Why the Persecution at Dale Farm is all about the Economy
When I was a postgraduate student I tutored on a course about the politics of inequality. We dealt thematically with gender, sexuality, race, class and ethnicity. By the end students were fully convinced of the value of non-discriminatory politics. Until that was we got onto the subject of travelling people. The mention of travellers unleashed a torrent of bigotry; stories intended to explain why utter intolerance was acceptable and even a set of jokes about shoddily done work. Where it was easy to explain why discrimination on grounds of sex, race or other social descriptions was unacceptable, prejudice against travellers seemed to be much more deeply engrained.
There’s good reason for this prejudice being so profound. Owen Jones writes at length in his excellent book Chavs about how class became a legitimate field for prejudice over the 30 years as society and the economy became organised around consumption rather than community or ability. Similarly prejudice against travellers has profoundly economic roots.
Our economy is based around the exchange of work for wages. Rather than in agrarian societies where people work to directly produce their own food or in a barter economy where people swap goods and services for food almost everyone works to earn money that then allows them to pay for food, shelter and other necessities.
In a wage economy, where workers have to exchange their labour for money there is inherent conflict between those who pay wages and those who work. Everyone wants more money in return for their work while employers will want to pay less. A number of factors determine how much is paid for particular work. These factors include the availability of qualified labour (the more people who can do a job, the lower the wage for it will generally be) and the availability of money to pay for work (where there is less money available, less work will be offered).
One of the strategies pursued by organised employers is to create a supply of unemployed or underemployed workers so that wage levels will be driven down. If there are 20 people who can do a job and only 10 places, the employer is able to make the 20 people compete with each other to do the job for less money. On the other hand if there are 5 people who can do the job and 10 jobs needing done the workers can ask for more money to do the job.
Travelling people throw this equation out of balance. By travelling they make it much more difficult for employers to bargain down wages. It’s only sensible to move from somewhere where you will be played off against other workers so your labour is worth less. That’s why so many early human societies were transhumanant (moving to where the food or work was). So employers seek to introduce social sanctions on travellers.
By ensuring that workers are not able to move, the competition for work becomes greater and the value of wages is reduced. Where state boundaries cannot prevent the movement of workers, the state and the organs that influence our culture are pressed into use. One of the reasons why the Thatcher government was so keen to sell council houses was to make it harder for workers to move. Selling one house to move is much more difficult and expensive than terminating a lease, particularly if you wish to buy another house. The explosion in home ownership is part of the reason why Britain’s workforce has become much less mobile since the 1980s.
The bureaucratic apparatus of the state has failed travellers in Britain at almost every turn. Education authorities fail to put in place appropriate measures to serve traveller children, health services are rarely as accessible for travellers as they are to even the most excluded settled people and local authorities seek to prevent travellers from using traditional sites.
And that’s before you get to the employer controlled media’s portrayal of travellers…
All of the massive firepower of the state and media are used to undermine travelling as an acceptable way of life. This has led to the demonization of travellers, open persecution by bigoted politicians and the marginalisation of travellers by the state. The aim of all this is to prevent travelling becoming an acceptable way to find work. It feeds off the racist controls placed on immigration and the move to mass home ownership to ensure that wages are depressed through an end to the movement of workers.
This media attack on travellers goes as far as to claim that people who move to sell their labour actually damage the interests of other workers. The argument goes that by creating more competition for jobs in one place mobile workers reduce wage levels there. But that is a product of employers success in ensuring that most workers can’t move to where there are most jobs and higher wage levels. The movement of workers is much more of a threat to employers than it is to other workers.
The eviction at Dale Farm is just the latest act in a long and disgraceful history of oppression for travellers. A history of opression recognised by Rabbis who have spoken out against the eviction at Dale Farm as part of a shared Romany-Jewish history of victimisation. It stands as a warning to workers everywhere that if they seek to move to where their labour is most valuable they will be the victims of state oppression and media vilification. We must stand in solidarity with travellers both because of their long history of oppression and their resistance to control by labour markets.
Hi, interesting article and with, I think, a germ of truth.
Neoliberal economic theory has depended on the principle of free movement of goods, services, capital and labor. On paper, general equilibrium theory says a market will reach equilibrium where supply equals demand (provided there are no restrictions on the operation of the market) – a Pareto optimum, where resources are allocated in such a way that maximizes the welfare of all.
There’s plenty of scope to challenge the theory, but my point here is that its strongest advocates have never practiced what they preach. The history of free-trade and of institutions like the WTO have shown individual Nation states – or rather, the representatives of small, powerful interest groups – pick and choose which aspects will promote their own self-interest. Thus, the US was all for promoting liberal economic policies when it wanted to take advantage of markets in Europe and Asia damaged by WWII, but turns all protectionist and builds walls to keep out Mexican’s when the likes of General Motors face competition. Similarly, it is fascinating to watch Conservative’s have-their-cake-and-eat-it attitude to Europe.
So, if you were a true “liberal” capitalist, you’d want people to move around freely in order for the market to function. But of course we are dealing with language turned on its head. “Reform” doesn’t mean to improve a system but to destroy it and “liberal” means the selfish not the free individual. The travelers are perhaps caught in the crossfire of duplicity and represent a source of unconstrained labor that is threatening to the capitalist economy.
I remember the assault on gypsies and travelers in the ’80s. We were all being encouraged to be capitalists and homeowners. The unemployed, who were required to keep wages down and assist the demise of trade unions, were to be located in the North where they could provide fine case studies of the sort of people who are poor in the future. Travelers presented as an inconvenience, which weren’t cladding their newly acquired properties in Basil don or smashing windows on derelict estates in Hull. To deal with them, they were prevented from stopping and confined to special sites; the trick being that Tory Councils would make sure there would never be enough sites.
The “greenbelt” argument is totally spurious. Has anyone been to Basildon? I know Wickford as my mother lived there as a child and there has been scant attention paid to preserving the natural environment in that corner of Essex. Having made it very difficult for travelers to live according to their own culture and heritage, the Irish travelers demonstrated their ingenuity and community spirit with the owners of Dale Farm welcoming their fellows. And of course the neighbors complained, I know who and what they are and it’s very ugly.
They needed to go because they were a functioning community outside the control of the capitalist economy. Having been prevented from moving freely, they’d had the cheek to settle down on their own terms, not where they were put. This was clearly intolerable, since such privilege is only accorded to a special elite – such as Donald Trump, who is happily digging up an environment even more important than Basildon’s greenbelt, up the road from me in Balmedie.
So – and I apologies for a rambling response – I think it is not simply that capitalists don’t want people to move so they can suppress wages, neither is it that they want freedom of labor to promote the effective functioning of the economy. What they want is to exercise absolute control over labor, so that people get on their bikes when they’re needed; or stay put in crumbling estates when they’re not; or slave in cotton-fields; or go to war; etc. As for travelers, the truth is they don’t want them at all.
Guy,
Thanks for your comments.
While I agree that all should be equal in the face of the law, where the law is discharged fairly I think it’s quite clear that the law in this case has been used to victimise travellers. And planning law is notorious for its selective application. If you or I build something without planning permission we may have it pulled down. If Tesco do, it’s almost never pulled down. One prominent development in Edinburgh was built with 5 stories rather than the 4 that had permission. The Council gave retrospective permission. Perhaps because the flats will go for £500k plus.
If I thought that the Council always, without fear or favour, applied planning law I’d be a lot less convinced that this is racism. But no Council does apply planning law in that way, and so the choice of an already marginalised group looks very much like racism.
You’re also right that if my argument is correct the state’s rational action should be to encourage settled living for travellers. And that’s mostly what the state provides. But the need to attack travellers’ way of life sometimes becomes more important than the need to make settlers travel.
In this case the travellers seem to be moving onto the part of the site that has planning permission, so will stay settled. But the state will have made violently clear how much it disapproves of traveller lifestyles.
Thanks again,
Peter
Also, you’re correct in saying that travellers face discrimination – and that must stop – but you don’t seem to address the fact that just because they are travellers doesn’t change that they have broken the law. If your argument is for equality, it works both ways – better access to healthcare and education yes, but it also holds that they should be treated in the same way as everyone else when it comes to planning regulations – and if I were to illegally build a house on land without planning permission, I’d expect to be evicted too. You/they can’t pick and choose which bits of the law they would like to be applied equally and which they wouldn’t.
Unless I’ve missed something, the crux of your argument is that the state wants to make it difficult for these travellers to move to find work. Surely if that argument held any water, the state would be aruging for them to stay where they are rather than evicting them to force them to move on?
Hello Peter,
An interesting article, though I find it difficult to agree with.
That there is much prejudice against travellers is clear and that there are many unjust comments in the media and elsewhere about them is equally evident. However this does not mean that the current attempts to enforce planning law in relation to structures deliberately built illegally on green-belt land are due to prejudice. If you or I deliberately built numerous large structures on green-belt land, we would also be asked to remove them. Equality means being treated in the same way as everyone else.
I also find the argument that travelling is being discouraged in order to help drive down salaries rather unlikely. Indeed, the reverse seems more plausible as where people are willing to move to find work this increases workforce availability and drives down salaries.
Rachel,
Thanks, I quite agree.
Political student,
Settlements in the West Bank contravene the fourth Geneva Convention. Settling in occupied territory is therefore a war crime.
Dale Farm contravenes planning regulations, which are regularly breached to little or no consequence for those who breach them. Further, the same government that is evicting these travellers is at the same time trying to abolish the planning system that prevents this, so that rich people can build as much as they like on the green belt.
Just out of interest, and from a purely legal point of view, what exactly is the difference between this site and the settlements in the West Bank? Both are illegal, so why should this one be allowed to continue to exist when many demand the West Bank ones should go? The settlers at Dale Farm and the settlers in the West Bank have similar arguments in regards to why they should be allowed to stay where they are.
I Hadnt thought of it like this, so interesting. A spokeswoman at the farm was just saying its about hate, not about the green belt, which certainly seems likely.
I just wish they would leave them alone, looking at it all on T/V it seems cruel and unecessary to evict.
Jock,
Thanks for your comment. I think that its useful to think about workers’ mobility at both macro and micro levels. At the macro level the bosses interest is in ensuring control over the movement of labour. At a micro level it may not be, but I think the calculation is that they can then make exceptions. That’s what “points-systems” for immigration aim to achieve.
On the thinking behind the Thatcher proposals to sell-off Council housing, there is a substantial literature on the impact of home ownership in the US from the 1920s onwards. That was a clear influence on the Thatcher government. The main aim, I think, was to lessen industrial militancy, as workers had been proven less likely to strike if they had a mortgage to pay. But one of the secondary aims was to fix labour, so capital had an advantage. I’ll have a rummage round and find some of the best references for that.
‘barnshee’
I’m neither a traveller, nor someone with no experience of travellers. There are plenty of things that education authorities could do to help support travellers – and few of those are in any way the fault of teachers.
Nick,
Thanks for your comment. As I say above I think that the impact of workers’ mobility works differently at macro and micro levels. The prejudice against travellers functions because of macro-level problems.
Thanks for the book recommendation – another one to add to the pile!
While anyone can be blamed for the prejudice against them, my point is that we should change those with the power to create prejudice, not those who suffer discrimination. Blaming the victim never solves the problem and almost always exacerbates it.
Hmm I’m not sure about this either – travelling benefits employers in areas where the travellers are moving to, and harms those in areas where they are moving from.
The enclosures created a large influx of the working class to cities, to supply industrialist with cheap, and expendable labour (and replenish this supply as they died from the awful conditions). The end of slavery created a labour force which was far cheaper, if less directly under the control of individual owners. The end of feudalism was a similiar process, as was the end of serfdom in the russian empire.
fostering prejudice against immigrants is a way of distracting from class tensions against the rich, and is a form of divide and rule – preventing immigration for example is generally not in the economic interests of big business.
Bury me standing (http://www.amazon.com/Bury-Me-Standing-Gypsies-Journey/dp/067973743X) is a good book about the roma from a largely sympathetic point of view,but also discusses how they don’t always help themselves when it comes to preventing prejudice.
What a load of old cock– clearly witten by either a “traveller” or someone with no experience of traveller behaviour.
“Education authorities fail to put in place appropriate measures to serve traveller children” Try teaching travellers who disappear TO THEIR HOUSE IN IRELAND late march/early April and who MAY arrive back in October -exactly how are Education Authorities -not to mention teachers (whose fault it is that travellers underachive academically) supposed to cope
Hi Peter, good article which I agree with the thrust of, but I’m not sure about your analysis of the interests of the bosses;
Adam, I see your Burns and raise you Steinbeck;
http://www.synaptic.bc.ca/ejthree/028nuthr.htm
Chapter 14 of The Grapes of Wrath – a belter of a book all about the difficulty of uniting a glut of migrant labour that was driving down wages. That’s definitely not a completely apocriphal situation – and I reckon any industry with seasonal work is always going to have a heavily vested interest in as many people as possible being mobile. In the same way, I’m pretty sure that any business that employs lots of workers in, say, IT is going to be opposed to caps on immigration for the skilled workers it needs, on account of what a shortage of supply is going to do to wages. Unfortunately for them, on this occasion the Tory party’s desire to return to the 1950s trumps it’s desire to do anything that Tesco wants.
Do you have any evidence that Thatcher’s government wanted a more immobile population, as distinct from one that was just property owning and therefore more likely to be conservative? Genuine question – ’cause again, that kind of goes against what I would’ve guessed business wanted.
Great stuff Peter. Employers preventing workers from moving reminds me of my favorite Burns poem: http://www.google.com/m/url?channel=browser&client=ms-rim&ei=rsZwTviiEa-O4gSRnsKeAQ&hl=en&oe=UTF-8&q=http://www.robertburns.org/works/110.shtml&ved=0CA8QFjAA&usg=AFQjCNFjLLuKwFA1Q5ywJoWfdj9rT3O6eQ