Tsigane voices in the 1960s: The first decade of Romani activism in France (1960–1971)

Introduction

Transnational Romani activism is one of the main forces for change in Europe today. ¹ Its achievements in the recognition of rights for this ethnic minority, the eradication of anti-gypsyism –a specific form of racism directed against Roma population– as well as the debates it has stimulated in recent decades, make its trajectory inseparable from the evolution of democratisation processes in Europe (Beck and Ivasiuc, 2008). Its development has been neither unidirectional nor homogeneous. To illustrate the plurality of sensibilities that have emerged from within the Romani movement since the Second World War, Selling uses the metaphor of a tree:

[Its] roots vary in size and stretch out in different directions, without direct connections to each other. They come together in a single, strong trunk, with different branches and lead up to a crown with an almost incalculable number of offshoots, which again stretch out in different directions […] To continue the analogy, during its growth, the tree has taken nourishment from, but also had to fight against, the surrounding environment and changing climate (2022: 28).

This image of the Romani movement as a tree, which has the added advantage of representing it as a living force, is particularly useful for setting the scene for a historical analysis like the one presented here, whose objective is precisely to examine one of those roots that nourish the “single, strong” trunk. As recent research on Roma activism in Western and Eastern Europe has pointed out, while their status as victims of secular persecution should not be forgotten, academic research on Roma history also ought to engage with a vision of Romani activists “as political subjects rather than objects of humanitarian empathy” (Donert, 2017: 5). This perspective, as demonstrated in Joskowicz’s work (2023) on Roma and Jewish victims of the Holocaust, is intrinsically connected to an approach to documentation that scrutinizes the power dynamics inherent in the sources employed by historians.

Based on these premises, this article focuses on the emergence and development of Romani activism in France during the 1960s. This process is known, above all, through the classic studies of Liégeois (1976) and Acton (1974), who both pointed to the profound transformation that took place at that time with respect to traditional forms of association and representation among Roma, and whose observations, despite being made almost half a century ago, are still a reference for any research on Romani activism. Equally essential are the more recent works by Klímová-Alexander (2004, 2005, 2007, 2010), who provides a thorough overview of the history of Roma activism, focusing on its institutional development in France, and Sierra (2019), who examines the specific demand made by Ionel Rotaru, one of the movement’s most prominent figures, for a state of their own, Romanestan. Expanding the scope beyond France, works like O’Keeffe (2013) on Roma activism and the attitude of official powers towards Roma in the former Soviet Union highlight the significant potential of studies that focus on specific political contexts. Concurrently, O’Keeffe’s research reveals that many of the strategies employed by French Roma in the 1960s bear important parallels to those mobilized by Soviet Roma during the inter-war period, particularly the reappropriation and adaptation of available emancipatory discourses.

Against this background, this article aims to contribute to the history of Romani activism and engage in a dialogue with the social history of France in the 1960s. It explores the Tsiganes‘ ability to unify their voices and establish themselves as legitimate interlocutors of the state. Specifically, it delves into the process of how French Romani organisations set themselves up as representatives of Tsigane interests, mobilising a wide repertoire of references to ethnic identity and establishing a common agenda of social demands. This analysis takes into account that the Romani movement adopted a transnational profile from the outset, appealing not only to French Tsiganes but to all members of the ethnic community. Without losing sight of this transnational dimension, this article focuses on the national context of France, with the intention of exploring a field that has received much less attention in the previous literature: the connections that Tsigane activism established with other intellectual and protest movements in France in the 1960s. As the following pages will show, the history of the Romani movement in France during that decade was closely linked to the changing fortunes of other national phenomena associated with anti-racism and tsiganologie, a form of expert knowledge on the Tsiganes. Within this frame of reference, and despite being united around common objectives, the movement’s leaders displayed different sensibilities and pursued different strategies. They did so both to confront the experts and their paternalistic policies and to seize the opportunities provided by the anti-racist movement. Apart from providing a broader view of their interactions, the relational perspective proposed in this paper strives to help counter the neglect of this form of ethnic activism among the claims and protest movements of the 1960s, and to stress the agency of those Tsiganes who enriched the social struggles of their time by mobilising in pursuit of their aspirations for emancipation. ² Furthermore, the article suggests that, while the balance between Romani organizations on one hand and expert circles or the anti-racist movement on the other was clearly asymmetrical, the emergence and consolidation of the Romani movement throughout the 1960s had a notable impact on the future trajectory of the more powerful actors, namely tsiganologie and the anti-racism cause.

Undoubtedly, the context of Romani mobilisation was a complex one, not only because of the obvious institutional and social discrimination faced by Tsiganes in France, but also because of the ethnicity blindness that characterised the French tradition of republican universalism, which prevented legal discrimination based on race, but also made it difficult to develop policies to protect communities affected by specific racism (Bleich, 2000; Simon, 2008). One of the main obstacles to their recognition as an ethnic minority was the fact that they were subsumed under the broader heading of “nomad” established by the law of 16 July 1912, which also required all individuals classified as such to carry a carnet anthropométrique d’identité (anthropometrical identity booklet) (About, 2012).

The emergence of Romani activism in this context was directly linked to the development of the very ethnic identity that it claimed to represent. If we take the constructivist definition of ethnicity employed in studies such as Surdu’s (2016: 42–58), and accept that ethnicity, in addition to being based on sociocultural factors, is determined by the conscious perceptions of those individuals who identify with it, then it must be allowed, as Mayall (2005: 234) stresses, that the Romani movement was a key element in the construction of this specific ethnic identity. To put it another way, the Romani movement did not simply come along to reactivate a previous identity (although this primordialist interpretation was present in its discourse) but was a determining factor in shaping it. Based on this premise, studies such as the one by Vermeersch (2003), comparing recent Romani activism in the Czechia and Slovakia, have highlighted the importance of activists in shaping the definition of ethnic awareness.

Given these premises, this article focuses specifically on the role of the leaders of the Tsigane organisations in France in order to compare the strategies of representation and the intellectual arguments and approaches of those who were at the forefront of Romani activism during the 1960s. The sources include newspapers and periodicals of various types, ranging from the publications of Romani organisations to those of the anti-racist movement and the tsiganologue experts. Occasional reference is also made to documentation from the Ministère de l’Intérieur (Ministry of the Interior) and the Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population (Ministry of Public Health and Population) held in the National Archives. As the study by Sierra (2019) has shown, intelligence reports on activists provide valuable information about their careers and background, as long as they are correctly interpreted in the context of the hostility that their persecutors bore towards them. ³

Community and fraternity

The origins of the Romani movement after the Second World War can be traced back to the founding of an association registered under the name of the Communauté Mondiale Gitane (World Gypsy Community) in Paris in 1960, and a journal, launched in 1962 with the title La Voix mondiale tzigane [World Gypsy Voice]. The two were linked, not only by the shared history of their leaders, but by their determination to act on behalf of Tsiganes throughout the world. The founder of the Communauté, Ionel Rotaru, was a Romanian-born writer and painter who had arrived in France in 1947. ⁴ After establishing contact with several groups of Ursari and Rudari Tsiganes, Rotaru was crowned the “head-man” in May 1959 under the name of Vaida Voevod III (Liégeois, 1976: 136). While Klímová-Alexander explains that this proclamation was connected to a Romani tradition dating back to the fifteenth century of adopting different titles (Counts, Dukes, Voivodes, Lords and Captains) (Klímová-Alexander, 2004), authors such as Acton et al. (2019) have pointed out that this coronation was essentially the performance of an “artist-provocateur” indulging in irony with the ritual itself. Whatever the reason, this hyperbolic gesture was followed by the founding of several associations, of which only the Rotaru’s Communauté would end up having real functions. Very soon, other hitherto anonymous Tsiganes with no connection whatsoever to activism began to join the Communauté. These included the Frenchman Vanko Rouda (a pseudonym he chose instead of Jacques Dauvergne), who began as the Association’s secretary and then, in 1962, founded the journal, La Voix, which became the mouthpiece of the Romani movement (the Communauté and the organisations that followed it) between 1962 and 1968. Despite their precarious infrastructures, both Rouda’s La Voix and Rotaru’s Communauté managed to cross French borders and raise subscriptions from foreign Roma, to include news relating to other European countries, and even to create a diplomatic network (referred to as “Communauté delegates”) that would reinforce the transnational character that both organisations were pursuing.

The ambitious programme of this early circle of Tsigane leaders included obtaining compensation for the Romani persecution and genocide under Nazism, as well as improving the quality of life of Romani communities in France. The programme took the form of specific demands, including the expansion of public parking areas, the promotion of formal education among the Tsiganes, and the repeal of the 1912 anthropometric booklet. The latter deserves special mention as it served as a key instrument in the persecution of Roma groups since 1912. This persecution’s legal framework was further refined in the subsequent decades, ultimately leading to the adoption of movement restrictions and internment measures during the Second World War. These measures were enforced in both occupied France and under the Vichy regime (About, 2012: 111). ⁵

Nevertheless, the most important challenge that these organisations and their leaders faced –and a necessary prerequisite for the successful realisation of this programme of demands– was to be recognised as legitimate representatives, both by the Tsiganes themselves and by the public authorities. This proved not to be an easy task, since this project soon began to arouse suspicion and mistrust among the learned societies and welfare organisations which, with the support of successive governments, had held a monopoly on the study and provision of social assistance to French Tsiganes in the post-war period. In 1948, the Interministerial Commission for the Study of Questions Concerning Populations of Nomadic Origin was set up for the purpose of reshaping French policy towards Travellers (Order 1st March 1949, Archives Nationales de France - Ministère de la Santé Publique et de la Population [Ministry of Public Health and Population], henceforth ANF-S, 19870256-1). This Commission in turn pushed for the creation of a scientific association that would document the past and present of the Tsigane population and provide members of the Commission with information. The Association des Études Tsiganes (Association for Tsigane Studies) was founded in Paris in 1949 for that very purpose, and indeed went on to play a much more important role than the Commission that had created it. From the 1950s onwards, this circle of academic scholars and amateurs, most of whom were non-Roma, gradually defined a field of expert knowledge, which they called tsiganologie, whose theories they disseminated through their homonymous journal, Études Tsiganes. While the association undeniably contributed to enriching anthropological, linguistic and historical knowledge on the Tsiganes, its outlook owed a good deal to the colonialist view that the best destiny for Tsigane communities was their gradual sedentarisation and assimilation into majority society (Barrera, 2022). ⁶

Once informed about the creation of the Communauté and the early public statements of Rotaru, the Tsiganologues, in particular, Pierre Join-Lambert (Councillor of State, President of the Interministerial Commission, and Vice-President of Études Tsiganes), not only used their contacts with the Ministry of the Interior to get the police to set in motion various investigations into the Communauté, but also launched a public smear campaign against Vaida Voevod III. In their journal, Études Tsiganes, for example, they accused Rotaru of being “just one of the many Tsigane rulers with whom the press of Republican France often entertains its readers” and predicted that his reign would be shortlived (Études Tsiganes [henceforth ÉT], 2, 1960: 18).

In response, La Voix fired back at the Tsiganologues, accusing them of paternalism, defining their communiqués in favour of the Tsigane population as a “war of words” and criticising the inertia of the “various groups or associations that say they are taking care of our progress” (“L’Aurore”, La Voix mondiale tzigane [henceforth La Voix], 20, 1963: 26). The author of the latter quote, the Algerian Anton Santiago, concluded his text by proclaiming that the Romani movement was an anti-racist cause. After achieving the much-desired “union” between Tsiganes, he claimed, “we will more easily understand our duties, our rights, and we will confront injustice through a movement that is against racism, anti-Gypsyism, and in favour of peace, most certainly allied with its big brother the MRAP” (Anton Santiago: “Consideration…”, LVMT, 20, 1965: 3). The reference to the fraternal partnership with the MRAP, the Mouvement contre le racisme et pour l’amitié entre les peuples (Movement against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples) was highly significant and illustrated the bond that Romani activism had been forging with the French anti-racist movement since the early 1960s.

Together with the Ligue internationale contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme (LICA) (International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism), the MRAP was one of the most important anti-racism institutions in France. The LICA was founded before the Second World War (in 1928), and the MRAP after the war (in 1949). Both organisations had a long history of fighting anti-Semitism, and the MRAP had also been involved in the Jewish Resistance. As Heuman (2018) has pointed out, the memory of the Holocaust was central to the discourse of French anti-racism from the years of the Occupation. While their main support in the post-war period came from Jewish circles, both the LICA and MRAP aspired to reach out to new collectives in order to include other communities of memory. To this end, they developed an interpretation of the Holocaust as a universal event, a human tragedy that transcended the specific suffering of Jews and linked the condemnation of this to a general aspiration for democracy and tolerance.

In the early 1960s, the two anti-racist organisations intensified their calls for mobilisation in remembrance of the Holocaust. At the trial of Adolf Eichmann in May 1961, the MRAP organised a large-scale protest against anti-Semitism at the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr, which, according to the press, was massively attended. Droit et Liberté (Rights and Freedom), the official journal of the MRAP, listed “His Highness Vaïda Voevod” “roi des gitans” among those present (“10.000 parisiens au Mémorial du Martyr Juif”, Droit et Liberté, 200, 1961: 6). Although Droit et Liberté had already reported on Rotaru’s coronation and, according to intelligence held by the police services –ever suspicious of any indication that Rotaru was a communist spy– he had long been in contact with Bernard Lecache, founder of the LICA, this commemoration was the first time Rotaru, by his presence, had gone on record in France as publicly endorsing a shared remembrance of the Holocaust (Report 12th January 1962. ANF-I, 19970156-3).

From 1961 onwards, Rotaru and Vanko Rouda increased their collaboration with the MRAP and LICA. The two Tsigane leaders quickly and skilfully learned how to organise their efforts within the framework of anti-racism, conscious not only that it represented an opportunity to broaden the reach of their messages through the impact of the events and the popularity of the publications of these organisations, but also that having the support of anti-racism would be a crucial factor in achieving public recognition as representatives of the Romani movement. Nevertheless, they would each find their own place. At the beginning of the decade, Rotaru preferred to highlight the link between Tsiganes and Jews in being subjected to the crimes of the Holocaust, whereas Vanko Rouda connected more with the anti-colonialist current that existed in the MRAP from the middle of the 1960s.

In Le droit de vivre (The Right to Live), the journal of the LICA, Rotaru stated that “Nazism sadistically massacred more than three million Gitans along with millions of Jews”, highlighting the unequal recognition of the suffering of Jews and Gitans after the end of the war: “The deaths of the Gitans have been forgotten”, he said (“L’homme naît libre et doit le rester”, Le droit de vivre, 298, 1961: 1–3). The reason for this, as Sierra (2023) points out, was that the latter were not recognised as the victims of racial crimes, but as targets of a policy designed to prevent crime. This consideration, which was a mere continuation of criminalising stereotypes that can be traced back to the Early Modern Era in Western Europe, prevented the German government from granting the compensation claims of the Romani victims and, above all, condemned the Romani holocaust to oblivion. ⁷

Indeed, before Rotaru, other Tsiganes had spoken out against this injustice. In 1946, the French writer, Matéo Maximoff, had written a letter to the British savants of the Gypsy Lore Society, highlighting the discriminatory treatment of the memory of the Romani genocide (“Germany and the Gypsies: From the Gyspy’s Point of View”, Journal of the Gyspy Lore Society 25, 1946). However, Maximoff’s rebuke had hardly any effect, not even on the Association des Études Tsiganes, which he joined in 1955, shortly after its founding, as the only Tsigane member. Rotaru’s complaint, a decade and a half later, gained momentum, propelled by the popularity he had attained through his coronation and amplified by the impact of the Eichmann trial. As explained by Joskowicz (2023) in his study on Roma and Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the Eichmann trial, an event Rotaru expressed his intention to attend, established the paradigm for victim-centred Holocaust and genocide trials. Romani activists were particularly interested in the Eichmann trial –Joskowicz states– “because they embraced it as a model for a genocide trial dominated by narratives of victims, not because of anything individuals said in the courtroom” (2023: 132–133).

In this undertaking of giving voice to the forgotten victims of the Holocaust, Rotaru was undoubtedly helped by the support that the LICA and MRAP gave to his pleas for recognition of the Nazi persecution of Roma. Fraternal solidarity between the Romani leaders and the leaders of the anti-racist organisations was at the heart of his speeches and statements at LICA and MRAP events and in publications, helping to bring the two movements closer together. In a speech at the Journée Nationale contre le racisme, l’antisémitisme et pour la paix (National Day of Action against racism, anti-Semitism and for peace) in May 1963, Rotaru had called for a joint effort: “Let us form a strong front before it is too late, a united front between brothers against racism, against anti-Semitism and for peace”, and extended his thanks to the organisers: “I would like to thank the MRAP and its members for the support they have given us each time we have knocked on their door” (“Formons un front solide et fraternel”, Droit et Liberté, 222, 1963: 8). Barely 2 weeks before that, he had made a similar speech at the 24^th National Congress of the LICA, where he pointed to the common enemy against which the anti-racist fraternity positioned itself: “I say to the Nazi International that this time they won’t find us just sitting there doing nothing, as they did in 1938 (applause). We have woken up”. The awakening, as he went on to suggest, was not only the awareness of their common suffering, but also of their joint role in the anti-racist movement: “The 12 million Gitans extend the hand of friendship to our brothers in the LICA and all organisations against racism and anti-Semitism” (Le droit de vivre, 311, 1963: 4).

The struggle against the “Nazi International” or “neo-Nazi International” was, as Lloyd (1998) has pointed out, one of the main lines of action of the LICA and the MRAP. After the war, they remained vigilant against the emergence of new right-wing extremist groups and launched several campaigns against public demonstrations of anti-Semitism. The situation of immigrant workers and the outbreak of the war in Algeria forced them to expand their concept of racism and fascism in order to deal also with “authoritarian French neo-fascism”, which they attributed to the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) (Secret Army Organisation). It was this openness, coupled with the search for a universal significance of the Shoah, that made it possible for Romani activism to find its place within the anti-racist movement. Thus, in 1965, linked to the debate on the statute of limitations for war crimes in the German upper house, the LICA launched a manifesto of opposition, among whose signatories Droit de vivre singled out Rotaru’s name, since it was impossible to mention them all. Moreover, in the hard-hitting article that the journal devoted to the debate, it included a “manifesto” of the Communauté, in which its leader once again recalled that:

In 1933 (the birth of the Nazi era), the inhuman suffering of the Gitan people living on German territory began. They were used as guinea pigs for laboratory experiments, and then started to be crammed into concentration camps to try out methods of radically eliminating the Gitane race through sterilisation and gas chambers.

The words bear witness to the role of the anti-racist movement as a platform from which the Communauté could publicly acknowledge failures and point directly at the culprits. In one of his first interviews for Droit et Liberté, Rotaru had criticised the French authorities for the ineffectiveness of their actions towards the Tsiganes and would do so again in a letter that he sent to the French Assembly in 1964, in which he explicitly referred to that Interministerial Commission of experts set up in 1948, which Le droit de vivre reproduced in its entirety (“Avec le soutien des parlementaires, les justes revendications de la Communauté Mondiale Gitane doivent être retenues par les pouvoir publics”, Le droit de vivre, 317, 1964: 5).

In February 1965, the Communauté was banned on the pretext of failing to comply with the law on associations (Order 26 February 1965, Journal Officiel de la République Française, 13-3-1965: 11). Rotaru was outraged and took the stand at LICA’s National Congress in order to portray the outlawing as an act directed not only against himself and other members of the organisation (which, according to the police file it was), but against the Tsigane people in its entirety. In a skilful manoeuvre to identify the interests of the representatives with those of the represented, Rotaru interpreted the banning of the Communauté as one more example of the age-old hatred and abuse that the Tsiganes had suffered, comparable to persecution by the Nazis:

Our oppressors may have changed their tactics, but not their methods. The coup de grâce was delivered to us by Hitler and his clique. Another coup de grâce is coming, which you are possibly not aware of. We know what we are talking about [...] For our suffering brothers, the Jews, there has been a truce from 1945 until today. For the Gitan people, there is no truce. We continue to be rejected everywhere. [...]

The speech concluded, once again, by appealing for support from the anti-racism movement: “Since I am at the LICA where we are at home, the only place where it is possible to speak freely, I call on those present, help us!” (“XXV^e Congrès national de la LICA”, Le droit de vivre, 324, 1965: 5).

There was nothing unusual about this appeal for help to the LICA if we consider that, far from ridiculing or belittling the Romani movement, as the tsiganologues had done, the anti-racist organisations had shown their support for and recognition of the authority of its leaders from the very beginning. This did not mean, however, that all the demands of the Communauté were taken up by anti-racism. Any reference to Rotaru’s other major aspiration apart from reparations for Nazi crimes –the creation of a Gitan State, Romanestan– were conspicuous by their absence. The obvious connection with contemporary Zionism (Klímová-Alexander, 2007), plus the fact that this was a source of tension between the LICA, which maintained an unwavering defence of the Israeli State, and the MRAP, which was linked to the French Communist Party and more sensitive to growing pro-Arab and anti-Zionist political activism in France in the 1960s, may have made it difficult for French anti-racism to recognise the right of Tsiganes to a state of their own (Heuman, 2018).

As Klímová-Alexander (2005) has noted, the first attempts to create a Gitan state had been articulated by the Soviet Romani associative movement in the inter-war period, when some Roma advocated for a central Roma national territory as a federate state within the Soviet Union. However, its momentum had been checked by the war until it reappeared again with the birth of the Communauté. In addition to announcing to all and sundry that his association was in the process of applying for official recognition by the United Nations, Rotaru also contemplated several possible sites for Romanestan, from Somalia to Lyon (Liégeois, 1976: 137–138). As Sierra (2019) explained, the significance of the proposal –beyond the possibility that the Gitan state could actually come to existence in a particular place– lay in its symbolic potential, a means of raising ethnic awareness among the Tsiganes in the Cold War scenario. Its location was less important in this respect than the transgressive –and therefore mobilising– nature of a state that could be imagined without necessarily being tied to a specific location.

Not everyone grasped this subtle symbolism, though. The tsiganologues understood the proposal in literal terms and were shocked and, at the same time, worried by the “considerable disquiet among many Tsiganes” that the news had, according to them, generated (“Nouvelles diverses”, ÉT, 3–4, 1961: 32). Some Tsiganes, excited at the prospect of Romanestan one day becoming a reality, were quick to guarantee that, far from leading to instability or international conflict, the Gitan state would be an example to the rest of the world. So stated Hervé Watine, a Tsigane musician from Lille, in his letter to La Voix:

One thing I am convinced of is that the existence of Romanestan will not in any way disturb the global balance, which is so precarious at the present time. What I wish for this future country is that it be a free, peaceful country where interests will not cut away the sincerity and truth that are characteristic of this people. What I wish for is for Romanestan to become an example for the world, and that these savages [sic], these Romanichels, will finally be considered as men (“Quelques Témoignages glanés dans notre correspondance”, LVMT, 4, 1962: 12).

The demand for compensation as victims of Nazism and the aspiration to a State of their own coexisted in the Communauté’s discourse with the demand for rights for the Tsiganes: “We believe that man is born free and must remain so”, declared Rotaru, paraphrasing the famous opening of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, in one of the first interviews he gave to Le droit de vivre (“L’homme naît libre et doit le rester”, Le droit de vivre, 298, 1961: 1–3). Shortly afterwards, in another interview for Paris-Presse, the reporter noted that the “prince without a crown” had placed an edition of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen at his right hand (“Paris-Presse l’intransigeant”, La Voix, 7, 1962: 14). This kind of staging –typical of the artiste-provocateur according to Acton et al. (2019)– was a technique habitually employed by Rotaru to denounce the situation of legal exception to which the Tsiganes were subjected in France, deriving particularly, though not exclusively, from the control of nomadism imposed by the 1912 law through the disgraceful anthropometric card.

Apart from this deliberate eccentricity, the decision to appeal to the universalism of the French republican tradition brought him back into line with the strategies of the anti-racist movement. The constant evocation by anti-racist organisations of the idea of universal citizenship and, as Lentin (2004: 115) points out, the central position of anti-racism as an essential component of the political culture of post-war France, invite us to consider these statements by Rotaru as an ambitious intellectual and political operation that involved formulating a personal interpretation of the set of arguments that anti-racism (“our home”) offered him.

Indeed, as Lentin (2004: 116–117) goes on to explain, French anti-racist universalism was subject to tensions between those who fully subscribed to it and those who saw it as an impediment to diagnosing the specific forms of racism perpetrated against certain racialised communities. From this position, part of the anti-racism movement started to look for possible combinations between universalism and defence of the particularism of ethnic “minorities”. This was the course that Rotaru followed. His particularist views were expressed, for example, in the statement that freedom was not only a universal right, but also an innate characteristic of Tsiganes, manifested in a “vital need to travel from one place to another” because the “love of freedom is a religion among us. You, you have your patrie. Our frontier is the universe!” (“L’homme naît libre et doit le rester”, Le droit de vivre, 298, 1961: 1–3). Thus, Rotaru gradually shifted towards the idea of a “particular French universalism”, the term used by Lamont et al. (2002: 390–414) to define one of the responses of the North African immigrant group to their experience of racism in France. In the case of Rotaru, it was a particularist view of French universalism that served to defend liberty and equality, not only as individual prerogatives but as the rights of a group, the Tsigane people, who would have to endow those rights with a specific content based on their uniqueness.

“Audi alteram partem” [Listen to the other side]

The particularist approach was further developed by Vanko Rouda and his brother, Leuléa Rouda (pseudonym of Jean Dauvergne), who was part of the Communauté’s diplomatic network as a delegate in Frankfurt. Although they both supported Rotaru’s project, neither of them gave up their own position within it, as would be apparent from 1963 onwards, when La Voix declared that it was “autonomous with respect to the Communauté Mondiale Gitan” (Vanko Rouda: “En guise d’éditorial…”, La Voix, 10, 1963: 1–2). Indeed, the differences of opinion between Vanko Rouda and Rotaru, together with the dissolution of the Communauté in 1965, led to the creation, in the mid-1960s, of a new organisation, the Comité International Tzigane (International Gypsy Committee), led by Vanko Rouda, in which Rotaru played no part (Liégeois, 1976: 153–159).

As with Rotaru, the police reports produced during the ongoing investigations into La Voix and the Comité shed some light on the background of Vanko and Leuléa Rouda, neither of whom had been in the public eye before engaging in Romani activism. From these reports, we know that both had studied law and had some military experience, in Leuléa’s case in Algeria in 1961. After working for some years in publishing companies, Vanko had left his career to devote himself to La Voix. Leuléa, on the other hand, was still working for an insurance company in 1970, where he was considered “reliable and hard-working”, a judgement to which the informant himself added that Leuléa was someone who, despite being involved in the wrong cause, seemed “very reliable and efficient” (Nota “Le Comité international Tzigane de M. Jacques Dauvergne, dit Vanko Rouda”, 12-1970, ANF-I, 19970156-3).

At the same time, the tsiganologue Join-Lambert, one of the most prominent figures in Études Tsiganes, described Vanko Rouda as “intelligent, attractive, certainly ambitious, probably generous” (Letter from Join-Lambert to Raymond Marcellin, 28-8-1970, ANF-I, 19970156-3). These admissions were quite exceptional considering the disdain and even contempt with which both the experts and the police privately addressed any matter concerning Romani activism. Furthermore, Join-Lambert’s impressions of Vanko coincided with those of the Paris-Presse reporter to whom Rotaru had shown an edition of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Next to the “prince without a crown’, she reported, was “a strict and serious young man with the look of a lawyer, Vanko Rouda”. Although grateful for the article, Vanko Rouda was forced to rectify some of the reporter’s comments, stressing that “he [did] not consider himself a ‘new-wave Gitan’ and that he [had] the greatest respect for all the traditions of his people” (“Paris-Presse l’intransigeant”, La Voix, 7, 1962: 14).

These and other sources reveal that the profile that experts, police, and journalists had created of the Rouda brothers was a far cry from the image they had of their predecessor Rotaru, whom the press had portrayed as a flamboyant and exotic individual and whom the experts and police called a dangerous fantasiser. The police, in particular, feared Vanko and Leuléa more than Rotaru, precisely because they had been profiled as shrewd, thoughtful men, but fundamentally because of the way that the Comité was spreading in France and other countries. These perceptions are important because, apart from the fact that the experts and police saw the Rouda brothers as a potential threat, they also reveal another aspect of the situation that was no less accurate; without them ever questioning (at least in public) the authority of Vaida Voevod III whose organisation, the Communauté, they had joined in the early 1960s sharing the main aims of his project, from 1962, Vanko and Leuléa had been developing their own personal style within the Romani movement. It had two distinguishing features. Vanko Rouda pushed for a rapprochement between the Tsigane leaders and the aid agencies monopolised by the Tsiganologues. Furthermore, both Vanko and Leuléa explored further the idea of ethnic particularism in their vision of the Tsigane people or nation.

Regarding Vanko, the rapprochement with whom he called “gadjos of goodwill” coincided precisely with his distancing from the Rotaru’s Communauté. This rapprochement might have occurred because both sides –Tsigane leaders and Tsiganologue experts– had been socialising for several years at MRAP and LICA conferences and events, to which the anti-racist organisations invited representatives of the Communauté (usually Rotaru, accompanied by Vanko Rouda) and experts from Études Tsiganologues. Both presented their formulas for solving the problems of the Tsiganes, an exercise that may have contributed to create a current of understanding. ⁸ Indeed, in 1963, in the same issue of La Voix in which Vanko Rouda declared that his journal was independent of the Communauté, he also announced “the time is ripe for union” and welcomed “all those who have understood the need for this union”, which included entities as disparate as the Interministerial Commission, Études Tsiganes and the French Evangelical Tzigane Mission (“En guise d’éditorial…”, La Voix, 10, 1963: 1–2).

La Voix was the space in which this fleeting alliance was staged. In the following issue, its editorial board announced that it would allow the collaboration of non-Romani authors in certain sections, because, once the “internal unity” of the Gitan people has been achieved, “these Associations will also unite …. Let them unite before reaching out to us and stop the fruitless arguing over vocabulary”. He also said: “Paris currently seems to be the place where this rapprochement can take place” (Le Comité de Rédaction de la VMT, “Le moment est à l’union”, La Voix, 11, 1963: 1–2).

The results of this “Gypsy diplomacy” –as Grattan Puxon, the leader of the travellers in the United Kingdom, defined Vanko Rouda’s strategy in France– (Acton, 1974: 158–160) took the form of cross-references in the La Voix and Études Tsiganes bulletins that praised their respective actions, and even the “first Tzigane Social Round Table” in 1964, which brought together specialists “from the gadjé side” and “the Tzigane side” (“À la suite de la première table ronde sociale tzigane”, La Voix, 15, 1964: 26–27). The agreements reached there were in no way different from the objectives (such as parking sites) that the Tsiganologues as well as La Voix and the Communauté had been pursuing since 1960 in terms of improving the social situation of the Tziganes. The novelty, as they acknowledged, lay in the involvement of actors, the Tziganes themselves, who not long before had been little more than passive agents in the decision-making that affected them.

This did not mean, however, that the Tsiganologues were comfortable with Vanko Rouda, nor that they had stopped being suspicious of the intentions underlying his approach. Precisely because of the impression the Tsigane leader had made on the Tsiganologues, they commented in private communication that Vanko Rouda was “at least as disturbing [as Rotaru]; he is more precise, more intelligent, and totally lacking in candour. His refusal to tell Miss Lafay whether he was Catholic or Pentecostal illustrates Vanko Rouda’s constant double dealing” (Questions traitées avec M. Peyssard, 28-10-1964. ANF-S). Indeed, the alliance between the French Romani movement and the Tsiganologue experts had feet of clay, as it became clear during the debate on the 1969 legislative change. On January 3 of that year, a new law was passed that abolished the anthropometric card and replaced the old category of “nomad” with that of “Gens du voyage”, or Travellers, which included itinerant Tsiganes. While the Tsiganologues were quick to celebrate the legislative change since they saw themselves as the driving force behind it, Leuléa Rouda protested in the pages of Droit et Liberté, pointing out the many shortcomings of the new law and its implementation (“Les Gitans, ces parias”, Droit et Liberté, 290, 1970: 9). Join-Lambert, in turn, accused Leuléa Rouda of manipulating the facts and the latter criticised him for the uselessness of government reforms supposedly undertaken for the benefit of Travellers (“Les Gitans sont-ils des parias?”, Droit et Liberté, 294, 1970: 12; “M. Leuléa Rouda: La responsabilité du gouvernement est entière”, Droit et Liberté, 294, 1970: 13). This exchange of accusations and recriminations over the 1969 law showed the limitations of “Gypsy diplomacy”.

Meanwhile, both Vanko and Leuléa further explored the particularist approach to try and establish the common denominator of the Tsigane nation and nationality. A question echoes similar endeavours by Roma activism, exemplified by the inter-war Soviet experience explored by O’Keeffe (2013: 27–65). In the Soviet context, the research had already shown the advantages of adopting the official language of the state, then “assistance to the proletarian Gypsy masses” and leveraging Soviet nationality policies to navigate the state apparatus and gain recognition (although Romani activists in Soviet Union were not advocating for the creation of an independent Romani nation-state, but for an ethnically-defined territory within the Soviet Union and within the specific context of Soviet ethnic politics). In the context of Vanko and Leuléa’s French project, the idea of “nation” was a symbol used to reinforce the sense of ethnic community and confer an awareness of rights – and not so much an argument a to demand their own Tsigane state as it had been for Rotatu. In the 1960s context, the anti-imperialist currents and the experience of Algerian nationalism both left their mark on the perception that the Tsigane people were victims of racism and colonial exploitation. The fact that La Voix mondiale tzigane appeared in 1962, the same year that La Voix du Peuple, the journal of the Mouvement national algérien (Algerian National Movement), ceased publication, is probably a coincidence, but nevertheless serves to illustrate the connection between the two discourses (Algerian nationalist and Tsigane nationalist) that did exist. Writing in La voix, Leuléa Rouda reflected on the situation:

Faced with such a situation, in view of a racism that is latent, constant and unconscious, how can we not invite the world to a little reflection and understanding. Learn how to listen to us ... do not refuse to get acquainted with ways of thinking that are very different from yours. Heed the invitation of the judges of ancient Rome: ‘Audi alteram partem’ (“Réflexion…”, LVMT, 4, 1962: 5–6).

The function of La Voix was precisely to make the voice of the Tsigane people –described as silenced and oppressed– audible and intelligible. Far from taking a complacent or moralising view, Vanko Rouda criticised not only the “parochial tribalism” of the Tsiganes, subject to an “artificial peculiarity shaped by language, region and family, so that we are unable to think about our problems in terms of the People as a whole”, but also the “complete lack of interest in the problems that afflict humanity in general, our people in particular”. Both these attitudes had only served to feed “the myth of the Gitan unable to break away from an exclusively itinerant way of life” (“En guise d’éditorial…”, La Voix, 7, 1962: 5–8). For the Romani movement to prosper, it was necessary to overcome “the religious fatalism that says: This is God’s will; and the economic fatalism that says: there’s nothing we can do about it” (“La ‘mission’ de la VMT”, La Voix, 4: 16).

But Vanko Rouda also identified those who benefited from this submission: “the forces of exploitation”, those adversaries “entrenched behind principles that they will claim are absolute provided that they serve their purposes” and who “[would] like to destroy us” (“En guise d’éditorial…”, La Voix, 7, 1962: 5–8). Leuléa Rouda observed that the progressive destruction of the Tsigane people was simply a consequence of the imposition of “the criteria, together with the ideas and values of the sedentarised West”. In view of this, “we must ensure that our people do not suffer the hard and tragic experience of the peoples of Asia and Africa. We must not allow them to be ‘awakened’ and ‘developed’, and at the same time, to be impoverished and bruised, to be ‘educated’ and simultaneously “treated like vagrants” (“Valeur et défense d’une civilisation”, La Voix, 5–6, 1962: 4–5).

To avoid that fate, to stop being, in the words of Vanko Rouda, the “accomplices of any imperialist or neo-imperialist power”, we must “find our own way, take up a defensive position, to prevent, if necessary, an attack. In a word, fight”. “This is a real revolution”, he concluded (“En guise d’éditorial…”, La Voix, 7, 1962: 5–8). But for such a revolution to take place, it was essential to create a nation. This was where the challenge facing the Romani movement became apparent. For, while Vanko Rouda claimed, on the one hand, that “in spite of all the upheavals”, his people remained “a nation, and therefore a distinct human community which has the right as such to administer itself” (“En guise d’éditorial…”, La Voix, 7, 1962: 7–8), elsewhere he acknowledged that it was a nation under construction, because “although forming a nationality, the Gitan People is not yet a nation”, adding that “at present, attempts at regrouping seem to have the greatest chance of success. ... We have had to wait until the 20^th century to see the idea of a Gitan nation, both one and universal, take shape” (“Aperçu sur le peuple gitan”, La Voix, 9, 1963: 19).

The Tsigane people was not yet a nation because the aspects peculiar to their ethnicity that the Roudas took as objective facts were not seen by the majority of Tsiganes as evidence of a common identity, nor were they associated with the idea of sovereignty, in other words, the right to decide their own destiny. Circumstances in the 1960s were propitious for this national “awakening”, but the leaders of the Romani movement had to be skilful when it came to specifying the precise elements that defined the Tsigane ethnic community. At the same 24^th LICA National Congress in 1963 where Rotaru referred to the Nazi International, Vanko Rouda also stepped up to the rostrum to explain that

We form an immense universal fraternal community. Let us stop taking the Gitan only for a flamenco dancer, or the Tzigane, his blood brother, for a Hungarian musician… We have been a people since the dawn of mankind, a people split into principalities, tribes, traditional trades, but a people united by its common origins, its traditions, its language, its history, a people that brings together members of all colours, of all religions, over and above the nationalities and borders established by the stupidity of men (“Les Gitans, ces parias”, LVMT, 10, 1963: 24).

In an attempt to clarify these origins, traditions, language and history, Vanko and Leuléa published a series of pen portraits of the Tsiganes in La Voix that sought to dignify those characteristics that had been particularly vilified, such as their nomadism, which they defended against the French government’s attempts at sedentarisation (Vanko Rouda: “Aperçu sur le peuple gitan”, La Voix, 9, 1963: 19–21). The religious question, however, proved to be trickier. According to Acton (1974: 173), in a letter to Grattan Puxon in 1966, Vanko Rouda acknowledged the difficulties of “treading a middle path between Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical and Muslim Gypsies”, which forced him to abandon the idea of trying to make a specific religion one of the pillars of Tsigane nationalism, as Algerian nationalism had done. It is important to note that this balancing act between the various religious beliefs practised by the Tsiganes did not prevent Vanko Rouda from turning to certain religious organisations in search of support for the Comité. To this end, Rouda approached Evangelicalism, which already had a strong following among the French Tsiganes and whose leaders, including Maximoff himself, were Tsiganes. Working with the popular Evangelical pastor, Clément Le Cossec, proved to be very fruitful; through Le Cossec, the Comité gained a stronger foothold in Tsigane evangelical circles, and the Mission Evangélique des Tziganes de France (Evangelical Mission of the Tziganes of France) began to endorse the political demands of the Comité. ⁹

In essence, Vanko and Leuléa Rouda’s revolution started with the Tsiganes becoming aware that they belonged to a larger ethnic community than their fragmentation into different families and affiliations might otherwise lead them to suppose. To create this awareness, they dispensed with the image of Romanestan, which had inescapable Zionist connotations and had been one of the main reasons for the dispute with the Tsiganologues. Instead, they opted for the image of the nation, inspired no doubt by the decolonisation of Algeria and aided by the discursive framework provided by anti-imperialist thought. But this nation was no more than an instrument of mobilisation, a means of uniting all Tsiganes around common objectives, with legal reforms (and especially of the 1912 law) as a priority. Vanko and Leuléa did not demand a specific statute or legal recognition as a minority for the French Tsiganes, as they did for the Algerian Tsiganes, thus demonstrating their awareness of the limits and possibilities of the Republic’s legal tradition (Leuléa Rouda: “Les gitans d’Algérie à l’heure de la paix”, La Voix, 4, 1962: 22–23).

As the prospect of a future Gitan state fell into oblivion, so did the idiosyncratic transgressive style of its former promoter, Rotaru. Vanko Rouda adopted a more pragmatic approach. For Liégeois (1976: 175), this shift in approach was due to the “lesson” that the failure of Rotaru’s “utopias” had taught Vanko Rouda. Without ruling out this explanation, it is also possible that Rouda was inspired by the fact that public awareness of Travellers’ associations was growing in the United Kingdom. Grattan Puxon had written to Rotaru in 1965 explaining that the then leader of the movement, Lawrence Ward, “prefers to be known as President of the Travellers’ Community, as ‘King’ is considered old-fashioned and even laughable. It is important that our movement be modern and demand respect” (cit. in Acton, 1974: 157). Seeking to be taken seriously, not only by the rest of the Tsiganes but also by the authorities, Puxon and Rouda adopted similar versions of “Gypsy diplomacy” on both sides of the Channel. Only in the British case, however, was the strategy reasonably successful.

For the French activists, the failure of attempts to form an alliance with the Tsiganologues had several effects. On the one hand, it spurred the Comité, together with the British Gypsy Council, into appealing to European bodies for support. This creative strategy bore fruit. The Council of Europe not only accepted the Comité as a legitimate interlocutor in dealing with the issue of Tsiganes and Travellers in Europe, but also issued Recommendation 563 on the situation of Gypsies and other travellers in Europe, on 30^th September 1969, in which it confirmed much of the information that the Comité had provided about the flagrant violation of the rights of Roma and related groups, such as Travellers, in member countries of the Council of Europe (García-Sanz, 2022).

With attempts to collaborate with the Tsiganologues having been thwarted, and in view of the fact that Vanko Rouda had stated in 1962 that the Romani movement was apolitical –“We are outside all politics, whether right-wing or left-wing” (“La ‘mission’ de la VMT”, La Voix, 4, 1962: 16)– the support of French anti-racist organisations became vital for the Comité. Indeed, the relationship between the Tsigane leaders and the MRAP intensified with the founding of the Comité in the mid-1960s. As Lloyd (1998) has pointed out, the Algerian war and “anti-Arab racism”, as it came to be known, were transformative experiences for French anti-racism, particularly the MRAP, which became more receptive to anti-colonialist positions and debates on the right to national self-determination. Always attentive to the fate of Algerian immigrants, they began to read the situation of these workers not only in terms of economic exploitation, but also from other standpoints related to segregation and ethnic discrimination. Meanwhile, the concept of French universalism, which had been integral to the anti-racist struggle, also began to give way to other ideas, such as “difference” and “community”.

In this scenario, the fraternal bond between the Romani and anti-racist movements that Rotaru had called for was strengthened, and became a key element for the Comité, which the MRAP helped by spreading its message through Droit et Liberté and also by interceding on behalf of the Tsigane leaders so that they could gain access to other broadcasting channels. In 1966, an excited Vanko Rouda told his friend Puxon that “tomorrow, we start a series of Gitan broadcasts on Radio-Sorbonne and perhaps on RTF. The president of the MRAP, Mr Pierre Paraf, is helping us with this” (Letter of 4th November 1966, Bishopsgate Institute (London), Puxon/86). Roger Maria, one of the founding activists of the MRAP, was one of those who best exemplified the fraternal link between the anti-racist movement and the Comité, for it was he who insisted in 1965 that the grievances of the Tsiganes should be on the MRAP’s agenda (“La XVI^e journée nationale…”, Droit et Liberté, 244, 1965: 4). Far from setting himself up as a representative of their interests –as the Tsiganologues had done– and acting as the Comité’s guardian, in 1969 Maria described the position that the MRAP had decided to adopt:

We believe, to paraphrase a well-known liberation slogan, that the emancipation of the Gitans and Tziganes is, and should be, the work of those concerned, and that the useful role of their true friends could only be to help them discreetly, notably, by encouraging the beginnings of an organisation among them. Now, this internal effort has existed, and been developed with some effectiveness, despite many difficulties, for more than ten years; it is essentially a question of the organisations and associations whose leaders are our friends, Vanko Rouda, Leuléa Rouda, Stevo Déméter, Hernandez and others, to whom we have opened the columns of Droit & Liberté, and our public and internal meetings. For us, it is a matter of principle; even limited action on the part of the victims of racism is better than the best external aid, however well-intentioned (Roger Maria: “Cinq siècles de persécutions”, DL, 283, 1969: 29).

In the second half of the 1960s, the expressions of sympathy between the leaders of the MRAP and the Comité multiplied: the Commission sur les formes et manifestations actuelles du racisme (Committee on Contemporary Forms and Manifestations of Racism), chaired by Maria, undertook to pay special attention to the situation of the Tsiganes (“Notre printemps”, Droit et Liberté, 242, 1965: 5), while Droit et Liberté frequently published texts by Vanko and Leuléa Rouda, who were always introduced as the director and secretaries of the Comité, which was, in turn, regarded as the reference organisation for all things Tsigane-related. Furthermore, with the closure of La Voix in 1968, the journal of the MRAP became the Comité’s main window to the French public, which indirectly helped to situate its struggle in the context of the wider anti-racist scene, opening up the horizons of the latter to the activity of other Romani organisations outside France, such as the Gypsy Council. As early as the beginning of 1973, as a demonstration of the fraternal links between the two movements and the respect that the MRAP had for Vanko Rouda, the latter became a member of its National Council (“Le Conseil National”, Droit et Liberté, 318, 1973: 31).

The early 1970s ushered in an exciting period for the Romani movement. Beyond France, the Comité’s desire to become a rallying point for all Tsiganes in order to launch the revolution announced by Rouda led to its transformation into an umbrella organisation, under which other European Romani associations were federated. The plan to hold a world gathering came to fruition in the form of the First World Romani Congress, organised by the Gypsy Council, and held near London in 1971. At that meeting, the symbols of the Romani movement were established (their own day, April 8; a flag and an anthem), and the term Roma was chosen as the endonym that would unify the variety of affiliations represented there. The post-1971 history, marked by congresses that returned to the commitments made at that first meeting, was partially overshadowed by disagreements between the movement’s leaders, particularly the faction led by Vanko Rouda and a new body, the International Romani Union created in the 1970s. Nevertheless, the momentum of 1971 proved strong enough for the blossoming of associations in France, which Liégeois summed up at the time in the observation that “the Tsigane [had] discovered the power of associations” (1976: 179).

Conclusions

By situating Romani activism within the framework of events in 1960s France, it is possible to move beyond the cumulative view, in which actors such as anti-racism activism or tsiganologie are reduced to static pieces in the background, which, although they are there, seem to have nothing to do with the activity of the Tsigane movement. To counter this impression, this article has opted for a more relational understanding of the aspirations, obstacles, challenges, and strategies of the Tsigane organisations and their protagonists. To this end, it has probed the network of institutional and personal connections that the Communauté Mondiale Gitan and the Comité International Tzigane established and reviewed the imaginative adoption by their leaders of the frames of reference available in those years, showing how they took advantage of them to build a project bearing its own personality.

As the classic studies on this matter have already pointed out, the Romani organisations that operated in France during this decade all had their sight set on the same horizon of political and social change. The programme that Vanko Rouda’s Comité inherited and developed in the 1960s was largely the same as the one that the Communauté had launched in 1960. Nevertheless, each organisation created its own strategy, influenced by the disparate personalities of their leaders, who interpreted the opportunities that the context afforded them in equally disparate ways. Their attitudes toward the circles of experts and their paternalistic policies also illustrate this divergence. While the Communauté opposed them firmly, and Rotaru himself had the temerity to criticise the actions of the inter-ministerial commission before the National Assembly, Vanko Rouda opted for a more diplomatic tone, encouraged perhaps by the fact that Traveller activism was growing stronger in the United Kingdom, or maybe inspired by the mainstream institutional presence of the anti-racist movement. This movement had experience in creating encounters by inviting experts to its conferences and meetings, which might have helped Rouda to imagine a scenario of mutual understanding between Tsiganes and Tsiganologues. Similarly, both Rotaru and the Rouda brothers skilfully incorporated and reformulated the repertoire of arguments afforded by the French context of the 1960s, from the landmark invocation of universal citizenship to anti-imperialism and the right to self-determination of peoples. Access to these available meanings was, if not mediated, at least favoured by the fraternal bond between Romani activism and the anti-racist movement, perhaps the most important relationship to be explored in the French context.

The power balance between the Romani organisations on the one hand and the Tsiganologue circles of experts or the anti-racist movement on the other was clearly asymmetrical. Neither the Rotaru’s Communauté nor the Rouda’s Comité had the governmental support that the experts enjoyed, nor were they able to garner the social support and resources available to the older and more influential anti-racist organisations. Nevertheless, the emergence of the Romani movement and its maturation over the course of the 1960s influenced the future of the two more powerful actors. Put another way, neither the history of Tsiganologie in terms of expert thought and its philanthropic work, nor the history of anti-racism can (or should) be explained without considering the impact of this emerging new force. The coining of definitions of ethnic identity and self-construction representing the Tsiganes posed a clear challenge to the hegemony of the former –Tsiganologie–, while the denunciation of specific forms of racism historically exercised against the Tsiganes and the rejection of all outside tutelage enriched the way anti-racism understood both the phenomenon it was fighting and its role vis-à-vis ethnic activism.

In short, situating the beginnings of the Romani movement after the Second World War within the recent history of France, the country where two of its most important initiatives were born, in no way detracts from the international dimension to which the Communauté and the Comité aspired, and which led to the formation of a movement with a clearly pan-Roma profile from the 1970s onwards. Nor does it involve reducing Romani activism simply to a symptom of the turbulent sixties. Rather, it means taking a closer look at the agency of historic individuals whose choices were conditioned by the panorama of alternatives and the constraints of a nation whose civil rights they helped to advance through their own struggle.