Last week, the Welsh secretary, David TC Davies, insisted he meant no criticism with a leaflet that warned voters: “Gypsy and Traveller site coming to your area soon!” before asking them: “Would you like to see a Traveller site next to your house?”
Despite being accused of creating a “hostile environment”, Davies was defended by the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, who said his colleague was merely highlighting the failings of the local Labour council.
Gwent police said they were reviewing the leaflet on the grounds that it could be a “non-crime hate incident” – but later said they would take no action against the politician.
However, the Guardian has found a record of hostile comments by Davies towards Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities stretching back 25 years, with some Conservative colleagues questioning Rishi Sunak’s decision to promote him to the cabinet last year.
On one occasion, Davies claimed he would “register” himself as a Traveller so that people “won’t be able to call me a racist, because I’ll be a Traveller myself”.
In a letter to the Welsh finance minister Edwina Hart in 2002, reported in the Western Mail and Echo, Davies – then a Welsh assembly member – asked: “Can I assume the assembly will now be taking steps to ensure members of the Travelling community will be expected to MOT and insure their vehicles like other sections of society?
“Can we expect to see an end to the burnt-out cars and malnourished horses which so often denote the presence of Travellers?”
Noting the fact that his wife is Hungarian, Davies told the Western Mail and Echo in 2004: “I’m going to register myself as a Traveller. I travel quite a lot more than most of these people, especially to Hungary, and according to the Commission for Racial Equality, you don’t even have to travel to call yourself a Traveller. If I have registered myself as a Traveller, I can say what I think about the Travelling community without any fear.”
In 2005, the Plaid Cymru member Helen Mary Jones accused him of “giving support and comfort to people who behave appallingly towards Gypsies and Travellers” and called for him to be suspended from the Welsh assembly.
After he became an MP for Monmouth in 2005, Davies criticised a Welsh government form sent to schoolchildren asking them to specify their national identity and ethnic background for the pupil level annual schools’ census. Davies told the Western Mail it was “ridiculous” that people could not describe themselves as ethnically Welsh, “when you can opt to be one of seven different types of Traveller or Gypsy”.
“You might as well say that people who commute to work wearing suits are a distinct ethnic category,” he said. Pupils were able to identify as Welsh, English, Scottish, Irish, British or Other in the section on national identity.
Jim Carver, a former MEP who believes he was the first national UK elected politician of Romany Traveller descent, said Davies was engaged in “dog-whistle politics”, but that it was “sadly not surprising”.
“The Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community is the only community in this world that we live in that it’s an open goal to criticise,” said Carver, who sat for Ukip, then as an independent, and after that for a short period as a Conservative councillor. “The psyche has got to change.”
A spokesperson for Friends, Families and Travellers said there was a “severe lack of safe stopping places for Gypsy and Traveller people, and proposals to rectify this dire situation are met with vile hostility and targeted hate”. They said Davies’ leaflet was “an all too common, despicable example of the way Gypsy and Traveller people’s needs are weaponised by people from across the political spectrum, as political point-scoring”.
A senior Conservative MP told the Guardian that many Tories were shocked at Davies’ appointment in Sunak’s first cabinet, deeming him “a questionable choice for a secretary of state”. “People think it’s acceptable to say things to the Traveller community because they are not regarded as an ethnicity. But it’s got to stop,” they said.
The MP, a former cabinet minister, criticised Sunak and Dowden for defending Davies and said the prime minister was allowing his cabinet to “indulge in dog-whistle politics just because they can”, adding: “This is the rabbit hole we’re now heading down.”
They said Sunak was a good person, but had surrounded himself with people who only cared about the culture wars and targeting a range of minorities.
Another senior Tory MP said: “These culture wars are only going to get worse, and it only harms our reputation as Conservatives to the public.”
Police said last week they would investigate the leaflet distributed by Davies after the Travelling Ahead advocacy and advice service posted the “unacceptable” leaflet online and reported it. Gwent police said they would “not be taking any further action” against Davies.
Ch Supt Carl Williams said: “Officers have spoken to several people from the Gypsy and Traveller and settled communities before seeking advice from the Crown Prosecution Service on whether the leaflet’s contents constituted any offences.”
Under the heading “Gypsy and Traveller site coming to your area soon!”, Davies said he was concerned that a public consultation on the plans being held during the summer holidays would mean “many residents [would] be unable to participate”.
Davies has a reputation for making interventions on the issue of equalities. He quit the Welsh assembly’s equal opportunities committee in 2004, describing it as a “total waste of time”. In the same year, he was forced by his own party to apologise after he described the Commission for Racial Equality as a “recruiting sergeant” for the far-right British National party.
Davies has been contacted for comment.
This article was amended on 10 August 2023. An earlier version said that in 1999, David TC Davies was a district councillor in Monmouth and quoted him as telling a meeting that Travellers who had set up camp on football fields near Jersey Marine had made it “absolutely stinking there”. This was a different David Davies and not David TC Davies.
