Some Secretary Jack Straw's outrageous traveller community been rightly greeted by a good deal of anger. In an interview with BBC Radio West Midlands on July 22 Straw said: "There are relatively few real Romany gypsies left, who seem to mind their own business and don't cause trouble to other people, and then there are a lot of people who masquerade as travellers or gypsies who trade on the sentiment of people, but who seem to think that because they label themselves as travellers that therefore they've got a licence to commit crimes and act in an unlawful way that other people don't have."
He then went on to make even more offensive comments claiming that travellers were going round stealing and defecating in doorways.
As Rachel Morris, coordinator of the traveller law research at Cardiff University responded "He has fallen into the trap of thinking that you have to live in a painted wagon and sit around a campfire to be a real gypsy. Anyone who doesn't fit with that romantic image is automatically given the other label of being a thieving, anti-social trouble maker."
Traveller organisations in Britain and elsewhere have worked hard to build unity across the communities. By law the term gypsy incorporates anyone with a nomadic way of life - not just the Roma, but Scots and Irish travellers as well as new age travellers.
These communities 'have many differences in culture but they face the same discrimination historically and today. it is inis common experience of discrimination - of lack of decent sites, harassment by the police, lack of clean water, or access to jobs and to decent education, that has forged this unity. They will not be thrown off course by the racism of people like Jack Straw.
The experience of harassment and stereotyping has strengthened their organisations. Signs in pubs that refuse admission to travellers may seem trivial to those that they don't exclude, but few would react in the same way if it were other ethnic groups that were excluded.
It is pleasing that criticism of Straw's intervention has ellers' organisations them• selves but also from sections of the black community. Darcus Howe for example argued that Straw would not have been able to get away with using the spat of shootings by some from the Jamaican community to brand all black people (or all West Indians, or all Jamaicans) as murderers in this post-Lawrence environment.
But Straw and his supporters in Millbank clearly do not understand the unity against racism that is being slowly but surely forged.
The parallels drawn with Enoch Powell's 'river of blood' speech are accurate, despite John Prescott's fawning over Straw.
What is most important - particularly so soon after the eruption of racism in Dover - is the effect the speech has on others as it legitimises and reinforces the bigotry of others.
But the power of Straw as an individual should not be downplayed. As Home Secretary he must have been well aware that at the same time as he was making these prejudiced comments, junior minister Mike O'Brien would be asking the Czech gov-SEX ernment to intervene to reduce the numbers of Roma applying for asylum in this country.
The fight against racism and the fight for a genuine right to asylum are part and parcel of the same battle. The rights of all travellers must be a key aspect of this struggle.