The Roma community in Scotland

WALKING the network of streets in the heart of Govanhill is a primer for the confused and warring nature of race relations in 21st century Scotland. Local white people and those of Asian origin throw the most appalling slurs at the latest incomers to the area - the Roma community. The Roma people tend to stick together - isolated by language - unwittingly adding to the tension between them and their neighbours.

But that's not all. Whites and Asians are daggers drawn at times as well. The word "Paki" is never long out of earshot and white people are told to "get back to your white ghettos".

It is not a pleasant place. There is open drug dealing in the streets from mid-morning to midnight. In some areas litter is piled high in the streets and in tenement flat closes - a fact blamed on the Roma. Much else is blamed on the Roma: rising crime, drunkenness, anti-social behaviour, allowing their children to play truant - just about every conceivable social ill is laid at their door by the long-time residents of Govanhill.

Drinkers in local bars claim they are "rolled" - attacked - by Roma people at kicking-out time. There were accusations of running battles between Roma men armed with sticks and local white kids armed with golf clubs. Other local white and Asian people, however, say they know nothing about any of this alleged criminal or anti-social behaviour by their Roma neighbours.

To add to the woes of the Roma people - an ethnic group which has been persecuted in Europe for hundreds of years and faced genocide under the Nazi regime - it is now confronted with the prospect of a possible child prostitution gang operating within the immigrant community in Glasgow. Police are keen to stress that this crime, if it is happening, must not be used to tarnish the entire community. One police source said: "There are sex crimes in every social class, every walk of life and every ethnic group."

Crime levels in Govanhill cannot be blamed exclusively on the Roma either. One police commander said that the area has been "the hottest hot spot for crime on the southside of the city" since before the Roma arrived. Officers say the Roma are dismissed as "beggars" by locals who believe the prejudiced myths about Roma culture.

Ironically, each wave of new immigrants into Govanhill has faced discrimination. One Asian shopkeeper described the Roma as "dirty bastards who survive through crime". Although, he added, he remembered his own family being treated in the same way when he was a child.

One local white resident of Irish descent, who also blamed the Roma for crime and the running down of the area, said he recalled his grandfather being discriminated against before the war because of his Irish birth. A regular in a local pub said: "I guess it's just the turn of the gypsies to get it."

Constable Stephen Scott is Strathclyde Police's diversity liaison officer for Govanhill - and much of his work focuses on the Roma people. Many of them, he says, came from a small run-down town in eastern Slovakia called Michalove, near the Ukraine border. It's effectively a shanty town - a vast, open rubbish tip. Scott said: "Back home, they are racially abused and ostracised. They face unemployment levels of up to 95% and get little access to education." The Roma people are among the poorest and most disadvantaged in Europe today.

Job agencies in Slovakia targeted them over recent years with offers of employment and housing in Glasgow. When they first arrived, unscrupulous landlords placed them in terribly overcrowded conditions - sometimes with up to four families of three generations, or around 20 people, living in two-bedroom flats. Around 2000 to 3000 Roma people live mostly in the southside of the city.

Scott said that most of the so-called problems associated with the Roma people were not deliberate acts, but cultural crossed wires. Some residents have complained of noise pollution, but in fact, says Scott, this is down to the Roma people's love of singing, dancing and entertaining. Others have complained of intimidating behaviour by groups of Roma people standing on street corners. Again, police say, the Roma people are just meeting on the street to talk to each other. Litter has been an issue, but police say that it is understandable that people who were forced to live in degrading conditions in Eastern Europe might not be aware how the refuse departments in Western cities operate.

Scott says a lot of work has been done to fix these cultural misunderstandings. Translators have been hired to work with the police.

Translators have also helped get Roma children into school. Few were enrolled in local primaries but now more than 100 are in full-time education. According to police, few Roma children even managed to get to school in Slovakia due to discrimination.

There was an innate mistrust of the establishment among the community as a result of their previous experiences, but today, Scott added, "we are talking and interacting and getting somewhere."

A multi-agency taskforce comprising the police, environmental protection, council chiefs, community safety, anti-social behaviour teams, the health service, and housing and education departments are all working to improve the quality of life in Govanhill, for the new Roma arrivals and the local population of whites and Asians.

A street outreach team designed to speed up integration between the Roma and the local population has had some success, says Scott. Local football matches with mixed teams of white kids and Roma kids have been a start to mending inter-community relations, Scott said.

The police pointed out that many locals fail to understand that the Roma people from Slovakia are just as entitled to be in Scotland as someone from France, Poland or Germany as they are citizens of the EU. "They are not spongers. They are not asylum seekers. They are not over here taking our jobs and they are not getting benefits," one community officer said.

The officer pointed out that it was misleading for local people to blame the run-down state of Govanhill on the recent arrival of Roma people. "It's never been the most salubrious area," he pointed out.

Overcrowding has eased a little, say police. Today the average is 10 people living in a three-bedroom flat. However, officers said that the Roma people were still being exploited by absentee landlords who were happy to leave people in slum conditions.

In one house visited by officers, eight Roma men had only the rings of their gas cooker for heating. Many Roma households operate a "hotbedding" system where beds are shared by two people - one who works a day shift and one who works at night.

All the Roma live in privately-rented property. Many have no tenancy agreements and are subject to exorbitant prices for slum accommodation as well as immediate eviction on the whim of the owner.

Michael Collins, of the anti-racist organisation Positive Action in Housing which campaigns for decent living standards for ethnic minorities, said that the Roma people were in Glasgow because they were "fleeing persecution, discrimination and really terrible conditions in eastern Europe". Yet the living conditions in Glasgow were like a "return to the Rachman era" (the 1950s slum landlord whose notorious methods earned him an entry in the OED).

Collins also said that he had heard council officials talk of "cleansing" the Roma community. This was an "appalling use of language", he said, given the persecution the Roma faced in Europe during the second world war. "It shows that the system sees them as a problem. The Roma may have brought a few problems with them, but they face many, many more due to discrimination and persecution."

Collins said he knew of Roma people being evicted at knife-point by their landlords for no reason. He added that claims about Roma crime were also exaggerated. When he asked one council official what crimes were being committed, he was told of Roma children stealing old food from bin skips at a supermarket. "It's not even theft," he said, "it's taking food from a bin because you are hungry.

"The mistrust of the indigenous community is simply down to ignorance. One or two incidents lead to rumours and soon you have a crime wave that doesn't exist. Things get out of proportion."