Progress in the Request for an Apology?

In 1894, an official enquiry sat in various parts of Scotland to research information and report back on Scotland’s Traditional Travellers. It was argued that some of the committee members were liberal, and some viciously prejudiced against the Traveller community. The ensuing report made a number of comments and recommendations, one of which had appalling ramifications; the rounding up of children of Travellers and sending them to Canada and Australia as domestic and ‘farm’ servants. These children were told their parents had died, or did not want them. The vast majority of these children were never heard of again from their families. The forced shipment of traveller children continued until the outbreak of WW1 and again after cessation of hostilities until WW2. In this article Roseanne sheds light on a little known horrific chapter in Scotland’s history.

by A Cup of Rosy with Rosie

MANY OF YOU will be familiar with the term, ‘Tinker Experiment’ and the concept which it embodied.

Many of you have reached out to us both individually and collectively as campaigners for an official apology – and we thank you for that gesture of support.

For those of you unfamiliar with ‘Tinker Experiment’, it was a racial eugenics programme, established post WW2 (though with many decades of preplanning) with cultural genocide as its broad aim; as is evident from reading the 1895 Scottish Traveller Report to the Secretary of State for Scotland where Dr. William Mitchell discusses the need to “extirpate” the community; create ‘reserves’ of cheap labour. This sentiment is echoed during the Evidence Session in Perth, 1917 chaired by Katherine Ramsay, 8th Duchess of Atholl and Chair of the Departmental Committee on Tinkers in Scotland where it was proposed that the best way to rid society of the ‘scourge of Tinkerdom’ was to use education as a tool to disable the culture; as expressed in the 1918 Report of the Dept. Committee under ‘Education and Training’: