"We all know what Michael Howard did when he was Home Secretary, when the Tories passed the Criminal Justice Act which made criminals of gypsies and one parent families.
"Their approach to gypsies then and now is an incitement to racial hatred. Its made people think they can do anything, its dehumanising us. That’s a slippery road.
"Labour, by contrast, is at least listening and trying to come to
some conclusions. We're getting somewhere - for example, through the House of Lords Advisory Committee which I'm a member of. When we actually get to talk to them, they realise that most of our community is hardworking and are taxpayers.
"There's still a long way to go. When we apply for planning permission 80% of our applications are turned down, but the figures are only 20% for the settled community.
When it comes to retrospective planning permission, that's done out of need -
"When our children are born with no legal place to stay they are
born criminals. We keen to get our kids an education so that they can realise
their full potential. But there's still a lot of prejudice - even when our girls go for a checkout job
they can't even get an interview. We can't let that go on.
"I doubt we'll get much of a vote here in Folkstone, and we've learnt that we could do with better publicity and more canvassers in future. But as long as people don't vote for the Conservatives, that doesn't matter as much. We didn't expect much from this election. But I just wanted to stand on the same platform as Michael Howard and prove to him that he can't shift me. "In future, we'll encourage youg gypsies to come forward and will try to help them to get elected. Gypsies are becoming more politicised so we'll have quite some support in a few years."
Back to Red Pepper
She only got 22 votes, bless her, but she was really very nice!
Posted by: oscar | Friday, May 06, 2005 at 04:17 AM