Christmas is meant to be the season of goodwill, but not in plummeting relations between police in Manchester and the Romany Gypsy and Irish Traveller communities.
A political storm is brewing over accusations of “racial profiling” by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) after the force used draconian public order powers last Saturday to ban hundreds of Traveller youths from gathering anywhere in the city centre, where they had travelled to visit Christmas markets.
Police claimed they had “intelligence” the youths would cause trouble, but community groups alleged the operation was planned and the children were targeted due to their ethnicity. In scenes likened by furious Travellers afterwards to historical images of the repression of Jews, lines of police were filmed corralling scores of confused teenagers on to trains at Manchester’s Victoria station and forcing them to leave the city.
A few youths ended up more than 150km from home and had to be picked up by their parents, sparking accusations that police had put them in danger. “I don’t know where I am going,” shouted one Traveller teenager who has become a symbol of the community’s anger, in footage showing him being pushed on to a train by police. Another teenage girl screamed as her leg wedged between carriage and platform after she was pushed by a female officer.
Other youths were prevented by police from disembarking trains arriving at Victoria from towns such as Doncaster that have high Traveller populations, while other youths in the city centre were removed from big shopping centres such as the Arndale and told they must “go somewhere else”.
GMP told The Irish Times this week it had written to Traveller groups to express the force’s “regret at the distress and upset” the events caused, but it denied racial profiling.
Labour MP Mary Kelly Foy and Baroness Janet Whitaker of the House of Lords have written to home secretary Yvette Cooper, asking her to intervene with GMP for “violently restricting and over-policing” the youths. Manchester’s deputy mayor for policing, former Labour MP Kate Green, has also expressed her “concern” and has called for an internal investigation at GMP.
“If this happened to a different community, everybody would be up in arms,” said Yvonne MacNamara, chief executive of the Traveller Movement. “I think the police thought ‘these kids have no friends’ and it would all go away. Well, it won’t go away. Something bigger has happened here.”
This week in Manchester, the city’s Christmas markets – billed by local authorities as the biggest and best in Britain – were bustling. Shoppers thronged the retail and food stalls dotted around the city centre in several locations, including Piccadilly Gardens and Exchange Square outside the Arndale.
It was all absolutely as bad as the footage looked on social media
— Olivia Hammond, the Traveller Movement
However, the mood was different last Saturday. A sense of the day’s events can be gleaned from footage filmed by Travellers and others, much of which has been uploaded to social media, and by accounts given by older community members with relatives who were caught up in the events.
Hundreds of Traveller and Gypsy youths began arriving in Manchester city centre from midmorning. It has become a tradition among the community for the youths from across northwest England and Welsh border areas to meet up – wearing “their finery” according to Traveller community groups – for the Manchester markets at this time of year.
MacNamara said many younger teenagers would have been with older siblings. A lot of the Travellers and Gypsy youths would have been meeting cousins, said Olivia Hammond, who comes from a Gypsy background and works in Preston with the Traveller Movement. Her sister was in Manchester at last Saturday’s markets, while her cousins were also caught up in the events. One girl she knows, from Darlington, was ordered by police on to a train to Leeds, 100km from home.
“It was all absolutely as bad as the footage looked on social media,” said Hammond.
In November 2022 Manchester police were drafted in to the area around the Arndale and the markets to deal with complaints of disorder among Traveller youths. GMP says it received “intelligence” before last Saturday that renewed disorder was possible and it says complaints were made on the day about trouble on trains approaching Manchester.
In response to this, Travellers afterwards uploaded to social media videos of the youths laughing and singing on the trains. There appears to be no video evidence so far of trouble on the trains.
The force did not directly respond to questions from The Irish Times seeking further details about the volume and nature of the rail complaints, who made them and whether there had been any arrests or police action. When British Transport Police was asked if it held records of a spike in reports of trouble on trains to Manchester that day, it said the query was “too vague” and suggested a Freedom of Information request might be necessary.
MacNamara said the suggestion that police acted last Saturday on the basis of a litany of reports of trouble on trains by Travellers was “nonsense” and the operation was planned in advance. She said there were at least 17 police vans already filled with officers waiting outside Victoria station to meet arriving trains. “To put an operation like that together takes a lot of time,” she said.
A Manchester Youtuber with no affiliation to Traveller groups, who posts under the handle Manchester Walks, caught the events at the Arndale on camera. A police officer tells him in the footage that GMP was called by Arndale security to remove groups of youths. The scene appears calm, although the officer tells the Youtuber that “historically” there has been trouble. He says they are trying to “prevent a breach of the peace” and the youths are “just going to cause carnage”.
It has set back relations between Travellers and police and undone work done over many decades
— Patrick Morrison, The Irish Community Care Centre in Manchester
Shortly after noon, a senior GMP officer signed a so-called section 34 dispersal order, which gave police widespread powers to clear groups of people congregating in an area. The order covered the entire city centre, although the only groups that appear to have been subjected to the order were Travellers. The Youtuber asks one youth why they are being “chucked out” of the Arndale. He responds: “Because they’re racist b***ards.”
An angry Traveller teenager is later filmed being arrested outside the Arndale for pointing his fingers “in the personal space” of an officer who won’t let him into the Arndale. One officer leant on his neck while another mentioned an “assault”. “Assault? I haven’t touched you,” screamed the youth.
Others were filmed being denied entry by one of the officers who had arrested the youth. “I’m not saying you’ve done anything,” said the officer. “[But] every year there is a group of youths who descend on Manchester for violence and disorder.”
Hammond said the police action had made her friends and cousins feel worthless. “I know from experience how worthless it makes you feel. You get no support, no sympathy,” she said.
MacNamara said GMP needed to be held to account for its treatment of “children, in the eyes of the law”. The Traveller Movement said it was considering whether to take legal action. The Irish Community Care Centre in Manchester, which provides support to Travellers, said the police action had “increased fear” among the community.
“It has set back relations between Travellers and police and undone work done over many decades,” said Patrick Morrison, the centre’s chief executive.
Anger has welled up across the UK’s community of Travellers and Gypsies, fuelled by videos criticising the police action from celebrities such as Paddy Doherty, a former bare knuckle boxer and winner of Celebrity Big Brother in 2011.
Green held an online meeting with Traveller and Gypsy organisations this week, but was said by those on the call to have remained in “listening mode” and said little. The home secretary has yet to respond to the letter sent to her by the MP Kelly Foy and Baroness Whitaker, who co-chair the Westminster all-party parliamentary group for Gypsies, Travellers and Roma.
GMP told The Irish Times: “We do not racially profile any group but understand the concern raised about this issue and this is an important part of our meeting with community groups.”
Protests are planned by Travellers, including in Westminster this Saturday and next Saturday in Manchester.
“Those kids were treated like absolute dirt,” said MacNamara. “When will it happen again?”
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