‘We are invisible!’

Ensuring Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children do not feel unseen in the history classroom

Richard Kerridge and Helen Snelson present a brief sequence of lessons using the life of the Gypsy woman Mary Squires as a way into the changes of industrialising Britain. More significantly, they also present a compelling rationale for why history teachers should be slotting in the stories of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people to broaden inclusive representation and challenge intolerance. They provide useful links and resources for this specific area of inclusive teaching, as well as broader suggestions for how to portray the history of all the people in Britain in the history classroom.

Towards the end of last summer, I (Richard) was part of a social gathering celebrating a fiftieth birthday. People were excited to be socialising and conversation turned to recent holidays. One of those present at the party regaled a story of staying on a beautiful campsite: ‘the view was amazing, except for the [P-words] in the way.’ I was shocked by that comment. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. The Traveller Movement produced a report in 2017 calling racism against the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller [GRT] communities, ‘the last acceptable form of racism’.1 Judging by the agreement around the table I was certainly witnessing a degree of discrimination and prejudice that the report exemplifies. Schools have a responsibility under the 2010 Equality Act to ‘make sure that pupils of all races are not singled out for different and less favourable treatment from that given to other pupils.’2 This article suggests how the history classroom can be a place to support this work. To be able to fulfil our responsibility we need to acknowledge the racism that exists and then work to counter it. While researching this article and the work related to it, I came across a website on Ebay selling what was described as a ‘men’s funny T-shirt’. It was a T-shirt parodying a Roger Hargreaves Mr Men character: he was called Mr [P-word], had scruffy hair and was dirty. The Traveller Movement Twitter site, @GypsyTravellerM, called for Ebay to stop advertising the item.3 Ebay withdrew the sale following complaints. In the Traveller Movement report 77% of respondents said they had been the victims of hate speech or hate crime, with 91% experiencing discrimination.4 Fast forward to February 2022. A well-known comedian justified an outrageous joke about the GRT community and the suffering they faced during the Holocaust as raising awareness of this part of the genocide.5 For those of you teaching something about the history of the GRT community in your school, thank you. For everyone else, this is for you.