Guardian: The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala’s rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19

A model response. But, like New Zealand, does this not lock Kerala in to Bill Gates’ ‘vaccine or bust’ #ID2020 Big Brother digital ID, over a virus only about as deadly as a bad flu?

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), of which she is a member, has been prominent in Kerala’s governments since 1957, the year after her birth. (It was part of the Communist Party of India until 1964, when it broke away.) Born into a family of activists and freedom fighters – her grandmother campaigned against untouchability – she watched the so-called “Kerala model” be assembled from the ground up; when we speak, this is what she wants to talk about.

The foundations of the model are land reform – enacted via legislation that capped how much land a family could own and increased land ownership among tenant farmers – a decentralised public health system and investment in public education. Every village has a primary health centre and there are hospitals at each level of its administration, as well as 10 medical colleges.

This is true of other states, too, says MP Cariappa, a public health expert based in Pune, Maharashtra state, but nowhere else are people so invested in their primary health system. Kerala enjoys the highest life expectancy and the lowest infant mortality of any state in India; it is also the most literate state. “With widespread access to education, there is a definite understanding of health being important to the wellbeing of people,” says Cariappa.

Shailaja says: “I heard about those struggles – the agricultural movement and the freedom fight – from my grandma. She was a very good storyteller.” Although emergency measures such as the lockdown are the preserve of the national government, each Indian state sets its own health policy. If the Kerala model had not been in place, she insists, her government’s response to Covid-19 would not have been possible.

A walk-in test centre in Ernakulam, Kerala. Photograph: Reuters

That said, the state’s primary health centres had started to show signs of age. When Shailaja’s party came to power in 2016, it undertook a modernisation programme. One pre-pandemic innovation was to create clinics and a registry for respiratory disease – a big problem in India. “That meant we could spot conversion to Covid-19 and look out for community transmission,” Shailaja says. “It helped us very much.”

When the outbreak started, each district was asked to dedicate two hospitals to Covid-19, while each medical college set aside 500 beds. Separate entrances and exits were designated. Diagnostic tests were in short supply, especially after the disease reached wealthier western countries, so they were reserved for patients with symptoms and their close contacts, as well as for random sampling of asymptomatic people and those in the most exposed groups: health workers, police and volunteers.

Shailaja says a test in Kerala produces a result within 48 hours. “In the Gulf, as in the US and UK – all technologically fit countries – they are having to wait seven days,” she says. “What is happening there?” She doesn’t want to judge, she says, but she has been mystified by the large death tolls in those countries: “I think testing is very important – also quarantining and hospital surveillance – and people in those countries are not getting that.” She knows, because Malayalis living in those countries have phoned her to say so.

Places of worship were closed under the rules of lockdown, resulting in protests in some Indian states, but resistance has been noticeably absent in Kerala – in part, perhaps, because its chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, consulted with local faith leaders about the closures. Shailaja says Kerala’s high literacy level is another factor: “People understand why they must stay at home. You can explain it to them.”

The Indian government plans to lift the lockdown on 17 May (the date has been extended twice). After that, she predicts, there will be a huge influx of Malayalis to Kerala from the heavily infected Gulf region. “It will be a great challenge, but we are preparing for it,” she says. There are plans A, B and C, with plan C – the worst-case scenario – involving the requisitioning of hotels, hostels and conference centres to provide 165,000 beds. If they need more than 5,000 ventilators, they will struggle – although more are on order – but the real limiting factor will be manpower, especially when it comes to contact tracing. “We are training up schoolteachers,” Shailaja says.

Once the second wave has passed – if, indeed, there is a second wave – these teachers will return to schools. She hopes to do the same, eventually, because her ministerial term will finish with the state elections a year from now. Since she does not think the threat of Covid-19 will subside any time soon, what secret would she like to pass on to her successor? She laughs her infectious laugh, because the secret is no secret: “Proper planning.”

06 May 20 – Small farms and market gardening

Farming Today
The Ecological Land Cooperative says small farms could and should play an important role in the future of our food system. It buys agricultural land, then divides it into small-holdings, gets planning permission for houses on each one then sells or rents the plots at well below market value. The idea is to allow new entrants into farming without the need for huge capital. We find out more and visit a vegetable farm in Devon that grows more than 50 varieties of veg on less than an acre.
Presented by Anna Hill
Produced by Heather Simons
download/listen https://open.live.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/6/redir/version/2.0/mediaset/audio-nondrm-download/proto/https/vpid/p08cc14w.mp3

BBC link – expires in 24 days time (stupidly)  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hvmf

ELC 2020 Share Offer

https://ecologicalland.coop/2020investor
Small farms, big solutions — join the ELC as an investor member

Shockingly perhaps nearly half the land in the UK is owned by just 25,000 people – less than 1% of the population. And much of that land is dominated by industrial methods of production that come at great cost to the natural world. Yet there is another way. There is huge potential for the growth of agroecology – agriculture that works together with natural ecology.

NFU 2013: Solar photovoltaic electricity in agriculture

If 10 GW of solar power were ground-mounted (half the national ambition for 2020 set by DECC), this, would occupy at most 25,000 hectares (62,000 acres) – just 0.14% of total UK agricultural area (18 million ha) with a negligible impact on national food security. Solar farms are a temporary and reversible use of farmland – the modules are typically mounted on screw piles, to be removed at the end of the 25-year planning consent period, enabling land to return to agriculture.

Solar farms receive more cash from green subsidies than selling the energy they produce

• British energy producers were given generous handouts to introduce solar farms
• But many make the majority of their cash from the ‘green levy’ on taxpayers’ bills
• Total subsidy provided to solar electricity generators last year was about £1.2bn

By COLIN FERNANDEZ ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT FOR THE DAILY MAIL PUBLISHED: 01:14, 9 April 2018

Britain’s biggest solar farms receive more cash from green subsidies than from selling the electricity they produce, figures reveal. Energy producers were encouraged to start solar farms with generous handouts funded by a ‘green levy’ on taxpayers’ bills. But many of them now make the majority of their cash from the subsidy – instead of the electricity they produce.

The total subsidy provided to all generators of solar electricity last year is estimated to be about £1.2billion. This was part of the £5.6billion subsidy paid to green energy producers, which critics say inflates household energy bills. Figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) following a Freedom of Information request show ten of the biggest solar farms in the country pocketed more than £2.5million each in eco-subsidy last year. The payouts were offered to help increase the amount of ‘green’ energy produced in the UK.

The solar subsidy is responsible for around £15 a year on a household power bill. However the system – which guarantees the handouts for 15 or 20 years – has been overly generous. Treasury officials have stopped new deals being made with solar farms in a bid to stop haemorrhaging huge amounts of cash. But farms with existing deals are guaranteed generous handouts until the end of their contracts.

Last year’s biggest beneficiary was the Owl’s Hatch Solar park, in Herne Bay, Kent. The 200-acre site generated just over 54,000 MWh of electricity, worth around £2.5million, but was given a handout of £3.8million. The farm is owned by Cubico Sustainable Investments, which has seven other smaller solar farms in England.

The nation’s largest installation, Shotwick Solar Park, in Deeside, North Wales, was handed a £3.5million subsidy, which was pocketed by owner Foresight Solar Fund. It also generated electricity worth around £2.5million.

Dr Lee Moroney, of the Renewable Energy Foundation charity, said: ‘The moratorium on new subsidies to renewables was the right thing to do, but it is a classic case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. ‘The legacy subsidies are themselves so high … that Government must consider retrospective cuts to reduce what is an unreasonable burden on the consumer and the wider economy.’…

Vancouver city council has unanimously voted to acknowledge that the city is on unceded Aboriginal territory.

Mayor Gregor Robertson declared a ‘Year of Reconciliation’ last summer, in the hopes of building new relationships between Aboriginals and Vancouverites.

“Underlying all other truths spoken during the Year of Reconciliation is the truth that the modern city of Vancouver was founded on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations and that these territories were never ceded through treaty, war or surrender,” reads part of the motion from the city.

The city says it will now work with representatives from the Aboriginal community to determine “appropriate protocols” for conducting city business.

First Nations’ traditional territories in the Greater Vancouver area
Katzie; Musqueam; Squamish; Tsawwassen; Tsleil-Waututh
http://www.johomaps.com/cht/na/canada/bc/vancouver/firstnations/firstnations.html

[Notes – 1. this is a 18-19 century throwback see Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the 1723 Black Act etc. 3. Gypsies and travellers are protected under international law and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 3. trespass has been a crime in the USA for around fifty years – TG]

The trespass trap: this new law could make us strangers in our own land

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/15/tresspass-trap-law-land-travelling-people-rights

see also: Tories fanning flames of racism (Dec 2019)

A government consultation being framed as a crackdown on travelling people is an assault on all citizens’ freedoms

George Monbiot – @GeorgeMonbiot Wed 15 Jan 2020 06.00 GMT

Every government of the past 30 years has promised freedom, and every government has taken it away. The general ‘freedom’ they proclaim turns out to mean freedom for billionaires, the City of London, and the tax-avoiding, labour-exploiting, planet-poisoning chancers whose liberty is our captivity. Meanwhile, through further restrictions on housing, benefits, immigration, protest and dissent, they have snatched freedom from those who need it most.

Boris Johnson’s government intends to sustain this ignoble tradition. Its consultation document on unauthorised encampments proposes to criminalise the lives of some of Britain’s most vulnerable and persecuted groups. By enabling the police to confiscate the homes of ‘anyone whom they suspect to be trespassing on land with the purpose of residing on it’, Gypsies, Roma and Travellers will be left with nowhere to stop.

Even the police oppose this legislative cleansing: 75% of police forces and police commissioners believe that existing powers are sufficient to address any harmful behaviour by members of these groups. The government’s sweeping proposals would amount to collective punishment. This is Conservatism at its cruellest and meanest.

But when you examine the proposals more closely, you begin to realise that they don’t stop at the persecution of travelling peoples. The way the questions are framed could enable the government to go much further than the official purpose of the consultation, potentially launching one of the most severe restrictions on general freedom in the modern era.

The consultation is everything such exercises are not supposed to be. It is confusing and heavily slanted. It is pitched in such a way that, however you might answer the questions, you are forced to agree with a profoundly illiberal idea.

For example, the first question asks: ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree that knowingly entering land without the landowner’s permission should only be made a criminal offence if it is for the purpose of residing on it?

It’s a perfect trap. If you agree, you consent to the curtailment of the traditional rights and lives of Roma and Travellers. If you disagree, you consent to the criminalisation of something much wider, which, throughout English history has been a civil matter: trespass on land.

Is this the intention? To sneak in, under the cloak of a populist attack on a small minority, the criminalisation of walking on the great majority of England’s land? We have a parliament in which, in both houses, landowners are massively over-represented. We have a wider political and economic system in which ancient, landed power still carries immense weight. There is nothing some landowners would like more than to set the police on those who dare to venture into their vast estates. And there is nothing that tells us more clearly that freedom for one is captivity for another.

Even while it remains a civil matter, the offence of trespass informs us that we are strangers in our own nation, unwelcome on the great majority of its acres. This is why Scotland introduced its comprehensive right to roam, enabling people to venture on to almost all uncultivated land except gardens, sports grounds and the land immediately surrounding houses, schools and other buildings. Despite dire predictions, it works well, with scarcely any conflict. The Scottish government, and the campaigners who pressed for this reform, see access as an essential component of citizenship. When you are treated as a trespasser across most of your nation, the message you receive is that you don’t belong.

To criminalise trespass would be to make strangers of us all. The police become internal border guards, defending the fabric of the nation from us, the alien horde. In most parts of the country, this will leave us fenced into tiny areas. The right to roam in England extends to just 10% of the nation, generally far from where most people live. Some counties have only pocket handkerchiefs of land where we may freely venture.

To be adventurous in many parts of Britain, to explore more than a few glorified dog toilets, is to trespass. To stick to the footpaths and the pockets of access land is, for many of us, to feel unbearably trapped. Already we must tiptoe across our nation, trying to remain unseen. Does the government now seek to criminalise us? As the same confusing framing applies to several of the questions in the consultation, it seems unlikely to be accidental. The Conservative manifesto stated, without qualification, ‘we will make intentional trespass a criminal offence’.

The harder you look, the more disguised powers appear to be lodged in this consultation. Even if new trespass laws are aimed only at those residing on land, they will affect not only Gypsies, Roma and Travellers, but also rough sleepers. David Cameron’s government criminalised squatting in empty homes. This too was previously a civil matter. Thousands of homeless people found themselves on the wrong side of the law. Some have been imprisoned for using property abandoned by its owners. Johnson’s government would do the same to people living in tents or bivvy bags. There will be nowhere to turn.

Any new laws are also likely to be used against protesters. We’ve seen how previous legislation – such as the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act, the 2000 Terrorism Act and the 2005 Serious Organised Crime and Police Act – has been immediately deployed against peaceful protest, in some cases after the government promised that it would not be used for this purpose.

In view of the statements this week by the home secretary, Priti Patel, attempting to justify Extinction Rebellion’s temporary inclusion on a list of extremist ideologies, we cannot trust her to protect our rights to dissent. People seeking to reside on land for the purposes of protest, as anti-fracking and anti-roads campaigners have done to great effect, are likely to be criminalised from the outset.

But in casting the illiberal net so wide, the government might accidentally have created a coalition. Rather than allowing Roma, Travellers and homeless people to be picked off, all those of us who fear the criminalisation of trespass should join forces with them, protecting their rights while we defend our own. In responding to the consultation, which closes on 4 March, we should refuse to be trapped in the government’s framing. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with its proposals, we should state under every confusing question that we reject all attempts to criminalise trespass.

History shows that attacks on general freedoms often begin with an attack on the freedom of a minority. It teaches us that we should never allow a government to divide and rule. An attack on one is an attack on all.

Insecure Britain – we are two and a half pay cheques away from homelessness on average

A new survey finds three quarters of Brits worry that if their financial situation changed in just one way, they might end up losing their home, or evicted.

by Ben Gelblum – January 8, 2020 https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/property/insecure-britain-we-are-two-and-a-half-pay-cheques-away-from-homelessness-on-average/08/01/

see also: Half of households facing homelessness in Knowsley have jobs

Insecure Britain – we are two and a half pay cheques away from homelessness on average

The average Brit believes they could only pay their rent or mortgage for two-and-a-half months if they lost their job, according to a survey.

It suggests that many adults are just a couple of pay cheques away from facing homelessness, with three in four worrying that they could end up losing their home if their financial situation changed.

The survey also found that nearly half (45%) of those polled agree that anyone could become homeless and it just takes a run of bad luck for it to happen.

More than a third say they have had to leave their home because they couldn’t afford to live there.

The most common reasons for someone losing their home were because they lost their job and could not afford their housing costs (18%) and a relationship breakdown forcing someone to move (18%).

Almost half say they know at least one person who has lost their home.

Beam.org, the social enterprise which commissioned the poll, said the “sad reality” is that many people find themselves on the streets for reasons outside of their control.

The poll, which questioned 1,500 British adults, calculated that the average time that someone could pay their rent or mortgage if they lost their job was 2.5 months.

Three quarters of Brits said they worry that if their financial situation changed in just one way, they might end up losing their home, or evicted.

Of these, 31% said they worry about this all the time, and 45 per cent worry about it sometimes.

Almost one in five said that if they did lose their home because they couldn’t afford housing costs they would have nothing to fall back on.

Almost a third said they have savings to fall back on, while half could turn to family and 16% to their friends.

Alex Stephany, founder and chief executive of Beam.org, said: “Whether it’s mental health related, a relationship breakdown, or losing one’s job, the sad reality is that many people become homeless for reasons outside their control.

“But often, the difference between people tipping into homelessness or not comes down to the strength of their support networks.

“The people we support at Beam come from a variety of backgrounds but they usually lack this ‘scaffolding’ in their lives.

“At Beam, we’ve seen that a combination of upskilling homeless people and providing them with an online support community is vital.” The survey questioned just over 1,500 British adults in December.

Tories accused of ‘fanning flames of racism’ against Gypsy/Travellers in UK election campaign

rarely mentioned is the fact that demonising gypsies and travellers is always deployed by the Tories because it does win votes – votes from those corralled into debt-laden home ownership who resent others – such as travellers – who aren’t – yes – the politics of envy – pushing a bankster mortgage rentier landlord agenda – but this was recognised after WWII in the UDHR as totally unacceptable bullying of an ethnic minority and must be hammered – called out under human rights law and everywhere else….[TG]

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/tories-accused-of-fanning-flames-of-racism-against-gypsytravellers-ahead-of-uk-election/

‘They’re demonising us to win cheap votes’ say rights activists, as openDemocracy research reveals ‘sickening’ rhetoric deployed by Conservatives across the country.

OpenDemocracy’s investigation into anti-Traveller propaganda during the election has revealed that:

• Cabinet Minister Michael Gove has listed cracking down on ‘illegal traveller incursions’ as a key election priority.
• Tory candidates have promoted films on Facebook which single out and criticise the Traveller community, including one with Home Secretary Priti Patel suggesting communities live ‘in fear’ of Travellers.
• Tory candidates have put opposition to Gypsy and Traveller camps at the centre of their campaigns ‘ including support for new laws which Traveller groups say are designed to criminalise them.
• One Tory candidate, in Crewe and Nantwich, led a demonstration against the local Gypsy/Traveller community.
• Another Tory candidate in South West Bedfordshire has backed proposals which, according to a community spokesperson, amount to ‘forced assimilation’.

Adam Ramsay 10 December 2019

Home Secretary Priti Patel has promised to “crack down” on traveller communities.

The Conservatives have been accused of ‘fanning the flames of racism’ against Gypsies, Roma and Travellers ahead of the UK general election on Thursday.

The complaints come as openDemocracy research reveals that Tory candidates across the country have made inflammatory and discriminatory statements about Gypsies, Roma and Travellers in their campaign material.

Labour and the SNP have described openDemocracy’s findings as ‘disgusting’ and the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has said it is ‘sickening to see them stir up prejudice against vulnerable, disadvantaged Travellers.’

Accusing the Conservative party of trying to ‘criminalise Gypsies to hide their own failures,’ Joe Jones, chair of the Gypsy Council said: ‘They are using us the same as they do the immigrants and everyone else: as cannon fodder for political favour.’

Meanwhile the Scottish Traveller advocate Davie Donaldson said: ‘This is the worst election I have ever seen in terms of rhetoric towards Gypsy/Traveller people. The division coming out is causing real real worry.’

He added: ‘It’s a poison which infects the Conservative party.’

Senior Tory appointees not standing for election, including the government’s anti-semitism tsar, have also been accused of singling out Travellers as an ethnic group.

‘Legislative cleansing

openDemocracy’s findings come after a series of controversies about the Conservatives’ treatment of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community. They also come in the wake of recent attacks against Travellers.

Last month, Home Secretary Priti Patel announced a consultation on creating a new offence of ‘trespassing while setting up an unauthorised encampment’ – an initiative which has been described as ‘legislative cleansing‘ by the journalist George Monbiot.

The legislation will, among other things, give police powers to confiscate Traveller property, and critics say it is specifically designed to criminalise communities that have in many cases used the land for longer than settled communities.

Asked by openDemocracy to respond to allegations that the proposed new law is aimed at ‘criminalising an ethnic group,’ Home Secretary Priti Patel said: ‘The public want their communities protected and for the police to crack down on trespassers.’

‘Our proposals aim to ensure that [unauthorised] encampments can be challenged and removed as quickly as possible.’

A spokesperson for Ms Patel also highlighted the Conservative manifesto, which states: ‘We will tackle unauthorised traveller camps. We will give the police new powers to arrest and seize the property and vehicles of trespassers who set up unauthorised encampments, in order to protect our communities. We will make intentional trespass a criminal offence.’

Responding to the Home Office consultation, the human rights group Friends, Families, and Travellers, said: ‘The proposals would have a devastating impact on Gypsy and Traveller communities, who have been part of British life since before the 16th century, yet face some of the greatest inequalities of any group in England and Wales.’

They added that the Priti Patel’s assertions about unlawful behaviour in unauthorised encampments ‘focus on the behaviour of a minority, yet tar all Gypsies and Travellers with the same brush. This is dangerous and discriminatory rhetoric.’

‘It is no coincidence that this announcement comes in the wake of a general election. If there was a real appetite to address the issue of unauthorised encampments, the government would have invested in site provision. Yet, for over a decade we have seen little to no progress in this area. Criminalising families who have no place to go is inhumane and wrong.’

Leading anti-Traveller protests in key marginals

In the Labour-Tory marginal seat of Crewe and Nantwich, the Conservative candidate Dr Keiran Mullan has spent hundreds of pounds promoting two separate videos on Facebook in which he criticises the local Gypsy and Traveller community for stopping on a park in Nantwich.

Dr Mullan has also been described by a local as ‘spearheading’ a campaign against Travellers camping on the park, including leading a protest in September which was attended by 250 people, according to the local paper.

In the videos, Mullan describes a Traveller encampment on the park as ‘illegal’, despite the fact that trespass isn’t a crime.

The human rights group Friends, Families and Travellers has told openDemocracy that the claim that Traveller encampments are illegal has long been part of a strategy to vilify Gypsy and Traveller groups.

Speaking to openDemocracy, Dr Mullan said: ‘Residents approached me to help them after seeing a park that is a fantastic local amenity being used repeatedly as camp site. It is not [a] camp site. I couldn’t care less who is using it as a camp site. No one should be. So I helped them. Sorry if people are unhappy with that, but that’s not something I can control.’

‘Communities should not be living in fear’

Marco Longhi, the Conservative candidate in the key marginal seat of Dudley North, promoted a video on Facebook featuring Home Secretary Priti Patel and Dudley South candidate Mike Wood.

In the video, Patel says that Traveller camps cause ‘a great deal of chaos and harm across our communities,’ adding ‘communities should not be living in fear’ and that they are ‘standing up for the law abiding majority’.

There is no evidence to suggest that crime rates go up when Travellers move into an area.

Speaking to openDemocracy, Mike Wood said: ‘We are also pushing hard for an authorised transit site (on top of the semi-permanent traveller camp that we have had in Dudley South for many years),’ and emphasised that his objection was to unauthorised encampments.

Meanwhile Conservative candidate in Wolverhampton South West Stuart Anderson has opposed planning permission for a Traveller site in his seat, including appearing as Father Christmas at a fundraiser for a group leading objection to the site. Anderson has not replied to our request for comment.

And in another marginal seat, Conservative Douglas Ross, who is re-standing to be MP for Moray in the North East of Scotland, was forced to apologise for saying in 2017 that anti-Gypsy policies would be ‘his number one priority‘ if he were prime minister for a day.

‘It’s like a disease’

In May this year, Mole Valley MP Sir Paul Beresford opened an Adjournment Debate in parliament by saying: “We’re now in what we call the summer Traveller season, it’s like a disease.”

Sir Paul said his part of Surrey was “attractive to Travellers from afar, and many of those come with a distinct Irish accent”.

Writing about the incident, the local media outlet Surrey Live criticised the MP: ‘When we start using terms like ‘disease’ to describe an entire ethnic group because of the actions of some members of that community, we feed into the sort of intolerance that can turn into something more sinister.’

Mr Beresford did not respond to our request for comment.

Michael Gove: Cracking down on crime –  and Travellers

Michael Gove, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has singled out Travellers in a bullet point about crime on his campaign materials, but hasn’t referred to any other ethnic group. In his leaflet, Gove pledges ‘cracking down on crime, dealing with anti-social behaviour, theft, and burglary, and illegal traveller incursions’:

Similarly, Dr James Davies, Conservative candidate for the Vale of Clwyd constituency, has pledged to ‘Oppose controversial Gypsy and Traveller sites’ on a leaflet in his constituency.

Neither Mr Gove nor Mr Davies has responded to our request for comment.

‘Forced assimilation’

At least three other Conservative candidates have made criticism of Traveller communities a central feature of their campaigns.

The Conservative candidate in Bristol North West ran a story on his website with the headline ‘Conservatives push new approach to tackling Travellers‘. Meanwhile Conservative candidates Andrew Selous in South West Bedfordshire and Alex Burghart in Brentwood and Ongar have been vocal in their support for legal reforms which opponents say will criminalise Gypsy and Traveller communities.

Andrew Selous also last year proposed a bill which Traveller groups say would have amounted to ‘forced assimilation’ of the Traveller community.

In the bill, Selous pushed for caravan sites to be converted to ‘settled accommodation,’ for unauthorised encampments to become a criminal offence and for local authorities to be released from the obligation to provide sites for Gypsies and Travellers.

Asked about his support for Priti Patel’s proposed new law, Burghart said: ‘I am campaigning to reduce unauthorised developments encampments regardless of who is responsible for them.’ Andrew Selous has not responded to our request for comment.

‘Anti-Semitism tsar’ John Mann ‘legendary for his anti-Gypsyism’

Other senior government appointees who are not standing for election this week have also come under criticism about this issue.

In September, the government appointed the former Labour MP John Mann, as a anti-semitism tsar, appointing him as a cross bench peer. He retains his Labour party membership.

Mann has been criticised for an ‘anti-social behaviour handbook he produced in 2007 which discussed problems including ‘Travellers’ and highlighted in bold and red: ‘The Police have powers to remove any gypsies or Travellers’. In correspondence seen by openDemocracy, the police officer involved referred to the matter as a potential ‘hate incident’.

On at least two occasions Mann has opposed a Traveller site in his constituency, encouraging residents to ‘protest profusely’. In 2009, Mann complained in parliament that his constituency would have more Traveller sites than neighbouring areas. Lord Mann said to openDemocracy ‘there were many more suitable sites in Bassetlaw and nearby…. I identified a range of possible alternative sites to the counci’.

Richard Bennett, who co-runs the organisation Gypsy Life and who lives in Mann’s former constituency, Bassetlaw, told openDemocracy that Mann is ‘legendary for anti-Gypsyism.’

He added: ‘The fact that the Tory Party has appointed someone with such a long track record of anti-Gypsyism as their anti-Semitism tsar just shows their disgusting attitude towards racism.’

Lord Mann said he’d received a ‘huge vote’ from the Gypsy/Traveller community when he was an MP and that ‘no complaints were made’ about how he’d represented them, adding ‘I also represented constituents on allegations of anti Gypsy/Traveller behaviour.’ Mann said he opposed the sites because they were in unsuitable locations, that the Bennetts are political opponents of his and that he’d represented the interests of Travellers on many occasions.

He also said the controversial booklet had been endorsed by Nottinghamshire police, and by Gordon Brown when he was prime minister in 2009, and that he regretted the highlighted portion of the pamphlet. He added that the police dismissed the complaint made against him in 2017.

Eric Pickles, UK envoy for post-holocaust affairs. | Image, Charles Ashburner, Wikimedia Commons.

Other high-profile government appointees have also come under criticism for their stance against Gypsy and Traveller communities. In September 2015, Eric Pickles was appointed UK Special Envoy for Post-Holocaust Issues by David Cameron’s government. (Five hundred thousand Gypsies were murdered in the Holocaust.)

In January of the same year, Pickles, in his role as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, had been found in the High Court to have breached the human rights of Gypsies and Travellers by discriminating against them in the planning process, specifically calling Gypsy and Traveller planning applications in from planning departments where other ethnic groups didn’t face the same treatment.

Lord Pickles has not responded to openDemocracy’s request for comment.

Fire in Somerset

Footage of one of the fires. | Image: Kimberley Jade Keen

Last month three caravans on Traveller sites in Glastonbury, Somerset caught fire within the space of a week. Speaking to Somerset Live, a spokesperson for the Glastonbury community council said that ‘if reports of deliberate sabotage are correct’, then those responsible were ‘risking people’s lives’.

In 2017, the local MP, James Heappey had asked Theresa May at Prime Minister’s Questions to take action against an ‘endless stream of illegal (sic) Traveller encampments’.

Contacted by openDemocracy, Mr Heappey’s office said he wouldn’t comment on the incident as there is an ongoing criminal investigation, but went on to repeat unsubstantiated local rumours about the victims of the crime, saying ‘the word locally’ is that the people who lived in the caravans were engaged in ‘criminal’ and ‘drug related activity’.

The victims of the fires could not be contacted to respond to these unsubstantiated rumours. Avon and Somerset Police said that they had no evidence to suggest that the fires were the result of anti-Traveller hate.

Dignity and respect

Commenting on openDemocracy’s research, Kate Green, the Labour candidate in Stetford and Urmstone and a campaigner for Gypsy and Traveller rights, said:

‘I’m disgusted at these attitudes to Travellers. Everyone has the right to be treated with dignity and respect, and Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers are recognised as ethnic groups under the Equality Act 2010, meaning they’re legally protected against race discrimination.’

‘Proposals to criminalise trespass are unfair, are opposed by the police, and will prove counterproductive when the real problem is a shortage of legal stopping places made worse by Tory planning rules.’

Tommy Shepherd, SNP candidate in Edinburgh East, called our findings ‘disgusting but not surprising.’

‘Rather than picking on Travellers, [the Tories] ought to concentrate on trying to respect and support their lifestyle, including finding means for their enfranchisement in the democratic process.’

‘Having canvassed my local Travellers sit myself, I know for a fact that members of the community are intensely interested in politics. Maybe it’s time somebody listened to them rather than engaging in this grotesque othering.’

Allan Hogarth, head of advocacy at Amnesty International UK, said that: ‘Divisive language used by any politician has a very real impact on people’s lives all around the country.’

‘We would urge all election candidates to choose their words carefully, and to ensure they lead by example by showing respect to all communities.’

And Win Lawless of Irish Community Care, which works with Irish Travelling Communities, pleaded with Tory politicians to change their language in the final week of campaigning: ‘We ask that people, Gypsies and Travellers with real lives; families, grandparents, children, not be treated as political footballs to benefit political goals. All people from all communities will be living side by side long after the 12th December’.

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