“Where are the Gypsies? Gone”: The Development of Roma Genocide Consciousness in 1960s Britain

While awareness of the Holocaust in Britain is now widespread, appreciation of the Roma genocide within this remains low. Using a cross-section of social and cultural outputs – materials held by the Gypsy Lore Society, historical publications, and local and national newspapers – this chapter focuses on the emergence of Roma genocide consciousness in 1960s Britain. It begins with a discussion of how, before the 1960s, awareness of the Nazis’ extermination of Roma and Sinti was constrained by piecemeal knowledge of their treatment in Nazi-occupied Europe, and was heavily mediated via stereotypical understandings of the UK’s own Gypsy and Traveller populations. We then demonstrate how the UK’s ‘Gypsy Power’ civil rights movement, advocacy by individual champions such as the Labour MP Norman Dodds, combined with seminal research on the topic – notably by scholar/activists Donald Kenrick and Graham Puxon - and press coverage of the contemporary perpetrator trials, attempted to shift public understanding of this history throughout the 1960s. However, as the chapter discusses in its final section, in the early 1970s awareness remained patchy and failed to permeate popular culture. We conclude by suggesting that a clear connection exists between the unwillingness of the British public to confront and grapple with historic and ongoing discrimination faced by Britain’s Gypsy and Traveller populations and the absence of meaningful engagement with the Roma genocide.