CHRISTY Moore is at once Ireland’s greatest contemporary balladeer and our conscience.

If Christy writes about an issue we need to wake up, listen and think about what he says to us. Where he pitches his tent is invariably a good place to stand.
When I first heard his song Go, Move, Shift, I sat blushing.

Born in the common by a building site/Where the ground was rutted by the trail of wheels/The local Christian said to me/‘You’ll lower the price of property’/You’d better get born in some place else./So move along, get along, move along, get along/Go, move, shift.’

I recognised the racism towards Travellers immediately. I knew it from my family home where the K word was used in everyday language. Whether it was when referring to Travellers, or referring to a mess, or referring to being unkempt, the K word was used casually and easily. When I moved North I heard G replacing K.

I was very lucky to go to a school where racism was recognised and called out for what it was. Racism against Travellers was seen and progressively explored with our primary school classes. We learned to use the words of choice that our proud mincéir community self-describe. So much so that other words immediately grated.

I was lucky to meet and chat with Nan Joyce in the 1980s when she spoke in community halls and students’ unions and to small groups of women. She explained the conditions in which Travellers live, the everyday discrimination they experience, the systemic barriers which mean education and basic health care become inaccessible. She was the coolest and warmest woman of her time, and ahead of her time.
 
This week the Travelling community lost another vital voice, Ronnie (Veronica) Fay. Acknowledged by President Michael D. Higgins as a “shining light of advocacy” for Travellers, she was as formidable and tenacious a woman as Ireland has ever seen.
 
She instilled in all who would listen the direction we must walk for social justice and equality.
 
It was no small irony that as news of her passing broke the Irish Supreme Court for the first time gave solid and irrefutable judgment in favour of Travellers who are told to Go, Move, Shift by county councils who have to date given little regard for our mincéirí. In delivering the judgment on whether the McDonagh family could be legally evicted from Clare County Council land, Mr Justice Hogan set out in a unanimous statement the context of the reasoning:  “This judgment is being delivered just over 100 years since the first Provisional Government for an independent Irish State was called into being. It is nonetheless salutary to reflect that one hundred years later a distinct group – the Irish Traveller community – still remains a vulnerable minority at the margins of Irish society. The members of that community have struggled for recognition of their own cultural identity and way of life.”
 
This promises a new dawn for Travellers on this island, when protection in law is not only promised and paid lip service to, but is actually seen to be done and experienced by the vulnerable.
 
Nan, Ronnie and so many other leaders from the Irish Traveller community were/are the proudest of Irish citizens despite their experience. We should learn from their example and pledge to fulfil our obligations to them all, for us all.