The Uglier Side of Bonnie Scotland: the Tinker Housing Experiments

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to illumine the insidious and covert nature of the racially motivated programme of measures, implemented by the State Party and other key stakeholders in Scottish society, ostensibly designed to crush and eradicate age-old Scottish Gypsy Traveller culture. To best rationalise those actions committed necessitates exploration of various themes: the treatment meted out, the mindset underpinning those actions, the attitudinal context, the intersectionality of the human rights violations and the long term effects of the damage sustained, both at an individual and collective level, by those subjected nationally to such assimilatory schemes, culminating in an inquisition of the reasons furnished by the Scottish Government for its subsequent refusal to grant an apology to the victims – despite repeated appeals to that end. The methodology will include personal photographs, reference to historical papers, relevant newspaper articles, and files from both national and local authority archives. The corollary of these investigations will conclude that the human rights of Scottish Gypsy Travellers have been irrefutably violated under international law; this has been executed with impunity by the authorities and, inarguably, constitutes a crime against humanity.