Twentieth century policies affecting Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland: archival research

1. Introduction

Research Scope

This report outlines the results of archival research commissioned by the Scottish Government in March 2023 and conducted to explore 20th century policies affecting Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland. The Scottish Government noted in the tender document that this research was commissioned in response to calls made by “members of Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland for a formal apology for historic state policies supported by successive Government departments (particularly the Scottish Office) in collaboration with Scottish local authorities and the Church of Scotland”.^[12] The research presented in this report was specifically directed by the original research tender “to locate and examine archival materials pertaining to a set of government policies and actions around the forced settlement and housing of Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland between 1940 to 1980s (i.e. prior to devolution),^[13] or what has subsequently been frequently referred to colloquially, including within the news media, as the ‘Tinker Experiment”.^[14] The aims of this research, as laid out in the original tender document were:

• To establish a timeline of key events involved in the implementation of these policies. This should include reporting on the key dates of implementation, which are thought to have been during the period of the 1940s to the 1980s.
• To identify any available records on key decisions made by National Government departments, especially the Scottish Office, in relation to the inception and operation of the policies and the roles of collaborating institutions/stakeholders including Scottish local authorities and the Church of Scotland. This should include decisions that instigated the policies (working back from 1940 to 1900), in addition to decisions made during the period of implementation.
• To estimate the extent to which these policies were implemented, in terms of the number, scale and locations of sites across Scotland and, where records allow, the number of individuals affected. Where possible, the Contractor should seek to produce evidence-based case study examples of the lived experiences of individuals and families in the Gypsy/Traveller communities affected by the policies.

The tender document noted the need for high quality analysis and raised the expectation that the above research aims would be refined and operationalised. It also stated that:

“In addition to the forced housing in substandard sites across Scotland, these policies may have also resulted in the forced removal of children from Gypsy/Traveller communities. While it is envisaged that this research will predominantly focus on the housing aspect, the contractor will be also be [sic] required to report on any instances of forced adoption identified through this research.”

The tender document also asked for a set of actionable recommendations, which are provided at the end of this report. The timeline of key events in the TE is presented here in Appendix 1. An accompanying auditable database in Excel, providing details of materials identified through the keyword search of collections, was also created as a separate output.

Definitions

Before going further, this report must define exactly who is being discussed when the terms ‘Scottish Gypsy/Travellers’ versus ‘Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland’ are used. This research project recognises Scottish Gypsy/Travellers as an ethnic group, protected by the Equality Act 2010,^[15] that is relationally connected to a historic nomadic, cultural way of life that has existed for hundreds of years in the lands known today as ‘Scotland’.^[16] In stating ‘relationally connected’, it is recognised that the decision of who is kin remains a process of collective self-determination, as is the case for many marginalised minority and Indigenous peoples elsewhere.^[17] As with other Indigenous peoples across the globe,[18] collective self-determined identification means that the recognition politics of who is kin, and who is not, remains an internal process that should not be dictated by non-Indigenous institutions, frameworks, or ethics.^[19] The Scottish Gypsy/Traveller identity is one that is thus not an identity measurable according to external recognition factors such as genetic identification, the active practising of Gypsy/Traveller traditions, bearing names often associated with Scottish Gypsy/Traveller families, or living outside of the modern-day boundaries of Scotland. There is plenty of research that demonstrates that the gatekeeping of identity based on these aforementioned factors is one means of continuing and exacerbating paternalistic relationships of control over the population of a particular group.^[20] We differentiate, then, ‘Scottish Gypsy/Traveller,’ from the phrase ‘Gypsy/Traveller in Scotland’, where the latter alludes to Scottish and Irish Travellers, as well as Roma from Central/Eastern Europe and English Romani who live or lived in Scotland. We would also note that the use of the term ‘Traveller’ is one that has been ascribed to label those maintaining a nomadic cultural lifestyle that is often in contrast to the values of the ‘settled community’,^[21] but that Scottish Gypsy/Travellers themselves may not identify as Traveller but may instead self-define as ‘Nacken’ or ‘Nawken’. Some Scottish Gypsy/Travellers may also identify as ‘Indigenous Highland Travellers’.^[22] Finally, throughout this report, reference will be made to materials that include pejoratives used to describe members of Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland. Such words have a historic origin, but we would also note that many such words remain in use today. The reader will see such words throughout the body of this report, referencing their use in archival materials. We would note, however, that the continued use of such words within wider contemporary society should be recognised as pejorative, and a form of racist language.^[23]

Research Process, Limits and Obstacles

Appendix 2 outlines in detail the research methodology underpinning this report. As an archival research project, this report recognises that this research is inherently limited to an understanding of the existing archival evidence in explaining how and where the TE came to be realised and what its impacts were. In addition, archives remain contentious sites of research and must be challenged for the versions of history found within them.^[24] Archives usually preserve and curate information, as well as the perspectives of actors that dominant institutions consider valuable. It is for this reason that many communities and peoples attribute archives as not only a site of their marginalisation, but also as a source.^[25] This is particularly the case for communities that have oral cultures, and where written records of their history, produced by members of those communities, do not actually exist.^[26]

Our approach to archival sites throughout the research process, in common with the research practice of numerous researchers examining materials that involve the histories of marginalised communities,^[27] has been to read ‘against the grain’ of the materials that we gathered. This involved noting and remarking upon whose voices were found, and whose were not, how those materials were presented, and what these voices did or did not say. In reading against the grain, within the archival materials that we collected there was little to no representation of Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland, either in terms of self-representation through submitted materials or through testimonies collected by non-Gypsy/Traveller stakeholders. The fact that Gypsy/Traveller communities have very rarely written their own histories^[28] means that any socio-historical account is dependent upon the piecemeal collection of written documents and oral evidence. As such, we would be remiss if we were not clear that guiding questions and assumptions impacted the investigations that were conducted in the archives. For this reason, it was the practice of the research team to consistently revisit these guiding questions and assumptions throughout the research process to maintain the objectivity and integrity of the research. A different demographic makeup of researchers might have viewed the materials differently or been able to reach different conclusions than we have.^[29] For example, those more closely connected temporally and culturally to the TE might have been able to see additional references to Gypsy/Travellers. As a result, the research teams limited knowledge of Gypsy/Traveller-specific geographical locations, cultural euphemisms, and the Nacken language, demonstrates the need for researchers, particularly those from Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland, to uncover what may have been missed.^[30]

In addition to consulting numerous official institutional materials located in archives across Scotland (listed in Appendix 3) the research team also consulted Hansard (the official record of all Parliamentary debates), numerous peer-reviewed research articles and monographs and made extensive use of newspaper archives, which includes online resources from the British Newspaper Archive, and paper copies of newspapers held alongside other archival materials (e.g. at Highland Archives). Examining newspaper archives was both a way to provide additional sources for this research (e.g. narrowing down dates, providing additional avenues of inquiry) and a way of examining another ‘institution’ in Scotland (i.e. the media). Newspapers offered reflections of general attitudes of the public and provided evidence as to the nature of historic policies and the ways in which Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland, and the narratives that surround their communities, have been described.^[31] Furthermore, the research team would note from the outset, as will be the case in the later recommendations, that much more research still needs to be done. The research team recognises the limits of this research and its confines to the walls of the archive. This is especially important to note given the following two issues relating to the contract tender issued by the Scottish Government.

First, this research was undertaken in response to one of two invitations to tender for research expertise issued by the Scottish Government in January 2023, both of which were designed to explore the same policies, but with different methodologies – this present one focused on archival research, and a second one which was designed to focus on the lived experiences of victims/survivors of the TE and specifically on gathering first-person testimonies. Had both contracts been awarded they would have complemented each other, with findings from each feeding into the other as the research process progressed.^[32] Specifically, the human impact of evidence found in the archives could have been able to be explored in interviews; and interviews might have also uncovered additional events that could have led to further examination, substantiation, and/or elucidation of the archival work. Despite two contract tender processes (the initial one in January 2023, and a further one in November 2023) the ‘lived experiences’ contract was not awarded meaning that the overall research commissioned by the Scottish Government lacks the testimony of Gypsy/Traveller victims and survivors in being able to outline the impact of the policies that have been evidenced by the wealth of archival materials examined during the research process, and that have subsequently been summarised in this report. In all research processes that consider the impact of policy upon marginalised communities - whether created and undertaken by government or by civil society actors - the testimony of those victims/survivors who have been impacted by such policies is vital to understanding both their intergenerational and contemporary impact. Because this report is based on archival research, such testimony is not available here. Where possible, we will include some direct quotations from books written by Gypsy/Traveller authors that are directly relevant to the analysis. Although these voices are reported second hand, it is important to highlight these especially because some articulate feelings of resistance and refusal. Thus, in addressing the key findings of this research, and acknowledging the context that the TE policies operated within, the focus of this report will be on key stakeholders but with the constant awareness that the voices of the most important stakeholder – Scottish Gypsy/Travellers – are largely absent.

Second, the research team needs to make note of the resource-based obstacles associated with this project. From the outset, the research team knew, and accepted, that the funding of £30,000 provided for this work would likely be insufficient compared to what would be required to meet the remit of the research aims laid out in the initial contract tender. Our team included members with previous experience observing the workings of Indigenous child welfare inquiries in Canada and in the United States. Such inquiries have some parallels with this present research in terms of historical scope, and key stakeholders, and so the research team were aware from the start that such a funding amount would yield limiting results. This was confirmed after conversations with archivists at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) based at the University of Manitoba, who were able to locate and contextualise the efforts that were required, and their respective financial costs when conducting inquiries, both in the archives and with victims/survivors.^[33] As a result, a substantial amount of volunteer hours (i.e. at least five times what each person received financial compensation for by the end of the writing and review process) were committed to this project by every member of our team both to ensure the integrity of this inquiry, and the high quality analysis that was required. This is to say that the substantial findings of this report reflect efforts that went far beyond the amount received for this project. For example, this research was able to clearly evidence and identify a range of policies affecting Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland, as well as the impact of these, something that allowed this research to be able to characterise the nature of the structural violence faced by Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland during the timeframe that is the focus of this report.^[34] Looking back, working to the contracted hours would not have yielded these results.

Simultaneously, this report remains limited in two key ways. The page cap of this report, requested to be approx. 50 pages, means that it has only been able to present a fraction of the materials that were found.^[35] There were many more instances in the archives of the use of derogatory and dehumanising language and discriminatory and assimilatory sentiments. Second, despite our visits to multiple archives sites, and our analysis of thousands of pages of archival materials and documentary sources, we are aware that there remain archival sites either unidentified or unvisited, and archival documents either unread or unanalysed, due to the time and financial limits of this project. We feel these points are important to state at the outset in order to emphasise that this present research calls further inquiry that is both comprehensively funded and community-informed, or preferably community-led. Nevertheless, both the types of materials we engaged with and the timeframes we examined created a strong picture of the dominant narrative. While we engaged with a variety of materials, the bulk were published by the government, local authorities and other institutional bodies (e.g. council minutes, reports, official correspondence etc.) and should be considered representative of the consensus of that actor. Finally, it is important to note that the timeframes presented in this report were selected without bias. During the data gathering process, we gathered as much as was possible, rather than limiting ourselves to where we would be most likely to find relevant material (for example, going through decades of council minutes as opposed to just a few years). With these points in mind, this report will now turn to an examination of how the research parameters were refined.

Refining the research parameters

The TE was initially thought to be a series of largely government-sanctioned and -led policies for the forced housing of Gypsy/Traveller families in substandard accommodation and on substandard sites, across Scotland that “may have also resulted in the forced removal of children from Gypsy/Traveller communities”.^[36] This research uncovered clear evidence that this relationship between forced housing and forced child removal was much clearer than had been anticipated. Specifically, the evidence demonstrated, as will be seen in the following pages, that there was ultimately an extensive set of actions to remove Gypsy/Traveller children from their families and communities, either combined with forced housing policies, resulting from them, or happening concurrently alongside them. Examples of this forced transfer of children included:

• the removal of children from their families to be placed in temporary care.
• the forced transfer of children to industrial schools^[37] sometimes in a different geographic location to that from which they were removed.
• the permanent removal of Gypsy/Traveller children in Scotland from their families through adoption domestically or overseas.

The archival evidence therefore demonstrated that the TE could not be analysed solely in relation to housing policy. Rather the TE needed to be viewed within the context of a much wider set of policies impacting Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland which were put in place by a range of stakeholders. Together these policies brought about the forced cultural assimilation of Gypsy/Traveller communities, families, individual adults, and children.

Second, in terms of this range of stakeholders, while the role of the UK national government, and specifically the Scottish Office, as a primary actor in the construction and enforcement of such policies can be located, the evidence that was discovered demonstrated that the work of the TE was complemented by the actions of local authorities, churches, charities, and the media, both through active cooperation and through independent yet parallel activities. Clear evidence was found in the archival record that these interventions in the lives of Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland were often couched in paternalistic attitudes and in the language of ‘good intentions’, although paradoxically, it was acknowledged that many of these efforts “have been for the protection of the [settled] community rather than the welfare of the tinkers”.^[38] In refining and operationalising the aims of this research, the TE cannot be decoupled from the wider environment of policies of marginalisation, discrimination and persecution that have been ongoing against Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland for centuries. It should also be noted, as has also been noted by members of Gypsy/Traveller communities across Scotland, that there are clear parallels in the documented experiences of Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland with the documented experiences of other marginalised peoples, such as the Maori of Aotearoa/New Zealand; the Indigenous peoples of Canada, Australia, and the United States; and Travellers in Ireland. Such experiences have been characterised by both outside researchers and members of affected communities as cultural genocide.^[39]

Third, the archival evidence demonstrated, as noted also in the timeline presented in Appendix 1 of this report, that the institutional and societal desire to forcibly assimilate Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland extends centuries before 1940 and continued beyond the 1980s (the ‘boundary points’ for the TE highlighted in the original tender document). In terms, however, of the beginnings of the TE, the Kirk Yetholm Experiment (outlined in chapter 5) which began in the Scottish Borders in 1829 and was led by the Church of Scotland, was the first iteration of many assimilatory projects that would take place in the nineteenth and 20th centuries,^[40] particularly after the seminal Report from the Departmental Committee on Habitual Offenders, Vagrants, Beggers, Inebriates, and Juvenile Delinquents, published in 1895 (see chapter 3). As an example at the other end of the date spectrum, in 1977 a policy on toleration and non-harassment (PTNH) came into force which gave police powers to force Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland onto official sites or to move Gypsy/Travellers out of a council area if all official sites were full.^[41] This policy ended in 2001 but arguably during its operation it led to an extension of the policy environment that had enabled the forced sedentarisation, and police harassment of, Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland. This research then had to consider a range of policies and set the parameters for what would be examined within a wider understanding of which policies contributed to the TE as an attempt at the forced assimilation of Gypsy/ Travellers in Scotland, who was complicit in this attempt, and when these actions ultimately began.

Chapter Summary

This chapter has introduced the aims and scope of this archival research examining policies affecting Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland commonly described as the ‘TE’. This chapter outlined definitional questions around the naming of the communities with which this report is concerned. This chapter has also given a brief overview of the research process, as well as the limits and obstacles to it. A fuller account of the methodology underpinning this report can be found in Appendix 2. The next chapter adds further context to this research by providing a historical background to the TE. This will put in place some of the broader historical detail necessary to gain a fuller understanding of the later evidence and analysis.