Why Gypsy-Traveller apology is just the start for Swinney

The Herald Scotland

25-06-2025

The apology follows years of campaigning but the reasons behind it date all the way back to the 1920s.
Campaigners behind this, including those with lived experience, recognised the report as being a long time coming.
The Herald has been covering the concerns facing the Gypsy-Traveller community for years. This is why an apology is just the start.
'Cultural genocide'
St Andrews University's report, commissioned by the Scottish Government details centuries of policies that systematically marginalised Gypsy-Travellers.
The report found that children were forcibly taken into care - an act described as "cultural genocide".
Efforts to "assimilate" Gyspy-Travellers into Scottish society began were first documented in the 1800s.
But it escalated with an experiment known as the Tinker Experiment, which ran from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Read more:
Gypsy Travellers facing 'biggest scandal' in housing
Gypsy Travellers 'failed' as housing standards breached
Gypsy-Traveller children trafficked out of Scotland
Supported by the UK Government and local authorities, Gypsy-Travellers were told their children would be removed if they did not leave their nomadic lifestyle for settlements.
While the experiment ended in the 1980s, these settlements exist today, with 'systemic failings' in accommodation reported by watchdogs.
Families in the settlement huts did not have hot running water or electricity until around 2010 and there were serious sewage issues.
Today, families living in Scotland's three Gypsy-Traveller settlements - Bobbin Mills, in Pitlochry, Double Dykes, Perth and Tarvit Mill, Fife, warn they are living in unsafe conditions.
Report delays and links to Nazi eugenicist
Dr Lynne Tammi-Connolly, a descendant of Gypsy-Travellers whose children were transported to Canada, leaked a draft copy of St Andrews University's report.
She did so over concerns at the length of time the investigation was taking, and warned it was attempting to remove research linking leading figures in Scotland's state and church with Nazi eugenicist Wolfgang Abel.
According to the report, the professor visited Caithness in 1938 to photograph and take measurements of Gypsy Travellers in Scotland.
Abel was employed in Adolf Hitler's SS at the time as a signatory to the eugenics programme that led to the detention and forced sterilisation of Germany's Romany community.
During his visit to Scotland, he bet with the British ambassador to Germany, the Archbishop of Canterbury and an inspector from the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSSPCC), now known as Children First.
New research from Dr Tammi-Connolly revealed Abel intended to return to Scotland to continue profiling Scotland's Gypsy Traveller community.
The apology is just the start
Former first minister Nicola Sturgeon said she was considering an apology nearly five years ago, so victims see this as a long-awaited step.
If the Scottish Government does make an apology to the Gypsy-Traveller community, it won't be the end of it.
Given there are still many living in poor housing conditions, there will be calls for financial redress, or compensation.
Victims of the Tinker Experiment, and its consequences, demand:
financial compensation
funding for a memorial to the trafficked children
Dr Tammi-Connolly told The Herald: "Any apology must come with a right to redress for Tinker Experiment victims and commitment to funding funding a memorial to the children trafficked to the colonies.
"Anything less would be an affront to the memory of those victims no longer with us and a gross failure of duty to both those living with the intergenerational trauma of the Experiments and those still residing in Bobbin Mill the first and one remaining assimilation camp."