星空传媒

It is, of course, a long way from this to racist violence against people. Nonetheless, it is a shame that a paper that has campaigned over the 1993 murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence could not at least condemn the bonfire as in appalling taste. Especially given the fact that, only last year, a teenage traveller boy called Johnny Delaney also apparently paid for his identity with his life when he was beaten to death in Cheshire, by two teenagers who called him a 鈥済ypsy bastard鈥�.

What really struck me about the tabloid story was the almost casual assumption that gypsies and travellers could not realistically expect to enjoy the kind of protection, let alone respect, that we increasingly and rightly believe we owe each other irrespective of colour, ethnicity or faith. It鈥檚 little wonder that Trevor Phillips, the energetic chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, recently compared the position of gypsies and travellers to that of black people in the American Deep South in the 1950s.

During the passage of the recent Housing Bill, I and some of my colleagues tabled amendments to press the government on a long-promised and long-overdue reform of the law. This was just the latest in a long line of efforts made by some MPs and others who have championed the issue of traveller law reform tenaciously through the years. We did not necessarily expect immediate action but hoped for, and indeed received, some positive assurances that there will be action.

Regeneration minister Yvette Cooper gave a welcome recognition of the scale of the problems facing travellers and gypsies, who are frequently forced into illegality and conflict with local communities by the shortage of permanent sites. Even though the sites problem has not been cracked, this government has made some very welcome investment in improvements.

The Westway site, in my constituency, is one that benefited, with smart new amenity huts providing decent washing and cooking facilities for the first time since the site was occupied. Yet even here, and despite a generally constructive and tolerant approach by the local council, problems have abounded over the years 鈥� from a dangerous road entrance to periodic flooding, a history of pest infestation and much else.

What struck me was the assumption that gypsies and travellers could not expect the kind of protection we believe we owe each other

Travellers may not, by definition, wish to live as settled communities do but there is no reason at all why existing sites should not be managed and maintained to a decent standard and no reason why the health and safety of this group of people should not be protected. Yet a whole range of factors, including environmental and living conditions, contribute to quite shocking statistics such as the fact that life expectancy is 10 years lower on average for a traveller than for the population as a whole.

So long as there is a shortage of pitches and weak, confused lines of responsibility for handling the needs of gypsy and traveller communities, there will be conflict. So long as there is an institutional scope for conflict, discrimination will be rife and the kind of discrimination that burns gypsies in effigy can so easily, at another place and time, spill over into something worse.

This is not easy territory for any government. A new legislative framework will undoubtedly prove controversial and there are a great many fears to be allayed. But progress must be made, in the interests of settled and gypsy and traveller communities alike. This issue can drift no longer.