Pressure grows for apology to Traveller community
Pressure is growing on the Scottish Government to say sorry for the ‘Tinker Experiment’after two more Gypsy Travellers from Perthshire said they were “shocked” and “upset” at learning about the atrocities of the policy.
Elizabeth McAllister McLaren and Jacqueline McCallum both live on the Double Dykes site in Inveralmond, and are part of a nation-wide call for the government to apologise for years of discrimination.
Enforced since the 1940s, the ‘Tinker Experiment’ saw Travellers placed in huts in a bid to take them off the road and make them integrate with the rest of the population.
Travellers across Scotland were forced to live in substandard accommodation, which caused them to be ostracised by society and treated as second-class citizens.
There has now been a widespread call from the Gypsy Traveller community for an apology to be issued.
Elizabeth said she had no idea about this experiment until last year.
She said: “I couldn’t believe it, I was angry at how they had treated Travellers and how they could treat one culture.
“They tried to wipe out our culture, because they would put the Gypsy Travellers together in one place in one certain area of the town.
“The kids were always clean and tidy, but the community was terrified of the authorities coming in and taking their kids away because it has been known for that to happen.
“Authorities would just take them and hand them out to other families, and they would grow up not knowing their heritage of being a Gypsy Traveller.
“This was a hidden experiment and it is atrocious to do that to these families.”
Elizabeth said the substandard accommodation Gypsy Travellers were given would get washed away in bad weather, stranding families and leaving them homeless.
She continued: “In Pitlochry at the Bobbin Mill site, the huts were near a banking and in the heavy rain they would get washed away.
“That was all caused by the government, and people wonder why we are now calling for an apology.
“We want an apology for the way our community was treated and the effort to wipe out our culture.”
Jacqueline, who was born down at the river in the Double Dykes site, added: “This mistrust of the authorities has gone right through the generations to our grandchildren.
“Would they have done this to any other ethnic group?
“The whole community wants an apology - we are angry.
“We need to start moving away the barriers.”
Elizabeth added: “It is scandalous what happened.
“There are things local authorities could do - if we want to go camping, let us.
“Have skips in the area for us to put our mess in - we don’t like living in filth.
“There are wee steps being taken, and hopefully that will continue and these steps will get wider and wider and that door will open further.”
Previously, Christina McKelvie, equalities minister at the Scottish Government, told the PA the government was taking the issue “very seriously” and accepts historical policies and practices have had a “devastating and lasting impact on families”.
She said she will now be working to deliver actions that are needed to address these inequalities and injustices in the Gypsy Traveller community.