THE struggle for Roma rights and working-class liberation in Britain aren’t separate fights — they’re different fronts in the same war against a system that thrives on class division and exploitation.

On April 8, as we mark International Romani Day 2025, we must recognise a fundamental truth: when the powerful want to crush collective resistance, they will first teach us to fear each other.
 
However, the Romani struggle in Britain mirrors the struggle of working-class families across Britain. Take for instance the devastating housing crisis that continues to ravage working-class communities and how it parallels the systemic displacement of Romani (and traveller) families throughout the country.

Council estates are demolished for luxury faux-affordable developments while Romani sites increasingly face forced evictions and hostile local opposition — these are two different manifestations of the same profit-driven offensive on our collective right to a safe, stable and dignified home.
 
In education, Romani children face staggeringly disproportionate exclusion rates across all age groups while working-class students navigate chronically underfunded schools and increasingly narrow opportunities for advancement.

Both groups hear the same venomous message repeated through institutional practices: you don’t really belong in these educational institutions; your ambitions must remain modest; your cultural knowledge and heritage have no value here; you must know your place.
 
Britain’s labour market reveals these parallel cruelties perhaps most markedly. Romani workers face workplace discrimination that systematically pushes them toward precarious, informal employment — the same casualised, zero-hour contract existence is increasingly enforced upon the wider working class. When these employers can exploit one vulnerable group with impunity, all workers inevitably become more at risk of similar treatment.
 
Britain’s hostile environment policies target Romani communities with virulence, but this same machinery of state suspicion and bureaucratic violence increasingly touches all working-class lives — from punitive benefits sanctions and devastating service cuts to progressively aggressive policing tactics. Again, we have been shown that the surveillance state first hones its tactics on marginalised groups before deploying them more widely against the general population.
 
Yet throughout our shared history, there are inspirational moments when these artificial divisions have crumbled. During the miners’ strike, Romani and Gypsy families in South Yorkshire were recognised to have supported striking workers with food, resources and an unwavering solidarity.

In the 2017 housing campaigns, working-class and Romani activists stood shoulder to shoulder against evictions in London boroughs. These weren’t simply acts of charity but a profound acknowledgement of a shared struggle and a common cause.
 
The ruling class understand this potential union all too well — perhaps better than we do ourselves. That’s precisely why our mainstream media narratives work overtime to pit “hardworking families” against so-called “problem communities.”

It’s why the politicians who systematically cut essential public services also deliberately stoke fears about “foreign elements” threatening social cohesion. They tremble at the prospect of genuine class solidarity across all marginalised groups joining forces.
 
This International Romani Day we must reject these manufactured divisions with increasing determination and clarity of purpose. To build a powerful united front, we must create movements that honour cultural distinctiveness while recognising our shared cause. It’s essential to open our organising spaces to Romani cultural resistance — which has survived centuries of attempted erasure — and strengthen the broader working-class struggle.
 
The path forward isn’t easy or straightforward. Centuries of deep-rooted prejudice won’t disappear overnight; centuries of discrimination have made some Romani communities reluctant to trust “outsiders” and similarly xenophobia can often be found in our own left-wing circles.

However, when Romani and wider working-class communities recognise their shared interest in dismantling systems of exploitation and oppression, they can become a formidable force for social change. Not through erasing differences, but by weaving them into a stronger, more resilient tapestry of solidarity.
 
Our collective fight for decent housing, dignified work, accessible education, and cultural recognition isn’t a zero-sum game. Victory for Gypsy, Romani and Traveller rights strengthens all working-class people. Advances for working-class power will in turn create space for Romani liberation and cultural success.

On this International Romani Day, we must commit to building meaningful solidarity — not as a haughty ideal, but as practical and necessary resistance against those who continue to profit from our division.