I was taught at school that ‘gypsy’ was a derivation of the word ‘Egyptian’, used in Elizabethan England to describe the feared, misunderstood, dark-skinned nomads who lived on the outside of society. I fear the sum of our understanding, 400 years on, has not been enhanced by My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, currently airing. Despite Barbara Flynn’s sonorous narration, the reaction to the programmes has been little more sophisticated than that of the Georgians paying to poke the mentally ill in Bedlam. Viewers have gawped at the vast, illuminated wedding dresses, been appalled at the subjugation of teenage girls, and speculated out loud, with a barely concealed subtext, about the source of the cash to pay for the lavish nuptials.
The programme makers are guilty of encouraging prurience on a grand scale; we are guilty of enjoying it too much. There was much harrumphing at this week’s edition showing an annual celebration at the graveside of a teenage traveller, with his family and friends pouring lager, kissing, and literally dancing on the grave. It was a Daily Mail leader writer’s dream come true. ‘See what they’re like’, they could say. ‘You see why we need stricter planning laws and powers for the police and councils to move them on.’
The missed opportunity for Channel 4 was a series of programmes on traveller life in Britain that isn’t a freak show. Twenty-five years ago, this is exactly what Channel 4 would have produced (maybe it did, but none of us watched it.) My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding is a metaphor for the death of Channel 4 as a socially-progressive cutting-edge broadcaster, and its rebirth as a ratings-chasing purveyor of tabloid TV. A serious documentary might have explored the variegated ethnicities and subcultures within Britain’s traveller communities, the distinct differences and rivalries between the Sinta, Romanichal, and Irish traveller groups, their ethnic origins (some say the Irish travellers, or Pavee, are the descendents of those Irish driven off their land by Cromwell), the reasons for their tragically low life expectancy and poor educational attainment, and their historic persecution. Europe’s gypsies were rounded up by the Nazis in the holocaust, and sent to the death camps alongside the Jews, gays, socialists and people with disabilities. They were made to wear a brown triangle, and up to a million perished in what they call the Porajmos, comparable to the Jewish Shoah.
All this and more could have added to the sum of our knowledge, and helped to break some of the prejudice. By shining a light of some of the traveller attitudes towards women, the strict control of girls’ lives, their traditional patriarchal society, and their homophobia, a decent documentary might have raised important issues of cultural relativism. I am clear that it is no more acceptable for a 16-year-old gypsy girl to be married against her will than it is for anyone from another culture or ethnicity. Some things are just wrong. It is also right that we should feel deep unease about the young girls dressed, and dancing, like lapdancers in a previous programme. This scene sparked a reaction from elements of the Roma community, who state that they would never allow their children to behave in the ways allowed by the Pavee families in the film.
In 1964 the folk singer, and father to Kirsty, Ewan MacColl recorded a ‘radio ballad’ about the travelling people, broadcast on the BBC. It included three songs, Moving On Song, Freeborn Man of the Travelling People, and Thirty Foot Trailer, which romanticise gypsy life, but also rail against the injustices and oppression faced by travellers. I heard the Watersons sing Thirty Foot Trailer on the John Peel Show in the mid-1980s, and would take it onto my desert island. It’s a lament to the disappearance of a way of life under the weight of modernity. Ewan MacColl received an honorary degree from the University of Salford (the ‘dirty old town’ of his birth) on the same day in 1989 I got mine. He died a few months later. MacColl also recorded and broadcast the voices of gypsies, and juxtaposed them with the bigots who persecuted them. You can get it on CD. It was a brave piece of public broadcasting.
How unlike My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which avoids any accusation of being brave by its craven acquiescence to the lowest forms of prejudice and ignorance, and will lead, sure as eggs is eggs, to an increase in murderous attacks on travellers and bullying of traveller children in schools. It is hard to think of another social group, culture or ethnicity about whom such a programme would be made without a chorus of outrage. It seems there is no-one to speak up for the gypsies.
Thank you for posting this article and getting facts right about us Romany Gypsies. I too dread to think of the bullying that kids will face now. I also am very angry because it has encouraged nothing but bigoted comments in the office where my husband works. I have complained to chanel 4 and ofcom and I hope more people please do the same. This programme is a lie – this is not about Gypsies. My own wedding was very small and private and tasteful and yet when I complained to chanel 4 they defended themselves by saying they have had nothing but positive responses from the gypsy community. What a load of rubbish. We are all disgusted at Chanel 4 who used to be good documentary makers. Why don’t they come and filml us in our houses and sites and our jobs in offices, schools, police, hospitals. We are a varied race and as usual the media is protraying us as anything but ‘normal’ Yet the vast majority of us, hundreds of thousands of us are able to hide in plain sight as we blend in with everyone else, though stay true to our culture in our own way in our private lives.
Well done – a well written piece
Thank God you have tackled the last bastion of “respectable” racism – for that is what anti-traveller sentiment amounts to. It’s still, to our shame, endemic in the Labour Party from people who in any other context would be horrified to be described as racist. It’s time your article got a much wider audience.
Excellent article
Finally someone that speaks sense!! Well done!
I’m just playing devils advocate here, but I’ve met gypsies in Europe and the uk and I have to say that a vast majority of gypsies in the uk have a completely different attitude to that of the Europeans. I hate predudice of any kind and completely understand the problems the gypsy community is facing. I hope there can be some way we can strike an equilibrium between their community and all the other culturally different communities in the uk today. The uk is quite an extreme example because some of the problems the British gypsy faces are not encountered by the European gypsy because of their acceptance in Europe. However, the British gypsy community doesn’t really help their oppression by the way they behave and effect the surrounding communities they impose themselves on. They can also be accused of being just having just as much prejudice for other communities that aren’t gypsy. It could be argued that that has come from years of predudice against them, but I don’t think that’s the sole reason, and hate that breeds hate is not an acceptable excuse for a community that wants to find it’s place and be accepted. I’m all for travellers, but unfortunately it doesn’t take a lot of editing in their ‘show’ (not documentary) to bring a few titters. It is unfortunately a prod at their community, but if you allow your child of 5 to walk around in miniskirts and babies to wear toe nail varnish it’s hardly surprising. It’s not being respectful to yourself or the communities around them. Unfortunately they aren’t alone. There are many communities in Britain today that are just as guilty of this, the gypsies are unfortunately just one example. I ask anyone to wander through a council estate in England and not have a few titters to themselves. And believe it or not, I’m a guardian reader… Lol…
I forgot to say, thanks for writing the article. It’s good to have both sides of the argument, over a controversial program that is, I agree, one sided. A more in-depth ‘lewie theroux’ documentary from both sides would be a lot more informative. ?
well said about the most sensabe thing i have read about that program , i am a Roamany and i could not have put it better my self,
So glad a serious and well-respected commentator has taken the trouble to get it right
Thank you for explaining so clearly and passionately why Channel 4 have completely failed to show the gypsy people as they really are. The documentary is in my view overtly racist and will only serve to deepen the misunderstandings of the broader community. I pray that someone will produce something fresh and truthful for our TV viewers. Failing that, read my book “The Pure in Heart – An Epistle from the Romanies”.
” It is hard to think of another social group, culture or ethnicity about whom such a programme would be made without a chorus of outrage. It seems there is no-one to speak up for the gypsies.” Here in the states, we have two shows (My big Friggin’ wedding and Jersey Shore) which portray Italian Americans as ignorant over-sexed laughing stocks. And no one seems to mind at all. They even refer to themselves using the ethnic slur “guido.” It makes me sick.
Well said Kelly same here same for my parents as well they married in a registry office, we do not travel anymore but actually settled down many years ago.
I AM A IRISH GYPSY I DID NOT HAVE A BIG WEDDING LIKE THAT .IT IS ONLY ABOUT 5% OF ALL GYPSY UK AND IRISH THAT DO. C4 PUT THE BAD ON T V ONLY
I was very dissapointed with the Channel 4 show. I have only recently discovered that my family are of Romany origin and have been settled for so long that I know nothing of my ancestor’s culture. I was really keen to watch the show. However, I don’t feel like I learned anything about Romany life. It seems to me that was not really a programme about Travellers as much as a show about the clients of a certain dressmaker from Liverpool. These dresses are afterall her creations. To be fair though, the producers of Cutting Edge have always made documentary style programmes this way. I don’t think that they have deliberately targeted the Traveller community. It seems to me that they just have a knack for finding the most unusual and loopy people from whatever sector they are making a film about and those are the kind of people who want to be on tv. This is not the first time they have made a programme like this. They find eccentric people and film them doing what they do. It’s maybe a Channel 4 thing. I feel that quite a few of their more recent programmes i.e. Embarassing Bodies which could be done in a gentler more discreet way whilst still being open and frank, are freak shows dressed up as documentaries.
This is an excellent article that I somehow missed. I followed the press and other media coverage of the Ch 4 programme, wrote a few blog posts on it (see Miriam’s Rambliings), even recorded an interview for Surrey Heath Residents Blog. My collection of media links might be of interest. One good thing is that more Romany Gypsies, and to a lesser extent Irish Travellers, are hitting back with positive stories of their lives. My views are clear enough, although perhaps it is no entirely bad thing to have people at least talking. I do hope another programme, perhaps by another channel, will get their facts right now that there is a public ready to hear more. I wrote my novels to try and increase understanding – however they are clearly not sensational enough to sell in their thousands, let alone millions!
I’m an author; part of the Scottish Travelling community-my books are about the culture, the history, the struggles, bullying, work, parents, weddings, funerals. Growing up it was apparent to me that in my own society as in the settled one, there are class differences. Rich, middle, and poor. In the channel 4 series it was apparent the researchers went for the bold and bling kind. If they’d visited me when I invited them to, and promised a true picture of what it was like in my existence, the country would have been speaking of the horror of a 5 yr old girl swinging happily on a swing when a group of drunk men decided to have a bit of fun with a Tinker. They kicked me until I went over the metal bar and landed on the concrete ground. I don’t know what else would have happened if my father hadn’t run to my defense. Result was my pelvic area had been left so permanently damaged that my three chidlren were born by C section. Was there any retribution; I hope there was but it didn’t come from the law officer who turned a blind eye. One small child, one small incident-there is a world of small incidents among thousands of Gypsy/Traveller/Roma people whose only crime is to ask for air to breathe. The programme did have a few positive points to ponder- the cleanliness of the caravans and the healthy glow of youth. On the channel 4 website I left this comment even although it declared there were no Travellers in Scotland.
I was a wedding planner on one of the episodes and all I can say is the wedding my traveller bride had was very classy, everyone behaved impecably and with manners at all times and the only comment I can make about it was the fact that alot of positive lovely things happened that day and in the weeks running up to the wedding and that family are now very special to me and will always hold a place in my heart.
well wriitten kelly,you speak for thousands and thousands of us who live and blend in with the whole country and yet no one is any the wiser ,except when you stand up and tell people I am from a Romany family and they dont know what to say …..because we are still human beings like them, only we have stronger family views and diffferences etc in our culture ,and we have every right to be on this earth as much as anyone,in all communities there are are good and bad it is about time the non Gypsy population woke up and realised it.