Roma Rising

For over 500 years, the Romani people were enslaved in the Romanian principalities. You were not taught this. Not because it was forgotten, but because remembering it would require reparations. From the 14th century until abolition in 1856, we were chattel slaves in Wallachia and Moldavia. Longer than the transatlantic slave trade. Longer than most European empires lasted. The silence around this history is not empty space. It is deliberate erasure serving material interests, the interests of states that built wealth on our stolen labour, of churches that held us as property, of a European project that required our elimination to justify itself. But this silence was never complete. It was filled with resistance. With songs sung in chains. With names remembered in the dark. The Architecture of Bondage The system was meticulous, codified, and absolute.  Roma were classified into three categories of property:  Crown slaves owned by the state,  Church slaves owned by monaster...

In July 2024, the High Court ruled that the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 unlawfully discriminates against Romani and Gypsy communities. Yet the Government continues to enforce it. This is the story of legislation designed to erase a culture—and why we must fight back now. KEY FACTS • High Court ruled the Act discriminatory under Article 14 ECHR (July 2024) • 4,000 authorised pitch shortfall across England—yet funding has been cut since 2010 • 56% reduction in stopping sites between 2020-2023 as local authorities close sites and accelerate evictions • Used only 34 times in the first year across 43 police forces—undermining Government claims of necessity • 90% rejection rate for Traveller planning applications vs. 10% for conventional housing • Gypsy and Traveller life expectancy is 10-12 years lower than the national average • Traveller women are 20 times more likely to experience maternal mortality The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 has bec...

In the fractured landscape of post-Brexit Britain, where promises of sovereignty have often curdled into a harsher reality for the marginalised, the mental health crisis within Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller (GRT) communities deepens. These are the invisible scars, etched not by choice, but by generations of systemic prejudice, exacerbated by a political climate that often weaponises difference. For too long, the profound suffering – the anxiety, the despair, the quiet battles fought in the shadows of a hostile society – has remained largely unseen, unheard. This article lays bare the mental health emergency engulfing GRT people in the UK, scrutinising the near-impassable barriers to care and the chilling statistics of suicide, self-harm, and involuntary detention. A Crisis Compounded: When a Referendum Becomes an Anti-Immigrant Platform The UK's departure from the European Union, while a complex political decision, became a potent vehicle for the far-right and elements of the establis...