Louise Doughty reveals her family's hidden gypsy past, at 5x15

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Louise Doughty reveals her family's hidden gypsy past, at 5x15

27 Sep 2010

Speakers: Louise Doughty

This talk took place at 5x15 on September 27th 2010. Full video of this event, a total of five talks and a musical interlude, will be available for Premium members next week, and will also be available for registered users to purchase for £2.99.

Why Now?

Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to order the demolition of gypsy camps across France and to expel many Roma travellers back to the countries where they were born has attracted widespread criticism. So far, French police have deported more than 1,000 Roma to Romania and Bulgaria and dismantled more than 100 camps. A leaked interior ministry document told police to focus on the Roma "as a priority". This behaviour has led to a threat of legal action from the European commission, and comparisons with Nazi persecution of gypsies - some half a million travellers died in concentration camps during the Second World War. But although Europeans have lined up to criticise France, can other countries - and particularly the UK - feel any pride when it comes to our own treatment of travelling communities?

In the UK, where Irish travellers are the largest nomadic group numbering around 300,000, recent research has shown that the average traveller has a life expectancy of about 50 years – some 25 years shorter than the settled population. Infant mortality is three times higher among travellers, and a traveller mother is nearly 20 times more likely to lose her child before their 18th birthday than the UK average.

Some see in these facts a manifestation of Europe’s ongoing prejudice against travellers, a form of racism which, they believe, perpetuates stereotypes about dirt, crime and illiteracy, holding back travellers who would like to work or integrate and pushing the community into further isolation. Others, however, say that travellers must take responsibility for their own plight, and argue that the problems travellers face can be blamed – at least partly – on their failure to educate their children, respect the planning codes, work for a living and obey the law.

Event information:

Novelist Louise Doughty gives us a gently meandering recital of the tall tales and fond vignettes passed down through numerous generation of her family. She begins with ‘Spank’, her great-great-great-grandmother, a pure-blood Romany gypsy and stern matriarch, who sailed to England to give her unborn son a better future, though not with immediate success, as he spent most of his early life living in a graveyard.

Although many of her family stories are light-hearted, Doughty brings her talk to a serious conclusion. She tells us that around one million Romany people died during World War II, and her family would almost certainly have perished had ‘Spank’ not been an economic migrant. Roma are the fastest growing ethnic minority in Europe, she argues, yet they are being deported from France in their thousands. Here Doughty makes the case for tolerance and integration through the framework of her own family history.