Baldrick's Blog: Here is my cunning plan!

On the night that police moved on gypsies who were sleeping rough in London’s Hyde Park hordes of British drunks were committing acts in the streets of Budapest that would have ensured there names were placed on the UK’s sex register. Much the same drunken behaviour was going on at resorts across Europe. Although the worst that the gypsies in London seem to have done beyond ignoring a local by-law forbidding sleeping in Hyde Park is to have left litter, the incident has become a cause célèbre. British drunks across Europe suffered little worse than hangovers and, perhaps, some cases of sexually transmitted disease. Hyde Park is merely a scene in a much wider drama that threatens the UK’s reputation and  trade. It began with statements by politicians and continues with press and media comments that stigmatize all Romanians - Romania has become the target of national xenophobia.

Media stories that border - at the very least - on incitement to racial hatred have not gone unnoticed in what is territorially one of Europe’s largest member states. “Through all the years of repressive government this country has suffered we looked to Britain as a beacon of liberty, fairness and justice. Now you call us all gypsies and you don’t want us in your country,” says a senior official of Romania’s justice service. He goes on to say: “We always looked to you because we admired your values. Now we see a country that still believes it can tell others what to do but that is not the case any more.”

The comments underscore those of university vice-chancellor Professor Quintin McKellar, who has branded the British public “xenophobic” and said that hostility to immigration was damaging the economy. The vice-chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire, said that foreign students were being deterred from coming to Britain to study in greater numbers by calls for tighter curbs on immigration. “We do have an issue not just within universities but in the whole of the United Kingdom in terms of having essentially quite a xenophobic population,” he told a vice-chancellors’ conference.

Widely publicised comments about “Romanian criminals” - not criminals from Romania spilled from UKIP’s party conference and, although overshadowed by reports of women being called sluts, were widely publicised not just by the press but by the BBC. Roma gypsies as the nomadic Romany people have more recently been labelled are one percent of our 20 million plus population, our Bucharest based official declares. Official statistics put the figure closer to 2.5 percent but many have already moved to Italy and France. Europe’s Romany population are a classic ‘nation without a state’. As anyone who has been to Auschwitz-Birkenau will know from the descriptions of women and children screaming as they were herded to their deaths. Romanies have suffered centuries of persecution. In World War II, Romanian General Ion Antonescu working with the Nazis began herding Romanies onto the Russian steps. “He was shot just two weeks before they were due to be exterminated. But for that there wouldn’t be any romanies today,” my friend said.

Romanies make up a small part of the population of Hungary and recently the self proclaimed King of the Romany was living in Turkey after being flown to Romania for emergency medical care. His people are scattered across Eastern Europe and have migrated  to Italy, Spain, France, Germany and - over many decades - to the UK. That there numbers have been increasing is due to failures on the part of successive governments to foresee and control the implications of EU membership.

They have been the subject of intense debate in the European Parliament which has been trying to find a solution. Lívia Járóka is a member of the European Parliament who is proud to be ‘Roma’. She is battling with many others to change the ethnic understanding of the minority group “especially from an employment point of view”.

She points out that European and national laws against discrimination are not implemented in some countries - notably France, Italy and the UK. According to the MEP only five percent of Roma lead nomadic lives “for cultural reasons or crafts”. The gypsies moved on from Hyde Park were described by the media as “Romanian gypsies” - did the police check all of their passports and, if so, did the police tell reporters that they were all Romanians? The incident happened in the evening and within hours newspapers were screaming that they were indeed Romanian gypsies. Since so-called journalists have no power to see peoples passports either they were making an assumption or police were complicit.

Back in Romania, a man talking to French tourists complained that the country “is in the grip of the English language and I am not comfortable with that”. He explained that British media and politicians are making sweeping statements that are simply offensive and questions why his country continues to "honour such scum by using their language".

 In another town a young man speaking perfect English together with his wife and young son said: "My mother is a nurse and she is working in your National Health Service. I lived in Ashford in Kent for a year and twice applied for a work permit but was refused. It was clear to me that I was regarded as a gypsy and not wanted. Now I don’t want to go there. I have a degree in engineering but if that is how they regard us then so be it."

Trinity College - Bucharest!

Another young man said: “I have two degrees but they won’t let me work in the UK. Friends of mine have come back saying the same thing - they think we are gypsies."

In Sulina, at the mouth of the Danube Delta and Norwegian who owns the Irish Bar - bars and restaurants across the country are modelled on those in the UK - says that the reputation of the British is at an all-time low. “Your night in Budapest is nothing to what we see in Cyprus and in Spain. The Romanians think you are all dogs and imbeciles.”

As in the UK almost every village has a well maintained war memorial. Many now have marble add-ons listing the dead in conflicts in the former Jugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Romania is a stalwart ally of the UK as a member of NATO.

In a recent BBC interview a Romanian government minister declared that he had no objection to restrictions being put on access to the UK NHS service or social benefits. “What Britain does under its national powers is a matter for them just so long as it applies to all and is not discriminatory against Romanians”.

Romania has close cultural links to Italy through its Roman history retiring legionaires were gifted land by the Caesars.  One million Romanians  mainly living in Transylvania are of Hungarian ethnicity. The country has a small ethnic German population as well as Turkish mainly in the Danube Delta. It is dragging itself into the modern world after some 50 years of brutal Communist rule that followed Nazi domination. People are seeking justice for those they have named as communist torturers.

Romania is open for business as  French and Belgian supermarket chains testify, as do the German and American businesses that appear to be prospering. Huge numbers of Americans returning to trace their ethnic roots dominate the bars and restaurants of Bucheresti [Bucharest].

The EU flag flies everywhere and the EU, as every Romanian points out, has now acceded to the Charter of Human Rights. The Council of Europe - for the benefit of British journalists NOT the EU - is losing patience with the UK.

So here is my cunning plan: racial and other forms of discrimination contravene human and civil rights but let’s look at things from a purely domestic point of view. Incitement to racial hatred is a criminal offence under British law. Labelling all Romanians as gypsies is is clearly a criminal offence.

The next time a newspaper, radio or television make such a cavalier and all-encompassing statement we should all formally complain and press for legal action leading to criminal sanctions. And the same should go for any politician, political candidate or British official.

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