Irish Traveller Movement

Dr Colm Power is Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Criminal Justice and Ethnicity at the Centre for Ethnicity and Health, University of Central Lancashire. Colm is also a trustee and secretary of the management committee of the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain (ITM).

Colm wrote the Community Fund bid that obtained £204,000 for a major social research project on Irish Travellers in England and was its Principal Researcher from 2000 to 2004. He is the author of ‘Are You Wide Pavee? An information booklet for Travellers’, and ‘Room to Roam: England’s Irish Travellers’ (Community Fund, 2004). You can read Room to Roam by clicking on the link provided here.

Amongst other publications, Colm has authored ‘Pavees and Muscers: police diversity training, Irish Travellers, and the limits of British pluralism’; ‘Healthcare for Irish Traveller Women and their Children in Britain’; and ‘The élite mediation of prejudice against Britain’s Pavees: A case of ‘reprobate’ mobs, successful assimilation, or ethnic disqualification?’, in T. Acton and M. Ó hAodha (eds.) Hidden Voices - Dialogue between the Irish Traveller, Roma and Settled Communities (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006). ‘TELLING IT LIKE IT IS’? Power, prejudice, politics and people in the qualitative process’, in S. Tombs and D. Whyte (eds.) Unmasking the Crimes of the Powerful (Peter Lang, 2003); ‘Irish Travellers: Ethnicity, racism, and pre-sentence reports’ (in Probation Journal, 2003); and ‘Our Histories, Our Futures – a social history of Irish homelessness in London’ (Irish Centre Housing, 1999).

In the following clips he discusses issues that have impacted on Irish Travellers’ welfare, talks about how you can become involved in the ITM and goes on to talk about how Irish Travellers can take advantage of new technology both economically and educationally.