Two reports in this newspaper on Wednesday: one, an 800-word account of how four Travellers were refused service in five different pubs after a wedding in Waterford. The other, a single paragraph describing of how some 40 gardai had to prevent a violent confrontation between 100 feuding Travellers in the public enclosure at the Galway races at Ballybrit.
Most of us intuitively understand the connection between four harmless men being denied drinks in Waterford and 100 not-so-harmless people in Galway, but we will not say it.
Instead we prefer the pious refuge of deploring racism, etc., even as not-so-harmless men are limbering up for the next Rumble in Tuam. Or maybe we worry about Martin Mongan's horses, 13 of which, according to a lavish report in this newspaper, were impounded by Dublin Corporation officials from the Clondalkin halting site. "The horses are still going through my head," he said. "Then I look out of the window, and all I see is a few of the horses. It breaks my heart."
Social Welfare
No doubt it does; but very possibly it breaks his neighbours' hearts in Clondalkin that even after the confiscation of 13 horses, he still has some left. How can he manage to maintain such expensive animals? He is, after all, on Social Welfare, which as far as I understand does not pay Horse Support Allowances. He himself says: "I don't keep the horses for money. I keep them because they're part of my culture."
Ah yes, part of his culture indeed. Which is probably why he feels the State should provide land and facilities to enable Travellers to "take responsibility for their own lives and their horses". An interesting idea. Maybe the State should build facilities and acquire land for the entire population of Ireland, to enable us all then to take responsibility for our own lives and our own cultural requirements.
For here prevails another culture, that of welfare dependency. More powerful even than the attachment to horses within the Traveller community is the cultural attachment to State benefits, to the extent that honest men like Martin Mongan genuinely consider that the role of the State is to financially support both them, their families and their cultural pastimes (which in his case apparently involves owning up to 20 horses).
But culture is not merely an expression of arts but of habits too. Might there not be other elements to Traveller culture, some of which might have been in the minds of Waterford publicans last week? At the start of this month, the town of Kells was closed down, and 80 gardai were deployed, in order to let a Traveller funeral pass off peacefully.
This follows the murder of Patrick Ward during a funeral in Sligo last May. And that follows last year's annual Travellers-in-Tuam festival, with savage billhook-fights between the McDonaghs and the Wards throughout the summer.
"Racism"
Even to discuss these intimidating realities is to invite from Travellers' representatives - funnily enough, often not Travellers themselves - accusations of "racism". One of the reasons we have problems dealing with this issue is that, in popular discourse anyway, we haven't developed the vocabulary or the social concepts to cope with its indigenous complexity; and so we import terminology - such as "racism" - which not merely does not apply but actually confuses the issue.
Were the Travellers in Waterford denied drinks simply because they were Travellers, as blacks in South Africa were discriminated against? Or was it because publicans feared that with drink taken they might start expressing their culture, in the Kells/Tuam fashion rather than the horse-owning sense? And were the fears of the Waterford pub-owners wholly groundless?
The truth is that we are dealing with different habits, different cultures, different ways of resolving conflict, which are often irreconcilable with those of the Untraveller community. And whereas the Untraveller does not seek welfare or hospitality from Travellers, the reverse is not true. The relationship, like the expectation, is almost totally one way. No Traveller-subsidised state exists for Untravellers to draw dole from; no Traveller-owned pub where Untravellers might wish to drink.
Traveller-gardai do not have to keep gangs of Untravellers from slashing one another to pieces with billhooks; no Traveller-subsidised Unhalting site exists for Untravellers to unhalt in.
Dependency Out of decent regard for a marginalised people, we have created a poisonous relationship of total dependency; but then when the inevitable cultural anomalies arise between Traveller and Untraveller, we respond to them by applying irrelevant anti-discrimination laws from other countries. Yet these are as one-way as the relationship which brought those anomalies about, and they actually intensify the dependency. Instead of seeking an Irish solution to an Irish problem, we have confounded our dilemma by legislatively resorting to the caricature of Traveller victimhood and Untraveller guilt.
The Equal Status Bill becomes the Equal Status Law later this year. Will equal status mean equal application of traffic laws, insurance laws, road tax laws, litter laws, dole laws, PRSI laws, tax laws and public health laws? Will it mean equal responsibility for equal status? Will it mean that duty is clearly seen as the quid pro quo for citizenship? Will it mean that Travellers will realise that it is time to attack their insidious dependency culture from within, and time at last to surrender the billhooks and the dole cards? For unless others say so, why should they?