 Douglas Ross is the Tories leader in Scotland and he has a problem with travellers. He's been very public about that prejudice. Take a look at this interview Ross did in 2017 as a newly elected MP in Westminster. If you're Prime Minister for a day without any repercussions, what would you do? I'd like to see tougher enforcement against Gypsy travellers. That's right. If Douglas Ross could do any one thing as Prime Minister with no consequences, anything. He wouldn't end hunger or poverty or give a boost to British businesses. This is a Tory after all. Rather, he would persecute Gypsy travellers. Now thanks to Adam Ramsey at Open Democracy, we've also learned that Ross's obsession with travellers goes back further than 2017. So in this article which was published this week, Adam reveals that when Douglas Ross was a counsellor in Moray, North East Scotland, he led a campaign to block the development of a legal traveller site. Now this happened in 2010. A traveller had brought a plot of land to develop into a site and complained that Ross would regularly appear at the bottom of their drive, taking pictures. Douglas Ross also went around local farms encouraging people to sign a petition against the granting of planning permission for the site. This is someone who's really obsessed with stopping this person get planning permission for a traveller site. We know there's a huge shortage of traveller sites across the UK. Now unfortunately for Douglas Ross, local supporters of the traveller community in question gathered even more signatures in support of the development than Ross managed to collect in opposition. This was an obvious example of democracy in action. However, Ross wasn't happy with this outcome and he complained. This is the man who is currently leader of the Scottish Tories. He wants to be first minister of Scotland and he said this kind of thing about ethnic minorities who are discriminated against. On May the 6th, Douglas Ross will be standing to become first minister and there was a debate last night for those elections. So all of the leaders of the Scottish parties stood up and argued why they should be elected on the 6th of May. And in that debate, the co-leader of the Scottish Greens, Patrick Harvey challenged Ross on his record of prejudice. I want to suggest to you that you've built your political career on divisive language and actions against one of Scotland's most marginalised communities, the Gypsy traveller community. It's not just your claim when you're asked if you were Prime Minister for a day what your first action would be tougher enforcement against Gypsy travellers. You've campaigned against their right to legal traveller sites for a decade and when your attempts to stop one of them failed, you complained about what you called having to bend over backwards for this ethnic minority. Is it your whole party that's prejudiced against Gypsy travellers or just you? I've apologised for the comments I made in the interview you have cited. They were wrong. It was the wrong answer to the question which was well put and I should have answered it far better. There are so many other priorities that I could have answered with and I should have answered with and I apologise for that. But on the later case that you cite, in my 10 years as a local councillor and in my time as an MSP and an MP, I've always stood up for constituents who have come to me seeking action on issues that they are worried about. Have you stood up for Gypsy travellers who don't have legal sites or have you tried to block those legal sites? There was a big issue and we formally had a legal site. It had to be closed by over 100 officers from the former Grampian police because of a legal activity which took place there. So I will continue to act on behalf of constituents who come to me as a representative seeking help and to advocate points forward. Your constituents are also Gypsy travellers. Do you acknowledge that this is a long persecuted community in Scotland and what will you personally do to make amends for the way that you've broken trust with them and appeared to support campaigns that are discriminatory against them? Well, there is far more I can do and everyone can do. You know, I've had communication during this election on the cross party group that's established in Westminster and also the one that I am sure will be re-established in Holyrood. So there's definitely more we can do for Gypsy travellers here in Scotland. And what are you personally going to do? Well, I'm willing to open those discussions to accept the mistakes I've made in the past but also work with all communities here in Scotland going forward. But I will never, ever refuse to stand up to constituents who come to me seeking help, seeking support. But I think that's the right thing than an elected politician. So you heard that he apologised for saying that his number one priority were he to become Prime Minister would be to persecute Gypsy travellers. However, there was no apology, either for organising to try and stop the traveller site get legal approval, nor apology for saying complaining that people were bending over backwards for an ethnic minority. Adam Ramsey, could you talk about the broader article in that in that piece? So you were saying that Ross's own habit of targeting Gypsy travellers taps into a deeper history and deeper presence of racism against travellers in Scotland. So very briefly, can you summarise your argument? Yeah, sure. I mean, the first thing people need to understand is that there are a number of distinct different Gypsy and traveller groups in Scotland. I think a lot of people aren't aware that like Ireland, Scotland has the Highlands in particular have an Indigenous traveller group, which is, you know, it often interacts with but is distinct ethnically and historically from the Gypsy Roma tradition who arrived around 1500 in Scotland. So for at least 1000 years, there's been a nomadic tradition, nomadic group in Scotland with their own language, their own culture, etc. So that's what we're really talking about. Murray is up in the Highlands. So we're talking about Douglas Ross, we're talking primarily about Highland travellers, an ethnic group which are very rarely talked about in British politics. And there's a very long history. So from, you know, the 1570s, it was legal to kill Gypsies, as in Roma Gypsies. From 1609, James VI passed a law, which again, reinforced you could kill Gypsies and also banned any kind of, you know, support for traveller communities. And that history goes on and on. We could talk about that in detail. But in the last one of the things I, you know, discovered when I started interviewing elders in the traveller community over the last couple of months, which I had no idea about. I grew up in rural Perthshire, where there's, you know, a lot of travel, there were a lot of travellers as a kid that knew this history, I thought. What I didn't understand is that from about the 1890s, there was a long phenomenon of essentially taking children off, travel of families, you know, kidnapping them as the state and then deporting them to colonies in order to essentially try and ban the nomadic lifestyle. And that was fairly explicit. A policy which started, by the way, in a report written by George Trevelyan, who was the Secretary of State of Scotland at the time, whose father Charles Trevelyan is the man somebody might know notorious for being behind a lot of wrongly Irish famine and who said that famine was an effective solution to the population problem secreted. And, you know, this is essentially a quasi genocidal policy. And I spoke to people whose grandparents or had had siblings deported, you know, taken from their parents by the state and deported to Canada and to Australia. This is a story which has never really been told outside the traveller community is really shocking. And this very active attempt to force travellers to settle. And if they refuse to settle, you know, literally taking their children off them. And that is a story that's still live today. So, you know, one elder in the travel of meeting Angus told me that she'd intervened when the police were trying to stop some travellers stopping on a site near her house up by Montrose in Scotland, a few years ago. And the police said to the parents of this family, you know, if you don't do what we tell you will arrest you. And then what do you think will happen to your children? In other words, you know, find well, then we'll take them off you. So this threat is still held over the traveller community. And that's the context that Douglas Ross's behaviour arrives in, you know, that there is a very virulent racism against that particular community. You know, my primary school growing up, this was the most familiar kind of racism, you know, it was very popular to bash, you know, travel of children and to, you know, accuse others if they were seen as, you know, I won't I don't want to repeat the tropes. And so and so when Douglas Ross is pushing this idea, this hatred of travellers, it's true that this is a very common form of racism among his electorate. And when he says, you know, I don't back down from speaking up for my voters, I'm sure he's right that a large percentage of people who support him do hold racist views against travellers in the area, and that he is accentuating, whipping up and representing those views. But it's, you know, we can all see it for what it is. And what's the status of party politics when it comes to attitudes or policies, I suppose, more importantly, towards towards the traveller community? I mean, we've been talking recently in England about how both the Labour Party and the Tory Party are guilty of marginalising, at least in their literature, in the way they speak about travellers, that community from people I spoke to policy between the two parties does actually differ a reasonable amount. What's the situation in Scotland is what Douglas Ross is saying, particularly grotesque compared to the other party leaders. And I suppose most importantly, because they are going to win the next election, what's the SNP's relationship to the traveller community in Scotland? Yeah, I mean, so the SNP have just allocated about £20 million to invest in traveller sites and to support traveller culture. I think to go back a little bit into the geography and history of this, you know, we're talking about the north east of Scotland, which is really where the SNP grew up. You know, I've had an SNP MP in the position so I grew up in since 97. Back when there were only very few, you know, the area of Banff was previously an SNP seat before, sorry, Moray was previously an SNP seat before Douglas Ross took it. So this is kind of the SNP heartland. And the class politics in the region is that basically working class people vote SNP on the whole and landowners, wealthier people tend to vote Tory as they do across the UK. And unsurprisingly, it's fairly consistent in the case that the people who particularly don't like travellers or landowners, and the working class communities have traditionally had much better relationships often, partly because travellers are working class and they will work. Personally, they sometimes vote themselves over their very low turnout rates, but also there'll be much more personal familiarity. And so, you know, the SNP has, to its credit, tended to not have much, well, have any time for any kind of racism. I wouldn't I don't want to praise them too much, because there's a lot more that needs to be done. You know, the 20 years that I talk about at the end of my high school, where, you know, there's been a massive decline in in visible signs of travelling communities. So when I was a child, you would see them round about and now you don't. And obviously, the SNP has been in charge for a lot of time. And that's allowed that process to take place. But they have tried, and they've done some things, they need to do more, but certainly there is a very big party split. And the parties were unanimous to some extent in condemning Douglas Ross for his comments. And to be honest, even, you know, Ruth Davidson, the previous Scottish Tory leader wouldn't be caught saying this kind of thing. This is very much out with the bounds of traditional political rhetoric in Scotland. You know, there is a lot of prejudice there, but normally, even the Tories are kept a cap on saying this kind of thing publicly.