Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- The formation of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller organisations in the UK
- Gypsy and Traveller accommodation policies
- List of abbreviations
- one Introduction
- two Pedagogies of hope: the Gypsy Council and the National Gypsy Education Council
- three ‘Ministers like it that way’: developing education services for Gypsies and Travellers
- four Charles Smith: the fashioning of an activist
- five Friends, Families and Travellers: organising to resist extreme moral panics
- six Building bridges, shifting sands: changing community development strategies in the Gypsy and Traveller voluntary sector since the 1990s
- seven The Gypsy and Traveller Law Reform Coalition
- eight Below the radar: Gypsy and Traveller self-help communities and the role of the Travellers Aid Trust
- nine Gender and community activism: the role of women in the work of the National Federation of Gypsy Liaison Groups
- ten The Roma in Europe: the debate over the possibilities for empowerment to seek social justice
- eleven Roma communities in the UK: ‘opening doors’, taking new directions
- twelve Conclusion: in search of empowerment
- Appendix 1 Directory of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller organisations
- Appendix 2 The numbers game
- Index
two - Pedagogies of hope: the Gypsy Council and the National Gypsy Education Council
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 March 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures and tables
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- The formation of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller organisations in the UK
- Gypsy and Traveller accommodation policies
- List of abbreviations
- one Introduction
- two Pedagogies of hope: the Gypsy Council and the National Gypsy Education Council
- three ‘Ministers like it that way’: developing education services for Gypsies and Travellers
- four Charles Smith: the fashioning of an activist
- five Friends, Families and Travellers: organising to resist extreme moral panics
- six Building bridges, shifting sands: changing community development strategies in the Gypsy and Traveller voluntary sector since the 1990s
- seven The Gypsy and Traveller Law Reform Coalition
- eight Below the radar: Gypsy and Traveller self-help communities and the role of the Travellers Aid Trust
- nine Gender and community activism: the role of women in the work of the National Federation of Gypsy Liaison Groups
- ten The Roma in Europe: the debate over the possibilities for empowerment to seek social justice
- eleven Roma communities in the UK: ‘opening doors’, taking new directions
- twelve Conclusion: in search of empowerment
- Appendix 1 Directory of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller organisations
- Appendix 2 The numbers game
- Index
Summary
This chapter provides an account of the formation in the 1960s and development of the Gypsy Council and its successor organisations (Figure 2.1). Most accounts of the origins, trajectories and achievements of Romani organisations concentrate upon the story of how they interacted with state authorities and what result they had upon the overt policy and actions of the local and central state and, more recently, transnational organisations. Over the last 25 years narratives have been set within the banal discourse of the ‘NGO’. Although the phrase ‘non-governmental organisation’ appeared in the UN Charter of 1945 (in a rather different context), the acronym NGO was popularised only in the 1980s, through the abbreviation of the somewhat more euphonious acronym the ‘QUANGO’, or ‘quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation’. That phrase, first used in 1967, was itself acronymised only in 1969 (Pifer, 1987), but was picked up by right-wing governments, such as the Heath government (1970–74) in the UK as the welfare state staggered under the twin shocks of the oil price rises and the rapid growth in the number of old-age pensioners and sought to outsource welfare provision to independent agencies that it nevertheless had to fund. Acknowledging that they were only quasi-autonomous, however, meant that the government was still held accountable for their performance. Neoliberal discourse swiftly dropped the ‘quasi’ bit, and reinvented government as the righteous, avenging popular regulator of the agencies that perpetually failed to manage the poor on the budgets they are given. The modern use of the term ‘NGO’ invites one to consider them only in relation to governments. How strange it is that at the very moment when the last major version of state utopian authoritarianism lost legitimacy in 1989, the neoliberal ascendancy was able thus to appropriate an inverted vision of the ubiquity of the state. Most of the Romani organisations bravely and ineffectually (according to some) taking grants across Europe to cover for the failings of the welfare state might better be termed ‘wholly non-autonomous fully funded non-governmental organisations’ (WONNAFFUNGOs).
The Gypsy Council, from its foundation in 1966 down to its local offshoots, and the two Gypsy Councils which dispute the title to be its legitimate successor today, have never been one of these WONAFFUNGOs.
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- Hearing the Voices of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller CommunitiesInclusive Community Development, pp. 29 - 48Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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