A History of Suffering

The Romani people have suffered persecution throughout their troubled history, particularly in Europe.

They are said to have originated in the Indian Subcontinent and began their migrations around the 11th Century. There is a theory that it was the attacks by Mahmud of Ghazni that drove the Romani ancestors into the Byzantine Empire from which they again moved by 1360. There was an independent Romani ‘fiefdom’ established in Corfu who were described as ‘an important and established part of the economy’. In the 14th and 15th Century Romani travellers has reached the Balkans, Bohemia and then Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

The term ‘gypsy’(which Romani find derogatory) originated from the European’s mistaken assumption that these travellers had originated in Egypt.

Rumors were spread in medieval times in Europe that the Roma were descended from a sexual encounter between a Roma woman and the Devil. The Catholic heirarchies attempt to silence any dissent to it’s rule turned against ’Witches’, Free Thinkers and, during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Roma. The courts seized and imprisoned them in various prisons, often without even bothering to record the victim’s names.

Roma were rounded up and imprisoned in Spain during 1749 and up until the middle of the 1800’s Roma Slavery was legal with up to 50% of the Romani population enslaved up to that point.

But things were to get far worse for the long suffering Romani people. After the failure of the Russian Revolution and the death of the massive revolutionary wave that had swept across the whole of Europe from 1917 until the early 20’s, and under the impact of the Economic Crisis of the 1930’s, the counter revolutionary forces and Fascist movements began to gain support for their savagery.

The name given to the mass murder of between 200,000 and 1 million Romani people by the Nazis during World War II is ‘Porajmos’, which translates as ‘The Devouring’. On the Eastern front Romanis were often killed on sight. And yet not one of the surviving victims of Fascist terror have received compensation for the horrors they lived through - in 1997 Bill Clinton failed to re-appoint a Romani representative on the Holocaust Memorial Council.

The recent crisis has seen a rise in Far Right groups across Europe with particularly vicious attacks on Romani families occurring in Hungary. ‘Jobbik’, a Nazi organisation, won 14.8% of the vote in the European Elections, their main campaign slogan was the disgusting call to tackle ‘Gypsy Crime’.

Roma houses are frequently firebombed. Gunmen lay waiting as a terrified father fled his burning home with his five-year-old son and then opened fire, killing both. That happened in February when Robert Csorba and his son Robika were murdered in Tatárszentgyörgy, central Hungary.They were buried in the same coffin.

In April Jeno Koka was killed in Tiszalök, eastern Hungary, the fifth Roma to die violently in the past few months. Koka, a 54-year-old grandfather, had just said goodnight to his wife Eva and was setting off for work when he was felled by a shot to his chest.

In various European countries Romani people are easy targets for right wing politicians and far right groups.Last year's deplorable attacks in Northern Ireland that over left 100 people fleeing their homes in fear are just another horrid episode in the history of the Romanis.

As the present crisis evolves the Left has to stand with these victims of racist abuse, but what’s more, we need to push the anger building up in society towards fighting the Bankers, the corrupt politicians, and ultimately the profit system itself, those who actually are to blame for the lack of social housing, lack of amenities,and our decimated health services.

Employers ripping workers off!

NERA, the National Employment Rights Authority, had to prosecute 108 employers this year for failure to comply to a legal situation already skewed in their favour.

6,000 workers had over €2.5 million stolen from their wages and this figure is only the tip of the iceberg with NERA employing only 69 inspectors and with most workers in the dark as how to proceed with suspicions or complaints against ruthless bosses. Even when these cases reach the point of prosecution the companies can hold them up in the High Court and with the NERA budget being cut from €9.6 million to €7.9 million it looks like the reality of super exploitation is much higher than the above figures for money recouped reveal.

13% of employers don’t provide proper pay slips for workers, 47% were found not be complying with holiday entitlements, some employers kept no records whatsoever and one facility in the midlands, for example, paid no holiday pay.

Karl Marx a long time ago pointed out that our wages represent only a portion of the working day, they don’t bear any relation to the amount of value we create, if you make 10 TV sets a day your wage may be enough to buy 2.

The boss’s profit comes from that unpaid part of every day when you make him 8 TV sets for free. So the system is based of theft even when it runs according to it’s own legality. But this isn’t enough to satisfy the boss’s absolute greed and as the NERA figures indicate there is another layer of extra exploitation dumped on workers whenever the bosses feel they can et away with it. We have to make it clear that they can’t.