Youth, Racism, and Place in the

Tony Martin Affair

Robert M Vanderbeck
Department of Geography, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA;
robert.vanderbeck@uvm.edu

This paper provides an analysis of media discourse surrounding the arrest, trial, and conviction of
Norfolk farmer Tony Martin for the murder of 16-year old Fred Barras, a Traveller from Newark,
Nottinghamshire. The paper argues that discourses about Travellers (re)constructed in the media
during the Martin affair showed evidence of both older, stereotypical representations of Travellers
and newer ways of locating them in relation to contemporary societal anxieties about “dangerous
youth”, the “underclass”, and “social exclusion”. The coverage was often emblematic of political
discourses in Britain, which too often emphasise the moral failings of the “excluded” without any
significant discussion of the sources of inequalities.

In August 1999, a local farmer ended the life of a 16-year-old Gypsy

burglar … The trial of Tony Martin dominated the headlines like
no other murder case in recent memory. (Narrator, A Very British
Murder 2000)

Introduction
On 19 April 2000, Norfolk farmer Tony Martin was convicted of the
murder of 16-year-old Fred Barras and sentenced to life in prison.
Barras, a Traveller1 from Newark, Nottinghamshire, and 29-year-old
Brendan Fearon, also of Newark, broke into Martin’s farmhouse
(named Bleak House) in the fenlands of eastern England on the
evening of 20 August 1999. Martin, using an illegally owned shotgun,
fatally wounded Barras (apparently without any advanced warning)
and injured Fearon, who escaped but was sentenced in January 2000
to a three-year prison term for conspiracy to burgle. The murder con-
viction led to a media-fuelled public outcry in support of Martin, who
was merely “defending his home”,2 according to then–Conservative
leader William Hague (Landale and Jones 2000). The Martin affair
continues to be used in many circles as a parable for, in Hague’s
words, the ways in which “millions of law-abiding British people … no
longer feel the state is on their side” (Waugh 2000a). The case has
particularly been employed as a focus for discussions of rural crime
and policing (Yarwood 2001), as well as of life on economically
deprived council estates, such as the Hawtonville Estate (about 80
miles from Norfolk) where Barras lived.
© 2003 Editorial Board of Antipode.
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA
364 Antipode

While the Martin affair has been used as a parable to support a

variety of agendas, my contention is that there is much to be learned
from the case about the state of discourse in Britain regarding racial-
ised minorities, “dangerous youth”, “social exclusion”, and the “under-
class”. Specifically, this paper provides an analysis of media discourse
about Barras and other Travellers appearing both before and in
the aftermath of Martin’s original conviction. My argument is that the
discourses about Travellers (re)constructed in the media during the
Martin affair constitute one important episode in a longer history of
the continual redefining of relations of power and space between
Travellers and non-Traveller society. While not uncontested, coverage
often showed evidence of both the repetition of deep-rooted stereo-
types about Travellers and newer ways of representing them in relation
to contemporary social and political concerns.
I develop this argument through an examination of accounts of the
Martin affair as they appeared in the broadsheet press as well as a
one-hour prime-time television documentary on the subject, part 1
of Channel 4’s A Very British Murder (hereafter referred to as AVBM)
series. Following a discussion of methods of discourse analysis, I
explore discourses of Traveller criminality evident in reporting of the
Martin affair, including the ways in which the current moral panic
about rural crime was constructed as a manifestation of Traveller
crime. I then focus on the ways in which discourses of “dangerous
youth”, “social exclusion”, and the “underclass” featured in reports, and
how these discourses suggest both continuities in the way Travellers
are represented and newer ways of locating them within current
societal anxieties. I also consider the significance of these discourses
for various forms of social policy, including policing and social welfare
initiatives. While media coverage of the Martin affair perhaps had
particular salience for Travellers, I argue that it was in many ways
emblematic of the state of current “underclass” and “social exclusion”
discourses in contemporary Britain—discourses that too often
emphasise the moral failings of the “excluded” without any significant
discussion of the sources of inequalities.

Travellers and Media Discourse

In recent years, an increasing body of research has documented the
widespread vilification of Travellers in Britain and elsewhere in Europe,
such that MacLaughlin (1999) can refer to an “historical geography
of loathing” towards European Gypsies and Travellers. For centuries,
Travellers have been subject to regulation, persecution, proselytisation,
and intervention from those with an interest in controlling and/or
changing them, as well as questioning and study from those with a
curiosity about people they see as exotic and different. The discursive
association of Travellers with criminal activity extends back deep into
Youth, Racism, and Place in the Tony Martin Affair 365

British history, and constructions of Travellers as essentially dirty,

deviant, and dangerous have proven persistent (Mayall 1992).
Although policies have varied between European states (Cottaar,
Lucassen, and Willems 1992), legal measures affecting Travellers have
been influenced by a pervasive sedentarism, which McVeigh (1997:9)
defines as “that system of ideas and practices which serves to normal-
ise and reproduce sedentary modes of existence and pathologise and
repress nomadic modes of existence”. Perhaps the most significant
manifestations of sedentarism within recent British legislation can
be found in the much-discussed Criminal Justice and Public Order
Act (CJPOA) of 1994, which repealed the duty on local councils to
provide official stopping places for Travellers while simultaneously
increasing the powers of authorities to evict Travellers from unofficial
encampments such as roadside stopping places. While much (although
not all) of the Parliamentary debate leading to the CJPOA 1994 focused
on the perceived transgressions of the growing “New Traveller” move-
ment and ravers,3 the impacts of the act have been widespread. Although
space precludes a full analysis of the impacts of the CJPOA 1994
(but see Murdoch 1999; Bancroft 2000), the act has increased the already
strong pressures on Traveller families to move onto official sites (which
are often little more than state-sponsored Traveller ghettos) or into
permanent housing. Traveller families seeking to build stopping places
for themselves on privately owned land frequently encounter
significant local opposition and lengthy (and often fruitless) battles to
obtain planning permission (see Kenrick and Clark 1999; Williams 1999).
In contemporary Britain, negative stereotyping of Travellers
emanates from a variety of sources, including from the upper echelons
of government. A popular trope is for non-Travellers to label modern
Travellers as “illegitimate” based on their lack of conformity to popular
images of the “real Romani” (which include dark hair and eyes, exotic
dress, and the use of horse-drawn wooden wagons). While the oft-
posited dichotomy between “real” Gypsies and Traveller impostors
has been thoroughly critiqued and refuted (see Acton 1974; Okely
1983), the tendency to label modern Travellers as illegitimate persists.
There is a strong tendency for Travellers (particularly Irish Travellers)
who do not conform to images of the “real Romani” to be viewed as
illegitimate and deviant and thus in need of regulation and control.
This is evident, for example, in these highly publicised comments of
22 July 1999 on Radio West Midlands by then–Home Secretary Jack
Straw, who drew on the false dichotomy between “real Romany Gypsies”
and others who “masquerade” for the alleged purpose of engaging in
criminal activity to support his agenda of increased policing of Travellers:

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
366 Antipode

there are a lot more people who masquerade as Travellers or Gypsies,

who trade on the sentiment of people, but who seem to think
because they label themselves Travellers that therefore they’ve got a
license to commit crimes … Many of these so-called Travellers seem
to think that it is perfectly okay for them to cause mayhem in an area,
to go burgling, thieving, breaking into vehicles, … defecating in the
doorways of firms and so on … If the West Midlands police and the
local authorities are toughening up their approach to Travellers, as I
believe is entirely justified, then they’ll … change their behaviour.
(Travellers’ Times 2000a:6)

More recently, Conservative Member of Parliament Andrew MacKay

referred to Travellers who stop in public spaces and cause damage as
“scum” not worthy of the same human rights as his “decent constitu-
ents” (Guardian 2002).
The state has, for centuries, been actively involved in defining
Travellers and constructing images of them that circulate through
British society. One cannot, however, consider the state the sole source
of stereotypes about Travellers. To some extent, state policies and
pronouncements, although reinforcing and legitimising stereotypical
constructions, also take into account discourses already in circulation
and stemming from a variety of sources. As Mayall (1992:21) argues,
stereotypes about Gypsies are sustained “through the repetition of
images conveyed by means of … language and labels, scholarly texts,
popular culture, personal experience, and official responses”. Signifi-
cant concerns exist about the ways in which Travellers are represented
in the media. As Turner (1999) argues, press accounts often employ a
“language used about enemies”: “When gypsies arrive anywhere in
numbers, they ‘invade’. A proposal for a new caravan site sees local
residents ‘battle’ to stop it. If they succeed, they score a ‘victory’”. Despite
the presence of guidelines from the Press Complaints Commission
and the National Union of Journalists meant to discourage racist and
stereotypical reporting, Morris (2000) finds that press regulation is
essentially “toothless”. As she (2000:218) explains, the Commission
may potentially uphold complaints about one individual called a
“gyppo”, for example, but it “allows Gypsies in general to be referred
to as scum, gyppos, parasites and so on with impunity”.
The opening quotation from AVBM suggests the sheer volume
of media coverage generated by the Martin affair, the bulk of it
appearing in a period of intense reporting before, during, and after
the trial in the final two weeks of April 2000. For this paper, I have
chosen to focus most closely on the broadsheet press (sometimes
referred to as the “quality” press) rather than the national tabloid press
or local press, although I have reviewed a wide range of coverage.
Previous accounts of press coverage of Gypsy- and Traveller-related
Youth, Racism, and Place in the Tony Martin Affair 367

issues have focused more closely on the local press, as in Morris (2000),
and the tabloid press, as in Clark and Campbell’s (2000) analysis of
coverage of Roma asylum seekers. Jordan (1998:69) suggests that local
press accounts of Travellers “are for the most part blatantly dis-
criminatory”, while “quality papers” and television documentaries are
“seemingly more authentic and better researched”. While there is
some truth to this, the representations appearing in “quality” papers
and documentaries, as I demonstrate below, are also significantly
implicated in reproducing power relations between Travellers and
sedentary society during the Martin affair.
For the purposes of data collection, the electronic archives
of the Guardian, Observer, Times, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph,
Sunday Telegraph, Independent, Independent on Sunday, and
Financial Times newspapers were searched for all references to
Martin and Barras. My analysis does not rest on prior assumptions
about the ideological positions of different papers. While, for
example, the Times and Sunday Times are often considered more
ideologically conservative than the Guardian and the Observer,
reporting by the Guardian’s Audrey Gillan often contained some of
the most vehement anti-Traveller quotations by Norfolk residents,
which she may not have condoned but for which she allowed ample
space.
My approach to analysing these materials is from the perspective
of discourse analysis, as opposed to content analysis. Content analysis
attempts to measure quantitatively how frequently and where par-
ticular news events are reported. In contrast, discourse analysis is a
qualitative approach that attempts to uncover underlying structures,
meanings, and uses of representation through in-depth reading and
interpretation (Morris-Roberts 1998; Tonkiss 1998; van Dijk 1985).
All of the relevant items were subject to preliminary in-depth readings
(or, for AVBM, repeat viewings), and then systematically re-read with
a focus on five issues:

1. Ethnic identity: Was Barras identified explicitly as a Traveller in

the coverage?
2. Barras’s background: How was Barras described, and what feat-
ures of his background were considered relevant to report?
3. Other Travellers: In what ways were other Travellers discussed
in relation to the story?
4. Place imagery: How were relevant places represented (eg the
Hawtonville Estate in Newark, or rural Norfolk)?
5. Causality: What explanations were posited for the events that
led to the shootings at Bleak House? To what broader social
concerns were the events linked?
368 Antipode

I begin my analysis with a discussion of discourses of Traveller crim-

inality and deviance in coverage of the Martin affair.

Travellers on Trial
In their seminal study Policing the Crisis (1978), Stuart Hall and
colleagues examine how specific forms of crime can become ascribed
to certain racialised minorities. They explore the ways in which “mug-
ging” and “black crime” became virtual synonyms during the moral
panic that constituted the “mugging crisis” of the 1970s, with a focus
on the panic as a “social phenomenon”. For their purposes, the primary
task was not to examine the crime of mugging per se, but rather to
interrogate why mugging resulted in a moral panic at a specific his-
torical juncture, and how this panic came to be profoundly racialised.
As they suggest, one of the key issues is to examine the ideological
forces and interests that fuel a panic. Since this work on the “mug-
ging crisis”, geographical literatures have developed that further
explore the relations between crime, “race”/ethnicity, and policing
(Evans, Fyfe, and Herbert 1992; Herbert 1997; Jackson 1994; Keith
1993). The influence of the media often figures prominently in these
analyses.
There are multiple ways in which Travellers became linked by the
media to the Martin affair. Although some shorter news reports did
not discuss Travellers directly or identify Barras as such, longer analyses
generally identified Barras as a Gypsy or Traveller and often included
references to the wider “Traveller community”. Many sources reported
that Martin harboured a deep antipathy for Gypsies and felt threat-
ened by “light-fingered pikies” (eg Jones 2000, Times). He reportedly
had previously expressed a desire to put Gypsies in a field sur-
rounded by barbed wire and machine-gun them, and had stated that
“Hitler was right” to kill Gypsies (see eg Gillan 2000b, Guardian). In
most cases, Martin’s hatred of Gypsies was reported without much
comment, although a few sources made critical commentary: for
example, Jones (2000, Times) labelled Martin a racist and discussed
his alleged connections to the neofascist National Front.4 Circum-
stances involving the trial itself also focused considerable additional
scrutiny on Travellers and Traveller society, such as claims that a
Traveller attending Martin’s trial had “glowered” at the jury and
that Travellers had somehow “nobbled” the jury (Gillan 2000e,
Guardian).5
In addition, a number of commentaries on rural crime emerged as
the result of the Martin trial, with rural residents suggesting that crime
in their communities was on the rise, and often stating or implying
that Travellers were in large part responsible (although this was not
uncontested; see below). The press provided ample space for Norfolk
residents to vent anti-Traveller sentiments as they attempted to build
Youth, Racism, and Place in the Tony Martin Affair 369

a case that Travellers were victimising rural communities that had

largely been abandoned by the police:

Living in this area you are at the mercy of the travellers and local
villains. (unnamed former neighbour of Martin in Carrell and Judd
2000, Independent, and Thompson 2000, Observer)

[Martin] said if anyone went against the travelling community, they

were likely to have their house burnt down—a view, I might add,
shared by several others there. (Tony Bone, Norfolk Farmwatch
director, in Sapsted 2000, Daily Telegraph)

They [Travellers] have always come here but in the past it was just to
pick fruit and they would move on … somewhere else. But now they
have settled here and there’s no work and they steal lawnmowers
from sheds. (unnamed Norfolk woman in Gillan 2000b, Guardian)

The thefts round here are terrible. You cannot leave your lawnmower
out. There is a large travelling community here and I hate to feel this
way towards them because we are leftwing but cars and lorries are
stolen. (Ann Fullwood, Norfolk resident, in Gillan 2000d, Guardian)

Rural Norfolk and nearby areas (such as Wisbech, Cambridgeshire)

have a long history of Travellers participating in seasonal agricultural
labour (see Okely 1983:127). As is evident in the third and fourth
quotations, the problem in the eyes of some Norfolk residents is not
necessarily confined to Travellers who lead seminomadic lifestyles;
rather, it involves Travellers who no longer “move on” and have “settled”
in the area. The Martin affair created space for the expression of
views that constructed rural crime as Traveller crime and suggested
that the presence of Travellers was somehow incompatible with life in
rural communities. This is explicit in the commentary of Scruton
(2000, Sunday Times):

Crime comes [to rural communities] … from outside … It comes

down the motorway in cars and vans and lorries. It comes because
people drift through the countryside who have no place in the in-
tricate web of obligation that holds rural society together. Mr. Martin
had a vociferous hatred of gypsies, and for that he has been condemned
as a racist. Be that as it may, it is the traveller, the one just “passing
through” and unknown to the community, who is the principal source
of anxiety to the farmer.

Despite occasional attempts to distance themselves from Martin,

commentaries such as these suggest the need for a “purification
of space” (Sibley 1995) that has been infiltrated by Others, such as
370 Antipode

Travellers, who are “out-of-place” (Halfacree 1996). While Halfacree

(1996) and Sibley (1997) argue that those constructed as “real”
Gypsies have sometimes had a marginal but accepted position within
imaginations of the countryside, reporting of the Martin affair often
explicitly or implicitly provided ammunition for rural interests who
have stakes in advancing a notion of Travellers as compromising rural
communities. As Woods (1998:321) notes, constructions of rurality
are “constantly contested by actors who have invested both financially
and emotionally in their ‘construct’ of the rural, and who seek to defend
it against alternative constructions”.
As suggested above, this moral panic about rural crime was not un-
contested, although little in the broadsheet press directly challenged
negative representations of Travellers. While not addressing the repre-
sentations of Travellers generated by the media (but referring to Martin
as “Tony ‘machinegun all Gypsies’ Martin”), Hume (2000, Sunday
Times) writes, “How did rural burglary become the biggest issue in
British politics? … It is as if yesterday’s overblown crime panics about
mugging in the inner cities have today been replicated around rural
burglary.” As Hume suggests, reports of rural crime are overstated, as
reflected in the British Crime Survey, which shows that rural burglary
rates are still far outstripped by those in urban—particularly inner-
city—areas. In fact, recent statistics suggest that rates of burglary,
vehicle-related crime, and violent crime remain well below the national
average in rural areas, and that these rates are declining overall
proportionately faster than in nonrural areas (Kershaw et al 2000).
Although some reports contained the occasional quotation that Barras
“didn’t deserve to die” or other limited defences of the 16-year-old,
there were also attempts to distance other Travellers from the case:

The Fred Barras case has not helped the cause of the Gypsies. There
are around 200,000 travellers in this country, but we are all tarred
with the same brush. (Charlie Smith, Gypsy Council for Education,
Culture, Welfare, and Civil Rights, in Wright 2000, Times)

We have all suffered as a result of Fred Barras. It has put the cause
of Gypsies in this country back at least fifty years. Before this hap-
pened, we were already persecuted and vilified. This case has only
served to make things worse. (Hughie Smith, National Gypsy Council,
in Wright 2000, Times).6

Coverage of the trial provided a forum for the perpetuation of

longstanding discourses of deviance and criminality in relation to
Travellers; indeed, many Travellers felt threatened by the reporting
(see AVBM). Charlie Smith’s reference to the trial as the “Fred Barras
case” when it was in fact Martin, not Barras, who was the subject of
Youth, Racism, and Place in the Tony Martin Affair 371

legal prosecution is a telling inversion. In some sense, Travellers were

experiencing their own trial in the media. Although media reports
often contained discussions of perceived Traveller crime waves in
rural areas, only AVBM highlighted the fact that the burglary, which
had become an emblem for rural crime perpetrated by Travellers, was
primarily instigated by two non-Travellers (Fearon and Darren Bark,
who drove Barras and Fearon to Bleak House and was sentenced to a
three-and-a-half year sentence for conspiracy to burgle), a fact which
would call into question representations of the break-in as a prime
example of a specifically Traveller assault on rural households.7 The
Sunday Times, among other sources, incorrectly reported that Fearon
was a Traveller; most sources did not mention the issue.

Dangerous Youth, the Underclass and Social Exclusion

While the trial of Tony Martin created space within the media for the
repetition of stereotypes about Travellers, there were also important
ways in which coverage drew on current public and political anxieties
about young people, social exclusion, and an emerging British “under-
class” to make sense of the Martin affair, particularly Barras’s role in
it. Hall and colleagues (1978:54–55) describe how the media, in con-
structing stories, engage in processes of signification, or “giving social
meanings to events”:

If the world is not to be represented as a jumble of random and

chaotic events, then they must be identified (i.e., named, defined,
related to other events known to the audience), and assigned to a
social context (i.e., placed within a frame of meanings familiar to the
audience). This process … is one of the most important through
which events are “made to mean” by the media. An event only
“makes sense” if it can be located within a range of known social and
cultural identifications. (cf van Dijk 1985)

Many media reports during the Martin affair relied on what Hall
and colleagues (1978:98) refer to as a “[s]ubsumption of themes under
images”. During the mugging crisis, certain images were drawn upon
by feature writers to suggest lines of causation, although little critical
analysis of potential causal factors was, in fact, provided. Images such as
“the ghetto” and “youth” were mobilised as explanations for the mugging
crisis—readers were to make inferences based on their pre-existing under-
standing of what these images “meant”. Similarly, the press frequently
invoked “underclass” imagery in relation to Barras and other Travellers
during the Martin affair, and these images were often seemingly em-
ployed to signify causes for the events that led up to Barras’s shooting.
Contemporary images of “dangerous” and “disaffected” young people
have become widespread, and it has been argued that these young
372 Antipode

people have come to serve as the primary symbol of an emerging

British underclass (MacDonald 1997). Bagguley and Mann (1992:118)
describe the adoption of the term “underclass” and its associated im-
agery by a range of British commentators and policy-makers: images
of the underclass include combinations of “[v]andalism, hooliganism,
street crime, long term unemployment, joyriders, drug abuse, urban
riots, a decline in family values, [and] single mothers”. This underclass
is also often associated with a spatial imagery of deprived council
estates (“worst” estates, as they have been called by Prime Minister Blair
and the Social Exclusion Unit 2000). While public concerns about young
people have included those from a range of backgrounds, images of
“dangerous” and “disaffected” youth have become particularly intertwined
with the underclass concept. As Williamson (1997:70) suggests, “Both
‘youth’ (specifically allegedly ‘disaffected’ youth) and the assumed ‘under-
class’ have remained powerful metaphors for societal decay and the
focus for ‘respectable fears’, often with limited, or mythical, justification”.
Representations of Barras evidenced a number of these contemp-
orary anxieties about young people. In some cases, reports focused
almost exclusively on his criminal history; others tempered this repre-
sentation with comments (particularly from family members and friends)
suggesting that Barras was a good young man gone temporarily astray
who did not deserve his harsh fate. “[H]e was a teenager; he might
have grew out of it, mightn’t he?” as Barras’s uncle stated in AVBM.
Columnist Deborah Orr (2000, Independent), however, felt confident
calling Barras “the scum of the earth”. Press accounts repeatedly
emphasised Barras’s involvements with the criminal justice system and
his previous convictions. For example, Gillan (2000c, Guardian) writes,
“Barras was … one of a number of little criminals rolling around
Newark’s notorious Hawtonville estate. He had … 29 offences to his
name” for theft, fraud, offences against property, and public disorder.
Similar statistics were cited in most reports profiling Barras.
Commentary on Barras’s educational background was also common,
with numerous sources mentioning his expulsion from school and/or
commenting upon his level of literacy: “By [age] 12, Fred had been
expelled from … school. Instead of trying to go to another school, he
worked on market stalls and let his literacy slip” (Gillan 2000b, Guardian).
Descriptions of Barras’s life often highlighted classic discursive
signifiers of the underclass, such as educational failure, a deprived
council estate, and being raised by a single mother (and later, as in the
description below, pursued by one), intermingled with commentary
on Travellers. For example, Lusher (2000, Daily Telegraph) recounts
Barras’s life as follows:

Barras, excluded from his secondary school at … 13, came from a

dysfunctional family of travellers. He never knew his father and was
Youth, Racism, and Place in the Tony Martin Affair 373

associating with a gang of prolific teenage burglars by the age of 14.

Mrs Barras met her husband … in a Wakefield pub when they were
both 15 and living on a travellers’ camp. They married at 18 and their
10-year, tempestuous union produced six children [Lusher discusses
the separation of the Barrases.] After living in a caravan with her
family, Mrs Barras moved to … the Hawtonville council estate on
the edge of Newark, an area increasingly favoured as a permanent
home by the travelling community … [Barras] was being pursued by
the teenage mother of two children.

While many sources relied on primarily coded imagery of an under-

class, some were more explicit in their classification of Barras, such as
Rayment and Gadher (2000, Sunday Times) who begin their focus
piece as follows: “Fred Barras was an underclass criminal who became
the victim of his own offending.” Later, they reported:

One community leader [in Newark] said: “The problem is that Fred
belonged to a group from the travellers’ community, and that com-
munity is a very close-knit one … They do carry with them a reputation
… of unworthiness, thieving and crime.”
Brandon Fearon, 30, who organised the Bleak House farm robbery,
was also from a travellers’ background [note that this is incorrect; see
above] … Along Devon Road, where Fred’s mother Ellen and his
sisters live, there are caravans and mobile homes parked near several
houses. One house had a pony wandering about in its tiny front gar-
den and in another there were two scruffy half-naked infants. Other
gardens are littered with mattresses, shopping trolleys and car parts.

Thus, space is given for a purported “community leader” to (re)inscribe

stereotypical notions of Travellers. While making no direct commentary
on Travellers themselves, the authors in no way challenge this “leader”’s
characterisation. The presence of a pony, “scruffy” children, and litter
signify the disorder and social disorganisation thought characteristic
of the underclass. Travellers are located squarely within this under-
class discourse through both the ethnic identification of Barras and
(incorrectly) Fearon and the associated symbolism of caravans. Similar
associations are found in, for example, Judd (2000, Independent):
“The Barras clan, described as a family of travellers, remain settled in
the town’s deprived post-war Hawtonville housing estate, where cars
sit on the street, stripped of wheels and windows”.
The Sunday Times, in fact, used the Martin trial as a springboard to
launch a public forum featuring Charles Murray on “The Growing
Threat of the Underclass”, advertised beneath a section of readers’
letters on the Martin case entitled “A Violent Underclass is a Threat
to Us All” (30 April 2000). Murray is an active proponent of the view
374 Antipode

that the emergence of a British underclass can primarily be explained

by the moral failings of the poor themselves—failings which, he
argues, are accentuated by a generous system of social welfare that
enables their apparent deviance (see Murray 1994). As Haylett (2001)
notes, this view has gained increasing currency in British politics and
infuses much current social policy.
This moral element was both an explicit and implicit feature of a
number of commentaries on Barras, which used him as a vehicle to
advance a particular moral agenda to deal with the “threat” of the
poor. This is evident in the commentary of Phillips (2000, Sunday
Times) on the underclass: “This government has made much of its
attempt to beat social exclusion. Barras was repeatedly excluded from
school, was the child of a fatherless family and took cannabis before
burgling Bleak House … For all the government’s fine words, it will
not beat crime or social exclusion while it confuses the prejudices of
middle Britain with its virtues.” Substituting images for explanations,
Phillips uses school exclusion, single parenthood, and soft drug use to
explain the existence of social exclusion (which is apparently synonymous
with “underclass” behaviours). By implication, for government policy to
be successful, it is these behaviours (as opposed to persistent inequality)
that need to be tackled. Similarly, Aaronovitch (2000, Independent),
who sees the Martin affair as a lesson about “social exclusion and
education”, frames the story as one of a boy raised by a single mother.
The narrator of AVBM indicated that their documentary would
“suggest a more complex, less palatable story” than the simple tale
(advocated by Martin’s publicist Max Clifford, Hague, and elements
of the media) of a man defending his life and property from danger-
ous criminals. The documentary discussed evidence, as explained at
length by a representative of the Norfolk police, that, for example,
Martin had shot Barras and Fearon from close range and had continued
shooting even as they were attempting to escape from the house.
Nevertheless, AVBM also employed many of the same representations
of Traveller society, dangerous youth, and the underclass found in
a number of other sources. As quoted in the introduction, Barras’s
background was made central to AVBM’s story from the outset, when
the first mention of him is as “a 16-year-old Gypsy burglar”. Shortly
thereafter, juxtaposing narration with images of young people of a
variety of ages (including several boys standing on a street corner and
a teenage girl sitting down next to two bottles of lager), the narrator
introduces us to Newark, with a short (and completely dehistoricised)
account of how Traveller families had come to settle there: “Seventy
miles away from Bleak House, in Newark, Nottinghamshire, the
Hawtonville Estate was home to many Traveller families, who had settled
as their traditional life on the road became increasingly difficult. This
deprived area was home to 16-year-old Fred Barras.”
Youth, Racism, and Place in the Tony Martin Affair 375

Later, a young person named Steve, identified as Barras’s friend, is

interviewed. This interview is conducted/constructed with a group of
adolescent men playing street football in the immediate background.
Several times, the camera focuses on one young man holding a bottle
of alcohol in his hand as he plays. Images such as this, I argue, serve
to place Hawtonville firmly within discourses of the underclass, signi-
fied by images of young men drinking on the streets and not engaging
in productive activity. The narrator has previously placed Travellers
within this underclass narrative, noting how Traveller families had
taken up residence on this “deprived” estate “as their traditional way
of life on the road became increasingly difficult”. One interpretation
strongly suggested by this combination of visual imagery and narration
is of formerly mobile Travellers who have now “settled” onto a sink
estate and into the “underclass”.
Previous work on Travellers has discussed in greater depth what
AVBM alludes to above—the pressures on Travellers to settle into
housing or onto permanent caravan sites and the potential impacts of
this on Traveller families. While these analyses link the movement of
Travellers into housing to the dynamics of, for example, the CJPOA
1994, which has severely limited the capacity of Travellers to control
their mobility (Bancroft 2000), the brief commentary on this situation
by AVBM contains no such analysis. Rather, by virtue of its embed-
dedness in coded images and representations of the underclass, it
suggests a contemporary variation on this dichotomy of the “real” and
“false” Gypsy—Travellers who cease to live on the road have “settled”
out of their culture and have begun to constitute (as symbolised by
Barras) a growing, dangerous segment of the underclass. The mobility
of Travellers has long been constructed as a social problem; now their
settlement is also being constructed as problematic.
Although the concepts of “underclass” and “social exclusion” have
their own histories, the imageries associated with each are often quite
similar, and in some cases “social exclusion” is clearly used to
connote the problems of the “underclass” (cf. Haylett 2001). Levitas
(1998), Lister (1990), and others argue that groups can be positioned as
“socially excluded” to justify programmes of social inclusion and inte-
gration ultimately meant to (re)produce existing inequalities and rela-
tions of power. In her careful study of exclusion discourse, Levitas
(1998:15) contrasts uses of “social exclusion” that highlight the sources
of inequalities and seek more equitable distributions of societal
resources with those she terms “moral underclass” discourses, which
shift attention from the sources of inequality to “the moral and
cultural character” of the excluded. Similar arguments have been
made about the “underclass” concept by, for example, Bagguley and
Mann (1992:123–124), who argue that the “underclass” is a poorly
defined ideological concept that “obscures the real problems” and
376 Antipode

“helps … sustain certain relations of domination of class, patriarchy

and race towards the unemployed, single mothers and blacks”.
Although some critics argue that the notion of an underclass can
potentially serve progressive political ends if it is used to emphasise
the systematic, persistent exclusion of segments of the population from
opportunity (Robinson and Gregson 1992), this was rarely the case
during the Martin affair. Rather, the concepts of the underclass and
social exclusion (and their associated imageries) were often used as self-
evident explanations for the tragedy at Bleak House that emphasised
the moral deficiencies of Travellers, young people, and/or the poor.
What reporting and commentary lacked overall was any meaningful
analysis of the nature of inequality and power in Britain, whether of the
ways in which oppressive measures such as the CJPOA 1994 have
negatively affected Traveller lifestyles and livelihoods or of structural
forces which produce and maintain inequalities more broadly. As
Haylett (2001:358) argues in her discussion of the stigmatisation
of recipients of social welfare, the underclass concept is “the ultimate
expression of [the] movement towards considering claimants as beyond
the bounds of ‘ordinary’ national citizenship.” The “morals” to many
of the stories told about Barras, other Travellers, and young people
most often suggested the need for their greater regulation and control,
rather than any progressive political end. As I discuss below, the
consequences of representation can be very real.

The Consequences of Representation

While it is dangerous to make overly simplistic assumptions about
how particular media coverage will be absorbed, critical analyses can
serve to reveal the relations of power supported by discourse. As
suggested previously, many Travellers have expressed their frustration
with the ways in which they were represented during the Martin affair.
These representations, it is felt, serve to further label and stigmatise
Travellers as undesirables, increasing the high levels of scrutiny, surveil-
lance, and suspicion to which they are already subject. For example, it
is well documented that young Travellers are frequent victims of harass-
ment and bullying within school contexts (Ofsted 1999); the public
repetition of racist discourse, so to speak, adds fuel to this long-burning
fire. Representations of Traveller youth as “dangerous youth”, evident
during the Martin affair, also have potential implications for young
Travellers’ relations with the police. Research on the policing of young
Travellers is sparse, but a few small-scale studies and some anecdotal
evidence suggest that young Traveller men are disproportionately
represented in the criminal justice system (Eviction and Criminal
Justice Traveller Working Group 1999). With the passage of the Crime
and Disorder Act 1998, fears have been voiced that Travellers in hous-
ing would be made targets for Anti Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs)
Youth, Racism, and Place in the Tony Martin Affair 377

(Forrester 1999). Some practitioners have already begun to express

concerns which suggest that this scenario may be becoming a reality.
For example, Anne Walker, a Traveller education practitioner in Man-
chester, writes: “I am aware that significant numbers of Irish Traveller
lads are being considered for Anti Social Behaviour Orders … In
Manchester the majority of Travellers move into houses while they
are in the city and the … legislation seems to be affecting housed
families rather than those on sites” (Travellers’ Times 2000b:8). While
no systematic, ethnically monitored data is yet available on this issue,
representations of young Travellers as “dangerous youth” and as part
of a growing youth underclass (particularly housed Travellers, such as
Barras and those described by Walker) create and bolster rationales
for even harsher policing measures that may disproportionately affect
them.
Hyland (2000) suggests that conservative politicians have attempted
to use the Martin affair to gain support for their own agenda of policing
and social control:

Hague and company, besides pursuing a political agenda of strength-

ening the repressive powers of the police and the courts, are seeking
to whip up fear amongst the wealthy upper middle class over the con-
sequences of growing social deprivation and poverty. Accordingly,
they have defined the Martin case as a conflict between property
owners and the “underclass”, and have shown no compunction in
making a fascistic degenerate like Martin their political poster boy.

Relations between Travellers and the police have long been prob-
lematic. It has been estimated that approximately 3000 Traveller
families live in Britain at any time without legal stopping places,
and the CJPOA 1994 both increased the powers of the police to
evict Travellers from land and removed the legal duty on councils to
provide legal stopping places (Kenrick and Clark 1999). In practice,
however, the nature of police involvement in evicting Travellers on
unofficial encampments from land is a contested and variable one,
with some police forces using their powers more enthusiastically
than others (Eviction and Criminal Justice Traveller Working Group
1999).
Recent guidance from the Department of the Environment,
Transport and the Regions (DETR/Home Office 2000) illustrates the
ways in which some councils have developed policies regarding when
to use their powers under the CJPOA 1994, with some issuing guid-
ance on “tolerated trespass”—when an unauthorised encampment
may be “tolerated”. There are a number of stereotypical assumptions
embedded in these council guidelines. Northampton Borough Council,
for example, includes in its guidelines the suggestion that the absence
378 Antipode

of “criminal activity” and “intimidatory behaviour” be considered

criteria for “toleration” (DETR/Home Office 2000). Councils and
police are often under considerable public pressure to evict Travellers.
The re-inscription of discourses of Traveller deviance (as occurred
during the Martin affair) potentially contributes to pressure to evict
“undesirable” Travellers and reinforces the already strong presump-
tion that Travellers will be criminal or aggressive, with potentially
devastating consequences for Traveller families on unauthorised
encampments.8
There was evidence in the aftermath of the Martin affair that plans
were being developed by the Conservative party to further “crack down”
on Travellers. Plans were circulated by former shadow Environment
Secretary Archie Norman and former shadow Home Secretary Ann
Widdecombe to restrict access to benefits for those leading “gypsy
lifestyles”, increase police powers to evict and fine Travellers on un-
authorised encampments, and increase nationwide intelligence efforts
to monitor Traveller movements. Norman remarked that “For too
many years, travellers have plagued the public. The time has come to
put a stop to this blight” (quoted in Waugh 2000b). More recently, the
Conservatives listed “Action Against Troublesome Travellers” as a key
pledge in their “Common Sense for Coastal Towns” campaign docu-
ment, made available in May 2001 prior to the impending election.
The Conservative reaction to the Martin affair can be read as an attempt
to appeal to its traditional rural base of voters (Johnston, Pattie, and
Allsop 1988). At the time of writing, these measures proposed by the
opposition party have not been implemented, although then–Home
Secretary Straw’s sympathies for the increased policing of Travellers
are well known (see above). Nor did the Labour party manifesto
oppose the Conservative proposals, making no reference to Travellers
whatsoever. Both the Labour and Conservative policies evidence
distinct “strong state” tendencies (Gamble 1994), with both parties
attempting to portray themselves as tough on crime for an electorate
that, as the British Crime Survey reports, still harbours “rather pessi-
mistic” views on crime (Kershaw et al 2000:vi).9 The trend in policy
continues to be towards greater regulation and control of Travellers,
even though, as Sibley (1981:197) argues, “[T]o allow travellers to
exercise their preferences in the use of land and to allow them unre-
stricted movement would make it possible for them to maximise their
economic opportunities.”10

Conclusion
This analysis of the stories told during the “Martin affair” reflects a
number of contemporary concerns for critical geographers, including
the dynamics of racism and exclusion, the politics of Traveller mobility
and settlement, and the contestation of ruralities. In their attempts to
Youth, Racism, and Place in the Tony Martin Affair 379

“make sense” of the Martin affair, many segments of the mass media
have drawn upon existing stereotypical understandings of Traveller
criminality and deviance while locating them within wider narratives
on the “underclass” and “social exclusion” (two often intertwined sets
of discourses) that continue to gain currency with policy-makers and
the public. The elements of Fred Barras’s story have been easily seized
upon because they contain classic markers of the “underclass”: a council
estate, underage drinking, educational failure, a single mother. In the
aftermath of Barras’s shooting and Martin’s conviction, the press
created space for the expression of considerable anti-Traveller feeling,
with Barras sometimes portrayed as emblematic of Traveller crime
sweeping the countryside. The coverage also illustrates how Travellers
are stigmatised regardless of their level of spatial mobility or accom-
modation status. Travellers in houses, Travellers on caravan sites, and
highly mobile Travellers were all discussed during the Martin affair,
with Travellers who have “settled” sometimes represented as an
emerging segment of the British “underclass”. One is reminded of
ní Shúinéar’s (1997:26–27) astute questioning of the relationship
between Travellers and non-Traveller society: “Why do settled people
everywhere block the exact same thing that they demand: that is, that
nomads should settle down and become part of the community? And
how is it that, where nomads have settled down … the hatred is still
there, as strong as ever?”
My point when raising these issues of representation is not to argue
that young people never commit crimes, that the Hawtonville Estate
is not economically deprived, or that underage drinking and edu-
cational failure are unimportant issues. Rather, I want to emphasise
the ways in which particular stories have been constructed, drawing
upon pre-existing prejudices and beliefs with little critical analysis of
the genesis of inequalities but potentially serious consequences for the
populations to which the “moral” of the story will be applied. Travellers
who have commented publicly on the case and its effects have been
forced into a form of “answering mode” (Kenny 1997)—responding
to charges levied by the dominant society (“why tar us all with one
brush?”), but given little space to develop alternative representations.
Travellers who speak to the media bear a heavy “burden of repre-
sentation” (Mercer 1994), given the range of negative stereotypes
they feel compelled to counter.11 Reid (1997:32) writes, “As a Gypsy/
Traveller myself I am painfully aware that we have always been defined
by outsiders … The language used to describe Gypsies/Travellers …
has more to do with government policy than ethnic identity”. Reporting
of the Martin affair often reinforced existing discourses of Traveller
criminality while situating Travellers within broader discourses of the
underclass and social exclusion, in the process obscuring relations
of power that have served to regulate and oppress Travellers while
380 Antipode

bolstering logics for their increased control. The Martin affair also
serves as a prime example of how discussions and representations
by politicians, the media, and others of an “underclass” and the “socially
excluded” are still too often thinly veiled ways of foregrounding the
perceived moral deficiencies of the “excluded”, as opposed to struc-
tural inequalities.

Acknowledgments
Thanks to Peter Jackson, Gill Valentine, Colin Clark, Kathryn Morris-
Roberts, Rebecca Ellis, Glen Elder, and Max Andrucki for reading
previous drafts of this paper. Also many thanks to the members of
trav-net, including Brian Raywid and Dominic O’Callaghan, for help-
ful discussions of these issues.

Endnotes
1
In this paper, I use the term “Traveller” to refer to those traditionally seminomadic
groups living in Britain who, as argued by Acton (1974), Okely (1983), and others, con-
stitute distinct cultural groups. These include Romanis or Romanichals (the largest
group in Britain, with an estimated 63,000 members; see Kenrick and Clark 1999), Irish
Travellers, and Scottish Travellers. I am not including New Travellers (often known as
New Age Travellers or other names; see Kenrick and Clark 1999) in my designation
“Traveller” for this paper. Issues of terminology are controversial; for example, many
Romani families prefer the term “Gypsy” to “Traveller”, while some consider “Gypsy”
to be pejorative. I recognise that “Traveller” is an imperfect compromise, but feel it
necessary to have a term that encompasses these different groups, given that many of
the representations I will discuss are applied indiscriminately by the press, policy-makers,
and the public. My strong preference is for the capitalisation of “Traveller” and “Gypsy”,
although when quoting I preserve the original capitalisation practice.
2
The details surrounding the night of the shooting remain murky. Fearon claims that
he and Barras had not intended to burgle Bleak House on that particular evening, but
rather were scouting the property when they were chased by Martin’s dogs and entered
Bleak House to escape. Martin’s defence argues that this is undermined by the presence
of pieces of Martin’s silver found in Fearon’s bag at the crime scene, although Fearon
contests that these were planted there after the fact by Martin. Martin had previously
been convicted of owning a gun illegally, and Detective Chief Inspector Martin Wright
argues that Martin had a reputation locally for taking the law into his own hands
(A Very British Murder 2000). The prosecution argued before the court that Martin “told
officers that he had at no time warned the intruders or given them a chance to surrender”
(Gillan 2000a). I should emphasise that I make no attempt to independently assess the
forensic evidence or testimony regarding the shootings. In October 2001, the convic-
tion was reduced to manslaughter on appeal after the court heard psychiatric evidence
suggesting that Martin was suffering from a paranoid personality disorder (Morris
2001). Martin was denied parole in January 2003, but is expected to be released in July.
3
For discussions, see Hetherington (1998) and Kenrick and Clark (1999).
4
Martin’s lifestyle “eccentricities” were also widely represented, including his “descent
into squalor” at Bleak House, bachelor status, and deep attachment to his dogs (see eg
AVBM 2000; Jones 2000).
5
Front-page tabloid headlines included “WAS JURY NOBBLED?” (in The Mirror,
21 April 2000) and “JURY WAS TERRIFIED” (in The Sun, 21 April 2000). A number
of reports suggested that death threats were made against Martin by unspecified
Youth, Racism, and Place in the Tony Martin Affair 381

members of the “Traveller community”, forcing him into hiding before the trial.
Claims of jury intimidation have not been substantiated.
6
The politics of Traveller organisations are complex; there have been conflicts between
organisations and concerns expressed about their representativeness (see Turner 2000).
7
My overall argument, however, would be no less valid had Fearon or Bark self-
identified as Travellers.
8
For examples of discourses mobilised by one police force, see Cambridgeshire Travellers
Research Project (1999).
9
The Liberal Democrats showed some support for improved site provision. See Avebury
(2000). There is currently a small Labour Campaign for Travellers’ Rights.
10
There is some prospect of legal reforms, such as the Traveller Law Reform Bill
proposed by the Traveller Law Research Unit at the University of Wales, Cardiff,
which is currently receiving support from some MPs.
11
I am grateful here for a conversation with Camila Bassi.

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