Irish Travellers: Racism and the Politics of Culture

Anthony A. MacKenzie is an associate professor of history at St. Francis
Xavier University in Nova Scotia.

For centuries the travelling people commonly called “gypsies” have
been objects of persecution and discrimination. They have been accused
of thievery, begging, sorcery, kidnapping, laziness, and heathenism. In
this book, Jane Helleiner deals with the travelling people of Ireland
and the attempts made by other Irish to force them to become settled and
send their children to school—in a word, conform. Travellers’
caravans have been burned or towed away by farm tractors; their dogs and
horses have been shot. Travellers have been refused service in shops,
pubs, and restaurants. Their children who do attend school are often
subject to abuse and discrimination. A considerable number of the 32,000
Travellers have settled in some sort of housing but still maintain a
feeling of kinship with camping Travellers.

Jane Helleiner and her husband lived for a time in a Traveller camp,
won the people’s confidence to a degree, and so acquired special
insights into the nomads’ way of life. Obviously sympathetic to the
Travellers’ struggle to maintain their distinctive culture, she is
equally scrupulous in listing the complaints and accusations made
against them, along with the well-meant attempts to train young
Travellers in employable skills.

Only rarely is the role of religion mentioned. Irish society has been
saturated with religious feeling since Saint Patrick’s time at least;
there is little said in this book, however, about interaction between
the churches and the Travellers. Aside from that omission, the book
deals fully and fairly with the status of the Travellers in an
increasingly industrialized and “globalized” Ireland. Sometimes the
excessive use of academic jargon makes for difficult reading.

Decidedly not a book for general consumption, Irish Travellers is a
very useful resource for scholars in the fields of anthropology and
sociology.