Hundreds of community members have criticised “discriminatory” government proposals to criminalise trespassing, warning traveller communities would be disproportionately affected.
 
Over 400 people - many of them students - signed a widely circulated open letter criticising the government’s policing bill introduced in Parliament last week. 
 
The open letter has also been backed by faith leaders, lawyers, campaigners, councillors, and doctors, says one of its organisers, Toby Kunin, 19, a second-year PPE student and former president of Warwick’s JSoc.
 
The bill, which has gone to the committee stage, proposes to create a new criminal offence to deal with unauthorised encampments that would be punishable by up to three months behind bars or a £2,500 jail sentence. 
 
Letter signatories described the “deep historical connection" shared by Jewish and Gyspy Traveller communities.
 
“Both of our communities suffered from being restricted to narrow and stigmatising social roles. Both have been vilified as thieves and cheats. Both communities have been suspected to be as rootless cosmopolitans, without connection to our national communities.  
 
“Our communities have continually suffered from racist hostility and persecution, including shared experience during the Shoah and Porajmos [Romani genocide]” they said.

The Board of Deputies also stressed both communities' "shared history" in a statement on Thursday. 

President Marie van der Zyl said any new policy "must be very careful in terms of its potential impact on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, which are already some of the most marginalised in the UK."

She added: "It is the lack of authorised sites that is the root of the problem and we ask that policymakers heed the calls of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, as well as many police, who are cautioning against criminalising unauthorised encampments.”