Enda Kenny and bigotry against Travellers

Prejudice against the Traveller community is now a fact of life in Irish society. It is as ugly, crude and vicious as the racism which prevailed in the southern states of America 50 years ago, founded on ignorance, bigotry and intolerance of the African-American community. But now, for the first time, a national political figure, Enda Kenny, leader of the Opposition, has joined that campaign and contributed his own mite of poison to the well of hate and hostility.

Enda Kenny is himself not a bigot but he is an opportunist and in aligning himself with the local Mayo sentiment in favour of the convicted killer, Padraig Nally, he is playing to a receptive local gallery. In doing so he has added to the sum of ignorance and injustice that surrounds Travellers.

In writing at all for the Irish Daily Mirror, which has been the most outrageously incendiary of all the media on this issue (see story on page 14), he has lined up with the most partisan and bigoted protagonist on the issue. But what he wrote was worse. In a caricature of the actual legal position, he claimed the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 imposed several requirements on home-owners facing intruders: this is simply not true (see pages 14 -17). He repeated all this on RTÉ's News at One on Wednesday (16 November) and when asked if he could cite a single case where a home-owner and been disadvantaged by the law in dealing with an intruder, he was unable to do so.

As we argue elsewhere, Nally was entitled to use force to dislodge John Ward from his property. Perhaps the firing of a shot at Ward was "reasonable" and, at a stretch, the brutal beating of ward was "reasonable", given all the circumstances. But what happened subsequently was outrageous. The killing of an already disabled intruder, who was leaving or had left the property and who posed no threat to anyone or to any property, was a major crime. It is hard to see how a jury that did not have prejudice against the Traveller community would not regard this as murder – it is fair to comment that the acceptance of the "provocation" defence could stand only if one regarded the mere presence of a Traveller on one's premises as provocative.

It is of no consequence what Ward's previous history was. The penalty for previous crimes is not the death penalty inflicted without trial.

What would the reaction be if it were the case that a Traveller had shot at a "settled" person who had come on to a Traveller camp site illegally, then had brutally beaten the "settled" person and, as the "settled" person was limping away injured and harmless, had run after them and shot them dead while the "settled" person was in a crouched position?

Padraig Nally is not a bad man. Almost certainly he will never again be violent to anybody. Whatever one feels about the prison sentence, the issue here is the cruel killing of a man in outrageous circumstances.

Whatever John Ward's history, sympathy must, in the first instance, be with his family. If any protest were appropriate, it should be about the conviction for manslaughter rather than murder and the insult that carried to the Traveller community.

This case has fuelled prejudice against Travellers. Nobody prominent in public life has spoken out in sympathy with the Ward family and the Traveller community as a whole, who must be devastated by the spectacle of prejudice and hostility aroused against them. But that the leader of the Opposition and would-be Taoiseach would take the side of those who applauded what Padraig Nally did is deplorable.

vincent browne