Opinion: Forced marriage claims 'another stick to beat Travellers with'

From worldirish.com

The Irish travelling community at home and abroad has always faced discrimination. Here, Mike Doherty from the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain shares his views on a recent furore over the claim that young traveller women were being forced into marriage – something which, he says, there's really no evidence of.

By Mike Doherty
Communications Officer
Irish Traveller Movement in Britain

As Thomas McCarthy, an Irish Traveller activist and singer says; 'It’s always about dirty Travellers, dishonest Travellers, violent Travellers and thieving Travellers. Once the statement is made it leaves a stain.'

The UK’s Irish Travellers are often derided for being a drain on society amongst other things. However, even their many detractors must admit that Travellers do play at least one vital social role; that of a useful folk devil for anyone who needs to whip up a bit of populist political capital.

One particularly ripe example of a moral panic – that of Travellers and forced marriage – was finally exposed twitching and quivering into the cold light of day at this week’s Irish Traveller Movement in Britain’s annual conference.

The story starts in May when Mr Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North-West and the guy who banged up the Rochdale pedophile gang, told the Independent and the Daily Mail, 'I have become aware of massive issues of forced marriage in the Traveller community. It is widespread.'

Lack of evidence

This was news to us at the ITMB, but just to make sure that we had missed something, we held a meeting with our community advisory group and contacted other Gypsy/Traveller organisations. Nothing.

Katharine Quarmby, an investigative journalist who has worked on forced marriage and is now researching a book on Gypsies and Travellers, was also baffled by the claims. She contacted an expert in forced marriage and a Scottish Traveller who has written several books on the different Traveller communities.

She received similar feedback to the ITMB’s: arranged marriages with the consent of both bride and bride-groom, young marriages and, apart from one isolated case, no forced marriages.

'This doesn’t mean that "forced marriage" doesn’t ever happen, but it would be foolish to extrapolate from that it is widespread,' she says.

When the ITMB approached Nazir Afzal asking for his evidence, he replied that he had seen a presentation on forced marriage by a domestic violence worker who works in Traveller communities.

Afzal also revealed another research method. 'A quick search of the internet via my search engine will bring up other articles and case studies in Traveller communities,' he said. In other words he googled it.

The domestic violence worker cited by Nazir Afzal was at the ITMB conference. When pressed by the many Irish Traveller women present, she claimed to have been misrepresented and misquoted and was not happy with how her presentation was reported.

At the same conference, Father Gerard Barry said that he had never come across any evidence of anything but the sometimes over-enthusiastic consent of the prospective bride and bride-groom in the twenty years he has been conducting Traveller marriages.

The Traveller scapegoat

All this would be farcical, but for the fact that it creates yet another stick to beat Travellers with. It also has serious implications for the future criminalisation of Travellers.

Just before Nazir Afzal’s remarks, the government's Forced Marriage Unit offered funding to NGO’s who were 'tackling forced marriage in the Traveller community.' Soon after, David Cameron announced that he was going to stamp out forced marriages by strengthening the law.

To their credit, the Forced Marriage Unit also came to the ITMB conference and have now taken their post down from their website without allocating any funding.

Why Mr Afzhal chose to make those remarks remains a mystery. However, a report by the Children’s Commissioner, published this week, refused to ascribe the practice of grooming of young girls by gangs to the Asian community. An ethnic breakdown revealed that both perpetrators and victims came from almost all the ethnicities currently living in multi-cultural UK, including white British.

This says to me that violence against women of any age, including that of forced marriage, cannot be ascribed to a particular culture; it must be more systemic and embedded within the dominant culture and cannot be blamed on the ‘other’. Patriarchy anyone?