GYPSIES, CELTS AND TINKERS - COLONIAL ANTECEDENTS OF ANTI-TRAVELER RACISM IN IRELAND

Post-colonial nationalist ideologies and practices construct an Irish Republic free of 'ethnicity' and 'racism', The ethnicization of the Ir ish Travelling People ('itinerants', 'tinkers') and the existence of a nti-traveller racism, however, reveal the limitations of this construc tion. This article focuses upon the antecedents of anti-traveller ideo logies by concentrating on the period that preceded Irish independence in 1922. The history of Irish itinerancy from the middle ages to the mid-nineteenth century is first described and located within the conte xt of British colonialism. This is followed by a consideration of scho larly, literary and popular representations of 'tinkers' during the la te nineteenth century. Three interelated discourses, those of the Brit ish Gypsylorists, the Anglo-Irish Celtic Literary Revivalists, and the folklore of the Irish peasantry, are described and linked to British imperialism, Irish cultural nationalism, and agrarian class relations respectively. It is argued that an analysis of these discourses, groun ded in political economy, provides a useful historical context for ana lyses of more recent constructions of Travellers that have arisen in t he course of struggles over a state settlement programme initiated in the 1960s. Through documentation and analysis of historical constructi ons of Travelling People, especially constructions of their origins, t his article aims to challenge contemporary essentialist constructions of both ethnic identity and racism by redirecting attention instead to wards the economic and political processes and relations of power that produce difference and inequality within the Irish context. Such anal ysis can also raise broader issues regarding the existence and specifi city of racism in the Irish Republic.