A Big Fat Victory against Channel 4's "Gypsier" billboards

Above: Members of London Gypsy Traveller movement and supporters demonstrate against the billboards in London earlier this year

By Mike Doherty

The controversy over Channel 4’s ‘Bigger, Fatter, Gypsier’ billboard campaign has come to the boil again after the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain successfully “forced” the Advertising watchdog to investigate Channel 4’s Big Fat Gypsy Weddings advertising campaign.

Reacting to the ITMB appeal, and after a behind closed doors meeting with Sir Hayden Phillips, the ASA Independent Reviewer, the ASA announced that its original decision not to investigate was “flawed”.

The Channel 4 advertising campaign, which was sponsored by Honda UK, splashed pictures of Irish Traveller children across giant billboards with the strapline ‘Bigger, Fatter, Gypsier’. Some of the billboards depicted Traveller children looking menacing and dirty, and others showed young Traveller girls posing in their party clothes.

Travellers' Times has seen the contact strips for the photo-shoot and it is clear that Channel 4 deliberately ignored the shots that showed Traveller children smiling, or being loving with their families.

Many Travellers, Gypsies and settled people were horrified by the billboards – some of which could be seen from school playgrounds –because they were concerned that they depicted Travellers in a bad light and reinforced negative stereotypes.

Travellers' Times has seen hard evidence that one billboard near a school led directly to a young Traveller pupil being bullied by her former class-mates.

Gill Brown, of the London Gypsy and Traveller Unit in Hackney, explains how she first became aware of the billboards: “There was one just down the road from our office and local Travellers alerted it to us. We wanted to do more than just complain on this occasion and organized a demonstration with local Gypsies and Travellers in front of the billboard. The local press covered it, then the national press took it up and our demonstration went viral.”

As word spread, the complaints flooded in to both Channel 4, Traveller NGOs and education services and the Advertising Standards Authority. One of the complainants was the ITMB who later said that its complaint had been “effectively thrown in the bin without consideration.”

Many people were shocked when the ASA decided not to investigate Channel 4 – the first step in getting the billboards taken down, and concerns were raised by Traveller NGO’s that the ASA – which is funded by the advertising industry itself – was “toothless”.

However, solicitor David Enright, from the human rights lawyers; Howe and Co, who is a tireless Traveller rights campaigner for the ITMB, would not let the matter end there. Working in his free time, he found out that the ASA had made mistakes in how they handled the case and complained to the Independent Reviewer.

Further investigation by Travellers' Times has brought to light an ASA document that lays out the criteria that must be met in order for an advert to be banned. The document says that the advert must cause “serious and widespread offense” and suggests that billboards and commercial adverts depicting children are the most likely to do this.

So will the ASA- whose motto is “Legal, Decent, Honest and Truthful”, do the right thing and abide by their own rules and strike the Channel 4 adverts out of bounds? David Enright is clear on this:

“The ITMB took a brave decision not to knuckle under when the ASA first dismissed the hundreds of complaints about Channel 4’s Bigger Fatter Gypsier billboard campaign. Working with Howe & Co solicitors, who worked pro bono on this case, they fought to force the ASA to admit they had got their decision seriously wrong and to agree to open a formal investigation into Channel 4.

“It takes a big person or organisation to admit that have made a big mistake. They did make a big mistake, the Channel 4 advertisements caused untold harm in the community, particularly for Traveller and Gypsy children”, he says.

“The ASA is supposed to work on behalf of all of us. We will be pressing the ASA hard to do their job, and to protect Travellers and Gypsies from racial stereotyping and denigration in the media.

“Dealing with the Channel 4 adverts is just the first step. The ASA must develop research and policy regarding Travellers and Gypsies to protect the community in the future from harm caused by such adverts,” he says.