Thu 30 Apr 2020, 02:46 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Mark Langabeer, Newton Abbot Labour Party member.
Dispatches presenter Anja Popp interviewed local residents, an MP and a police officer, who claimed that traveller sites were responsible for high crime rates. The programme, called The truth about Traveller Crime, in my opinion supported a narrative that more crime is committed by travellers than the general population. It also suggested that the police are reluctant to act because of the fear of being labelled racist.
The programme begins by highlighting the manslaughter of PC Andrew Harper and the subsequent arrest of three travellers. Also mentioned was a traveller gang that were convicted for modern-day slavery. But Dispatches made no attempt to establish whether travellers commit more murders than the general population
It visited a site near Lutterworth in Leicestershire, where a number of local residents complained of crimes committed by travellers. The range of offences included robbery, theft and anti-social behaviour. The response of the Leicestershire police was that they investigate and prosecute crime without fear nor favour, and they pointed out that crime rates had actually fallen in that area in recent years.
‘ungovernable’ spaces
Popp interviewed Andrew Seleus, the Conservative MP for South -West Bedfordshire, who claimed that traveller sites had become ungovernable spaces in his constituency and elsewhere in the UK. There was an example of Cromer, a seaside town in Norfolk, which had around 100 travellers visiting the town over a bank holiday weekend and a crime wave followed. There was criticism of the police response. The police issued a statement which accepted some of the complaints but were unable to deal with the level of calls because of a shortage of officers.
The Police Federation, in a poster campaign, had a slogan ‘cuts have consequences’. Seleus and his Tory colleagues have cut police numbers by over 20,000 over the past ten years. It’s not out of ‘political correctness’ that there are times when the police can no longer have the resources to deal with what are regarded as low-level crime.
The traveller community on the sites pointed out that they do have problems caused by a small minority. However, this shouldn’t tarnish the reputation of travellers as a whole. Stone and rock throwing from juveniles at passing cars was a common complaint. As a bus driver for more years than I care to remember, the throwing of missiles at vehicles isn’t simply the preserve of juveniles from traveller sites.
Survey of sites
The programme then attempted to provide statistics to back up the claim that the travelling community are responsible for higher crime rates. It conducted a survey of the 237 sites in the UK, of which 56% were in areas that were below the average crime rate and 27% was significantly above the national rate. What do we deduce from this statistic? As far as I can see, very little.
Popp interviewed a leading criminologist, Liz Yardley, who pointed out that higher crime rates are linked to deprivation and poverty. Popp also interviewed Pauline Anderson, the head of Derby’s city council education and skills department, who is from the travellers’ community. She said that young male travellers have proportionately higher numbers in prison than the general population. Anderson believed that this was linked to lower educational attainment, similar to young men from Afro- Caribbean backgrounds.
Kate Green MP, the co-chair of the all-party Select Group on Gypsy, Travellers and Roma, believed that characterising cultural background with crime was stigmatising a whole community. Green pointed out that a law in 2014 has made it harder for travellers to be granted permanent sites. This has resulted in a rise of unauthorized sites that damage relations between travellers and existing communities.
It can’t be doubted that some people have experienced horrendous problems with elements of the traveller community. Right-wing ideology is always about diverting attention away from the causes of working peoples’ problems. It’s Seleus and his Tory colleagues who are responsible for the cuts and growing poverty in the UK, not the police, council planners or ‘political correctness’.
