. And I remember me and my brother… What I think I was… What was I? I was nine. He was eight. I mean it was just hard trying not to laugh because we were obviously extremely bright. We were reading newspapers at two years of age means — back to front. And we said, “Teacher, come on. What’s going on here, like? This Huggy Bear.” “Well yeah, yeah. Would you be able to read that?” And we said, “C’mon. We were reading this as two-year infants.” And everybody else had crayons. And that was it. That was the class.
Another factor is the tradition of young marriage in travelling communities, which has lots of knock on effects. According to the Central Statistics Office, just under 23 percent of travellers are already married between the ages of 15 and 24 compared to 1.2 percent of the general population. Of course marrying young has lots of implications — and particularly leaving school early.
Right, and that sometimes ties in with the particular challenges faced by traveller women. A 2009 report published by the Women’s Health Council claimed that traveller women are 30 times more likely to experience domestic violence then settled women in Ireland. It claimed that traveller women — who only make up 0.5 percent of the population — represent 15 percent of all gender based violences.
The experience of traveller women is something I spoke about recently with Eileen Flynn. Eileen is an activist and an education worker with the Traveller Movement. She had some fascinating things to say about her work. Let’s have a listen.
Hey my name is Eileen Flynn. I’m a traveller woman from Ballyfermot, Dublin. I am a traveller activist and in the last three years I have opened up my eyes to feminism and what feminism means and equality, like the equality for women and for travellers in general. Going back in 2012 I would have really opened up my eyes to the levels of inequality that traveller women face on a daily basis, you know. Like every other community, the men are the dominant group, you know. And for traveller women, like any woman I imagine that comes from a culture or an ethnic minority group, would go through similar challenges as women, you know, because it’s like these cultures that’s wrote but it must be written from men for women, do you know what I mean? Where women can’t have sex before marriage, can’t drink before marriage, have to behave in a certain way, can’t move out of home before marriage. All these and all this and barriers put up to us women within cultures — I know in my own culture, for sure. These are some of the barriers, you know. And it’s very different for a traveller woman, say, to experience domestic violence, to come out as experiencing domestic violence or getting the support that that she needs because there’s this label that’s on traveller men. And not every single traveller a man beats up women, you know what I mean? But if you were to report domestic violence then, yeah, like, you know, it’s actually labelled, “then all them travellers, again, and them men are violent,” and stuff — which is no such thing. One out of five women in Ireland go through domestic violence, you know, and the traveller community are included in that figure, you know. And then young marriage. So for that women are having an opportunity of success because of of being getting married young, you know. And, it’s not a choice. A 15 year old child making a choice to get married should not be stood by — from parents, or from society, you know. So as a traveller woman I’ve kind of questioned that since 2012.
Eileen had the strange experience of having to come out as a feminist — and as a feminist from a traveller background. It’s something, she says, that is hard to swallow for some travellers — and some settled people, too. Traditionally, travellers have been seen as very conservative when it comes to women. They often have strong faith, and the influence of the Catholic Church is still pretty strong in many families. But Eileen, like many people in the few last years, said that she gradually became aware of the oppression that women like her were facing, in particular as the campaign to repeal the abortion ban was getting going.
In 2012 I would have been a pro- and anti-choice traveller woman, you know, because it was always easier fighting for life and for the rights of a child, if you want, you know.
So this would be — you would have opposed abortion, right?
Oh yeah, I would have. And that there is the truth. In 2012. In 2009 I remember doing a a debate in Trinity College and I would have been… It’s so easier to fight for for the rights of life and stuff, you know. However, you know, I wasn’t educated back then. I wasn’t — my eyes wasn’t open to the world of, to the level of inequality that women have to go through, you know. So, like, a woman is pregnant when she say she’s pregnant and wants a baby. If the woman doesn’t want a pregnancy, she’s not having a baby. And that’s her choice and her right for a termination if she wants that termination, if that woman wants the abortion. And, trust me, nobody knows the shoes that’s cutting them, only to person that’s wearing them, you know. So feminism in Ireland, even though started off originally from the working class women you know it was always. You have forms, if you want, that was took over by upper class women. And now, in Ireland, I think it’s ethnic minority groups that’s pushing the way through and saying, “Excuse me this is our space, too.”
So, 2015 would have been a starting point in my years of feminism, if you want. I stood up and gave a talk at the pro-choice. And you know I was… I didn’t know the words reproductive rights. I didn’t know what reproductive rights meant. So, it took myself for years just to question it and really understand it. So, when I was ready in 2015 I stood up, yeah. And it’s one of the hardest challenges I’ve ever been part of in my whole life. And the backlash of that, as well, where you know it can be met with violence outside of your own community and within your own community. You can get graphic calls and messages. And being called a baby killer, a man hater. I don’t hate men. I’m married to a Donegal settled man. And, but it doesn’t mean I’m a man hater because I want equality for women. I’m a feminist. I if I think a man is suffering inequality I will be the first to be there to there at his side. Which I’ve worked with many traveller men in the past, wanting better health for traveller men, you know. And so many times we have to make everything about men which absolutely kills me. If you want to know, even, like, women’s rights. “Oh, where’s the men’s rights?” And it’s just, you know, we need to stop making it about men and folks that are around men and not being ashamed of saying, “I’m a feminist, and this is what feminism is.” You know, that kind of way.
So what I’m getting, what I’m picking up is that some people see that you can’t both be a feminist and be, like, loyal to the traveller community. That it’s some some something of a betrayal because, like, many people the traveling community would have traditional views on things like abortion and marriage and things like that. So it is very difficult for you to be an outspoken person like that? And what has been the reaction from your community?
Yeah, it’s been very extremely difficult for me. But I how I see life is that my values in the world is human rights and equality. However, when my human rights and equality is being affected by norms in, like, people put it down to cultural views. But it’s not a cultural values. It’s not a cultural value for a woman to be treated less than a man, you know. So when one when I feel that women’s values are at risk and women’s equality and human rights is at risk, well, then we have to question our culture, you know. And yes. Hands up. I’ve had many difficult challenge within my own community and outside my own community. C’mere, you have to meet people where they’re at. And respect people where they’re at. And in the last, few years I’ve had many travellers that come up to me who have had had abortions. I’ve had many women who’ve come up to me who is living their own lives, and you know we’re having great conversations. And I can see that more today than ever, you know. I’m a traveller woman and I’m not just an activist for the community as a whole. I’m going to be that activist that fights for traveller women. I now work in the National Travel Women’s Forum and, you know, I love it to bits and being able to work with my own community is the best job in the world. And women within my own community. So it is, like it can be very challenging, but you know, Naomi, it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life. Because in my house, now, we speak about Trump. We speak around same-sex marriage. We speak about politics. And, you know, it wasn’t there in 2012, but it’s there today. And yes, it took years. But we have them conversations now. Now don’t get me wrong — we still don’t speak about periods or we don’t speak about abortion or anything like that. But look. All in good time. And it’s on it’s on its way if you want, you know.
Eileen also made the really good points that the statistics that you see about travellers — infant mortality, low life expectancy, you know — they are not part of traveller culture, but they get treated that way sometimes. You know, this is something entirely apart and it’s often the direct result of appalling living conditions that are overseen by the state.
As an example, Eileen mentioned the perennial problem of amenities at halting sights, which are often appalling and just left in a dreadful state for decades.
It’s horrible because wider society really don’t understand, do you know? Really don’t understand the level of inequalities that traveller community face on a daily basis. I went to a psycho-hospital last week. I guess you can hear my chest and stuff. And the doctor told me I was middle aged. Now I’m just gone. Twenty-nine years of age, like. Because my life expectancy is 12 years less than that of the general population, you know. and living in the conditions I’ve lived in for many many years, you know now I’m only like 29, as I said, and more than likely I’m going to be diagnosed with COPD.
What’s that?
It’s a chronic lung disorder, you know. Now, I am a smoker. To be fair, I am a smoker. But it’s because of living conditions as well. Cause if you are a smoker or not a smoker, you shouldn’t be getting that at the age of 29 years of age, do you know what I mean? And then there’s so many health problems within my own family. Like, my brother has to get half of his belly removed. My sister also has COPD in the lungs. My mother had it. My mother died at the age of 48 years of age with her lungs, you know. Because of all this environment. Not having the heat. Like the simple things that people take for granted. Do you know what I mean? Like we don’t have those. We don’t have them. In 2010, travellers in Labre Park in the caravans first had running water — and Labre Park is the oldest halting site in Ireland. It was it was opened up in 1976.
So I just want to pause and actually just repeat what you just said. So you’re saying in the halting site where you come from it only got running water in 2010. It only got running water in 2010, and it’s the oldest halting site in Ireland.
Yes. I’m saying the people in the caravans — because there’s caravans and there’s houses where I live, you know — and people in the caravans. Not only did they only get running water, they only got access to a toilet, a unit and a shower. Like it’s a shower, it’s a toilet, you know. And they got access to them in 2010. And I’m telling you right now Naomi, it was the hardest fight to get them units in. Them units were only meant to be temporary. They’re still there.
As I was finishing up the interview with Eileen I thanked her, and she pointed out that I had said her name wrong. She had only changed it on her social media profiles because she’s getting married and she wanted to make sure that the hotel where she’s due to have her reception didn’t find out that she’s a traveller by Googling her.
That there’s reality for travellers.
Can I ask you to say that again? So, you disguised your name when you were getting married to make sure that your wedding wasn’t cancelled by the venue.
Yeah. And yes, I changed my name on Twitter and on social media in case the hotel would have googled my name and my Twitter account stuff would’ve come up. But I changed it all going back last February for those reasons that I, like… They are actually so real. Like, these are struggles that people don’t really even see. You know, that kind of way they see, “Oh, there’s Eileen Flynn. She’s a strong feminist woman, and blah-dee-blah.” But they don’t the, like, you know, hiding your identity. I had to do it for many years.
You know, this brings up something that I think really gets overlooked in Ireland. You know, just the sheer mental burden that is placed on travellers all the time to either hide their background or be prepared to face discrimination. Like Eileen said, the constant obligation to renounce your own identity just to get on and do normal things — like have a wedding, or go to a pub — you know, that has to have a really serious strain on people’s mental wellbeing.
Yes, and Eileen told me she’s not comfortable going out on her own in case she gets challenged somewhere. Like, she can’t be confident that she’s not going to be refused from a restaurant or somewhere like that, so she needs to be in a group to deal with that or have an escort of settled people. And that’s just appalling in 2019. It’s a real level of oppression that inhibits daily life. There are, of course, valiant people at the forefront of changing this culture of discrimination. For example, after a long long battle by activists in 2017 travellers were formally recognized for the first time as a distinct ethnic group. That’s a designation that paves the way for legal protection of their culture and their right to reserve it.
Organizations for travellers’ rights have been around since the 1960s, including —perhaps, most famously — Pavee Point, which now advocates for the rights of Roma in Ireland, too. These organizations work to improve traveller access to education employment and health care and basically just try to begin levelling the playing field between the chances in life for travellers and those for settled people.
Like Eileen Flynn, a lot of other travellers have become involved in the recent grass roots political resurgence in Ireland. Like we’ve mentioned a lot on this podcast, there’s a feeling in Ireland right now that lots of old systems can be challenged or changed. This is a major factor in that. Let’s hear now from Julia O’Reilly. I spoke to her recently in Dublin and she explained how she was forced to take matters into her own hands as a child. She secretly rented library books and the audio book versions of them to teach herself how to read because their primary school had failed to do so. Next stop, running for election. I spoke to her in the middle of her campaign to stand as a local representative in County Longford. She always had political ambitions, she told me. But the appearance of Peter Casey had given them urgency.
What inspired you to run for a seat on the council?
To be quite honest I think it was the issue of Peter Casey, at the time. I always had interest to do it, but that was the push that I needed. I think it really showed really what’s going on underneath everything, to be quite honest. And, of course, it is hurtful for a whole community to be cast to one side constantly in the bad press, as well, do you know, when there’s so many good people out there.
Julia’s main focus is on equality of education, which she says is one of the central aggravating factors when it comes to depleted chances in life for travellers.
Well, discrimination starts on all levels. And it started, I suppose — for me and many of my people — at school. That’s where it really starts out. So it’s the educational system, as well. And also, when you’re going to school, that’s when you start to communicate better with other kids, and you start to bond. And there is a lack of bonding there, because, I suppose, we would be seen as outcasts or different. So there wouldn’t be as much interaction. And those that would be seen to interact with us as children we’ll be slightly outcasts, even in their community. So that’s one thing. Then, the other thing is, we’re not hired. Okay. And there has been different percentages that has been brought forward from Ireland: who’d want to be married to traveller; related to a traveller; work with a traveller… Which is quite shocking. Not for me, per se, but the percentages were quite high.
These are like opinion polls that asked people…
Yes, that would ask them those specific questions. And I think — I don’t want to quote a wrong marker — but I think it was something like 86 percent didn’t want to be related. And we’re living in a very diverse society right now. And we need to embrace that and move forward. Ireland, I suppose, was always seen as a very open country, do you know, and we have to open that up again. We can’t keep closing these barriers off for people. Pushing people back when there is chances for us to push forward. And it starts with our children. Acceptance. Inclusion. All of those things. I went to school, we’ll say mid-80s, and I finished primary school in 1997. So, that’s not that long ago, do you know. I finished my Leaving Cert in 2001. So again, that’s not that long ago. What’s really facing them is, these kids are left behind because, do you know, in my time we were segregated. And even now, you know, you’re put at the back of the class.
What do you mean segregated? Can you explain that?
I suppose not included, really. Do you know what I mean? And that goes from, we’ll say, the playground and so on. How does that make a child feel inside of themselves — especially if there’s not a big population of travellers in one community, either. So if we look at it from that kind of point, as well. And, I suppose being put down at the back of the class if you don’t have parents that can read and write you’re not getting the benefits somebody at the front will. And when they go home, they have the benefits because they have their mothers and fathers to help them, do you know. Now, there is many, many, many travellers that’s overly educated. Obviously, I’m not saying 100 percent of us is in that state. But there is a huge amount. And if it was only to come forward, it’d be shocking to see how much the system has failed us. And why they have failed us, you know. Because there is grants there, and support grants, and there always have been there. But were they used appropriately and properly would be my question, do you know, to really look at. Because this doesn’t just come from nowhere. So when we have education, we have knowledge. it’s very handy and easy to sort ourselves out. It’s when we don’t have it it brings, like, for example stress and anxiety when you’re filling out forms. Can you imagine what that’s like? At this day and age, to sit there and not be able to fill out a form. Can you imagine the frustration of men not being able to express themselves? And this is what’s happening.
This would be people with low levels of literacy.
Yeah, do you know. That’s right across all society. We know that but, there will be maybe thirty years of an age gap where people 20 years ago started this, or 15 years ago, and they would have been from a different era. And now, people my age probably would still be coming forward illiterate. And it’s very sensitive, do you know, because they feel it’s their shame when it’s not their shame. It’s something that was handed to them, do you know. So it’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s it’s time to take back your right. It’s time to change that. It’s in your hands to take that back.
Do you know for me, growing up with the education I was delivered with — which I took control of when I was 12 years old and started to go to the library and… Do you remember cassette tapes? Probably lots listening to this do. And I would bring them home with the books, and I would sit there and I would teach myself how to read. And by the time I went into first year I was, I’d say, maybe 70 percent better than I was. The same with my spelling skills and stuff like that. And it was not due to my lack. By the time I had it solved, do you know, I was a lot more content in myself. And I think that’s why secondary was a different battleground for me, if you get me. It was a lot fairer because I took that back. And that’s why I am focusing on education. We can take back those things. Everybody has the ability to change what somebody, they feel, has took from them, and say, “No. Do you know what? I’m going to take that back today.” We don’t have to be victims. We’re not victims. We’re not saying we’re victims. We’re just saying we want this now. We need this now. We need this for our children and we need this for ourselves — and it’s time to move forward.
And Naomi, I think that’s a pretty inspiring note on which to end this. Listeners — as well as John Connors, we’ll be posting the full interview with Eileen Flynn on our Patreon page if you want to hear more. And I’d really advise it, because there’s so much more fascinating stuff in those interviews that we haven’t been able to fit into this episode.
If you’re not a Patreon subscriber yet, it’s a great chance to become one. Just head over to patreon.com/theirishpassport. Join up today to gain full access to our whole archive of half pint extra content and videos. You’ll be supporting the podcast, too, and making sure that we can keep doing what we do.
Thanks again to our sponsor, Biddy Murphy. And thanks to you so much for listening, as ever. Slán.
Slán.
The music on today’s episode was Never Can Stop It by Lobo Loco from their album Hoh Hey.