“Citizens of a kind” :: Essays Papers

Citizens of a kindThe following clippings from regional Irish newspapers begin in 1923, soon after the founding of the state, and continue to the present day in chronological order. The premise informing the selection is that Travellers are caught in a dynamic of colonialism misunderstood by the majority they live amongst, and disadvantaged by their difference. Their event is comparable, in many instances, to that of gypsies throughout Europe and the indigenous minorities of many ex-colonies. It is no coincidence that attitudes toward Travellers, as evidenced by some of the following clippings, hardened in the decades following the founding of the Irish State in the 1920s. The early years of the republic were difficult economically, and a nationalist ideology of a homogenous, mono-cultural, unquestioningly Catholic united state was perpetuated as a consolation for the loss of privileges enjoyed as part of the Empire. The transfer from colonial to post-colonial status problematised the place of this minority population, and internal tensions surfaced in the absence of a colonial presence to demonise. I have concentrated on papers covering the general West of Ireland / Connacht area (Galway, Mayo and Roscommon), and in particular, articles dealing with Galway, since this is my hometown, and a traditional Traveller stronghold. Most clippings are from the longstanding Connacht Tribune.In a report on a Galway Urban Council meeting entitle Nomads in Galway Citizens fear an epiphytotic (Connacht Tribiune 10 Mar. 1923 5), the old colonial fear of organism contaminated by the Other (in fact, a fear of secretly being or becoming the Other) is detectable Mr J.P. OBrien wrote on behalf of a number of citizens stating that unless the council took steps to have the gypsies who are campingremoved, there was a danger of epidemic breaking out. He pointed out that it was illegal for these people to camp within the urban area. They could camp a quarter of a mile away(p) the u rban area, and then only for a couple of days.The strategy of distancing is implicit in the use of the words gypsy and nomad, which connote that these people are somehow foreign, and more or less explosively, in the use of gypsy, that they are actually British. (Within the British Isles, gypsies are from Wales and England only.) The word gypsy is a dispossessing of their Irishness, and it is easier to be cruel to what is constructed as being outside the self in a new state where the ideology of nationalism is uppermost.