Gypsies, Jews and how we're missing the point of immigration

My year as a squatter taught me a number of things. First, Neville Chamberlain might have been a bit lame when it came to Hitler, but a decade earlier he'd done more to provide affordable housing than now being done by New Labour. Not enough to compensate for the Hitler thing, but you get my point. Second, I learned how easily we slot ourselves into a pecking order. We squatters were the lowest of the low, until the travellers arrived. The working-class Irish looked down on us, the Bloomsbury homeowners looked down on them, and we decided to look down on the peasant-class Irish travellers.

In Ireland, the travelling people are called "gypsies", where the word is still largely an insult. In fact, it is unlikely that there is much Romany descent among them, although they have become pretty much a distinct ethnic group. They are mostly descended from people kicked off the land. If there is one sense in which they are gypsies, it is that they've been kicked around for a long time, and always seem to be the lowest of the low.

Middle-class people who like to travel are fond of saying "I'm such a gypsy", which is a bit like saying "I'm such a Jew", as you screen your home movies. One should be very careful of comparison, but the parallels between gypsies and Jews are very strong.

A century ago, Tories railed against Jewish asylum seekers from eastern Europe. Both peoples were sent to the camps by the Nazis. Both are blamed for causing their own persecution, both are seen as disloyal and sneaky. And both were responsible for most of the music played in eastern Europe for hundreds of years. There is such a crossover between Roma music and Klezmer that it makes one wonder which came first. And just as Jews massively influenced American jazz, the echoes of the gypsies extended into Spain and from there to the Americas.

There is a wide misconception that being a gypsy is about wanderlust. Sometimes, gypsies would quite like to stay where they are

I only say this because sometimes our measure of whether people are valuable migrants is whether they can cook, play tunes or do amazing things with fabrics. It shouldn't really matter if they are as culturally and intellectually enfeebled as Prince William, the issue in migration should be freedom of movement, not skills shortages.

Also, there is a wide misconception that being a gypsy is about wanderlust. Sometimes, gypsies would quite like to stay where they are. English gypsies, who can claim a lineage to the exodus of the Roma people from Rajasthan a thousand years ago, are, along with other travellers, currently resisting attempts to drive them from many parts of our countryside. Many of them don't want to live in flats. And some of them see themselves as cultural travellers even if they stay on the same site for years. They don't want to be forcibly assimilated as they were in Soviet Poland. And they are finding common cause with the Roma throughout Europe.

In eastern Europe, gypsies face a different order of suffering from that faced by travellers here. Lots are already in flats. Their persecution is racial. Mostly they are poor. Those who are not poor face discrimination because they are, in effect, black. In Romania, where gypsies were kept as slaves in the 19th century, there are many travelling farm workers still riding 19th-century horse carts. In Prague, gypsies are more likely to be seen driving bin lorries. But the discrimination is universal, and poverty widespread. You won't have read much about the riot police crushing protests by hungry Slovakian Roma in recent weeks. All you'll have read is that hordes of swarthy devils are going to swamp us as a result of EU expansion, as though there's any other way the harvest gets in.