Butlins break cancelled because "we aren't on the electoral roll"

[Butterlins]

Firstly - we are on the electoral roll, always have been, have voted in every general and local election, and can provide proof of being on the electoral roll.

We got a letter from Butlins today - I only picked it up at 6pm because I was working today, so I haven't been able to ring customer services. The letter says (happy to post it on here) that because we aren't on the electoral roll, our break has been cancelled, our money will be refunded, and this decision is final and cannot be reversed. *
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A small amount of googling has shown me that Butlins do this for anyone with an Irish/traveller sounding surname. Surprise surprise, we have a surname common in the travelling community.
There is a number to call to "arrange your refund", and my googling has shown that when others who have received this letter ring to explain actually they are on the E.R and can provide proof of this, Butlins say "tough" and refuse to reverse their decision.

And I can find many many instances of people with "English" sounding names (Bishop, Cooke, Pitt, Patel) who AREN'T on the electoral roll who have never had any problems with booking at all. It seems to be directed only at those with "blacklisted" surnames, even if they are on the ER.

I imagine I'll have a battle on my hands when I ring Butlins tomorrow - anyone help on how to approach this? I'm fuming tbh. Me and DH have both booked time off work, the kids have been so excited.

The more I think about this the more it gets my goat on so many levels.

First it is disgraceful that anyone can rock up at a holiday camp and cause so much trouble. A PLACE FOR CHILDREN. And clearly the legal system failed here otherwise butlins wouldn't feel the need to take it into their own hands. The perpetrators obviously were not punished enough to act as a deterrent. BUT ...

They can't just go acting like vigilantes who too are above the law (discrimination laws). They have a responsibility to the community to treat us all equally like any other service provider. If everywhere starts closing its doors to people with certain names the world for some families will stop turning. How many services do you access where you need to provide your name? Now imagine you were turned away from all of them.

Then what about their staff? Do they have a policy of not hiring OLearys as well?

And ffs it is Christmas and they literally have a naughty or nice list, cherry picking their guests based on a stupid criterion. And stealing presents from children who they deem unworthy. At the end of the day the OP has to tell her kids that they won't be going on holiday for Christmas.

Clearly the laws that are meant to protect us are no longer working. Book a holiday and either risk getting tangled up in a mass brawl or discriminated against cause you lost the surname lottery. What's the point of laws and regulations if nobody enforces them.

The DM has reached their quota for traveller stories this month I'm afraid. They even had dash camera footage, the readers heads nearly exploded over that one.
The only way they'd pick this up is if they have bad blood with Butlins.

It's a tricky one. As another poster said, these 'meets' are usually organised with the specific intention of settling scores and, well, fighting. I wouldn't have thought a company like Butlins would want to exclude any demographic as obviously that means less money for them, so they must have good reason and evidence for doing this sort of thing. Are pubs still allowed to ban travellers? I remember being in pubs (including pubs in London overwhelmingly patronised by the Irish community) that said 'no travellers' but maybe that has changed.

Unfortunately my experience with travellers has been entirely negative, including two particular times where I was completely open minded and determined to 'prove people wrong' about them, but then they totally lived up to the stereotype and then some and I was really disappointed. Obviously I know that 'not all travellers' are like that, I am going on my own experiences and those of who I know.

Having said all of that, I am surprised that Butlins can get away with striking off anyone with an Irish surname? I have an Irish surname and I (and a quite a few of my family with the same surname actually!) went to Butlins, when did all this come in, is it recent?

In the real world - would you and you relations want to be on a Butlins or what ever site with drunken violent travellers? I am sure you would be frightened and horrified - and complaining to the management.

In the real world would you want to be at a concert with a terrorist, bomb wielding Muslim? No? I guess we ban all Muslims from concerts then.

When I was quite young I saw travellers - Irish is a nationality not a race

Well, actually, Irish travellers are a race. Being Irish itself is actually a Celtic race so yes. This is racism.

This year large numbers of travellers have been imprisoned for enslaving people - slavery generally considered bad I assume?

Is that exclusive to travellers? Pretty sure there have been convictions of people from other races for the same thing. In fact, earlier this year (or late last year, not sure which) a white English man and his white wife were convicted in my country of imprisoning a vulnerable woman for years and sexually abusing her. According to you my country can now ban white English people.

I would suggest you contact the Equality and Human Rights Commission with details of your case, and those you have found googling.

You could try www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/contact-us

Or Www.frylaw.co.uk if you want to go the legal route.

Or contact the Daily Mirror if you want to go to the press. (Not the Daily Mail or The Sun as they'd probably sympathise with Butlins!).

You could tell Butlins that you believe you are being discriminated on the basis of your surname and they have 24 hours to reinstate your booking or you will be going to the press/taking legal action.

I'm glad that this thread hasn't gone the way of most traveller threads on MN, however the racist upstarts on here might want to check this out www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/protected-characteristics/gypsies-and-travellers-race-discrimination/

OP do you have twitter?

All those saying 'book Center Parcs instead' I'm pretty sure that if Center Parcs started getting any trouble at all with travellers they would be cancelling Irish surname bookings quicker than you can say 'Appleby Horse Fair'.

Well of course there’s always one exception to a rule Battered but if you look at all the cases of modern day slavery in the UK I doubt you’ll find many other stories involving white British people as their masters. Certain other ethnicities though, will surface as the culprits again and again and again. Not just Travellers though, in fact I’d say they are less likely than many in spite of a few high profile cases.

I can't beleive your going through this op, how distressing for you and all your family! I understand why they need to protect themselves but this is awful and so unnecessary. Have you tweeted them? With things like this people seem to have alot of success when publicly tweeting company's. Get as much publicity to this as possible!

This obviously isn’t right in any way. But....if you lived in a town with a Butlins. It does add a different take on it.

Honestly, you can’t know if you haven’t experienced the fall out from Butlins.

I know what @MammaTJ is talking about. It’s frightening.

If the Daily Mail picked this up, they'd go with "HARDWORKING BRITISH FAMILY mistaken for FILTHY TRAVELLERS by Butlins" and get some sly Sun digs in as well because of the method of booking.

You can't control how they pitch it. And they're fuckers so they'll pitch it to fit their overarching story, which is WHITE BRITISH GOOD, EVERYONE ELSE DEVIL INCARNATE.

I think making a bit of noise about this and threatening Butlins with legal action is possibly likely to get OP's booking reinstated, but will do nothing for the discriminatory policy more generally.

Well of course there’s always one exception to a rule Battered but if you look at all the cases of modern day slavery in the UK I doubt you’ll find many other stories involving white British people as their masters. Certain other ethnicities though, will surface as the culprits again and again and again.

So white English criminals don’t represent white English people but everyone else represents whatever their race is? Nice.

MammaTJ Calling people sweetheart, patronising much?

So, nurses and doctors have been attacked at hospitals, should we ban anyone who bares a remote resemblance to the perpetrators?

What would posters say if they had gone away for a Butlins break and found a big traveller shin dig there, complete with fights and anti-social behaviour? I'm sure they'd be mad at Butlins in that situation too for allowing it.

I’d expect Butlins to sort it out.

I wouldn’t expect Butlins to ban whole groups of people based on their age, gender, race, surname or nationality.

Can’t believe the apologism for Butlins on this thread.

tell them you'll be going public over this and to court if necessary for discrimination

Actually I was just coming back to say that I wanted to retract the comment 'certain ethnicities' and say what I meant was 'people from certain cultural backgrounds or with their heritage in certain other nationalities, even if they are British.

So white English criminals don’t represent white English people but everyone else represents whatever their race is? Nice.

No, that's not what I was said and you are being deliberately obtuse here I think.

At the risk of going completely off topic, we are talking about a very specific crime here - that of modern day slavery. I don't think finding a handful of examples of it among the white British community, given that they number around 55 million in the UK, can be seen as even slightly representative or common.

Whereas there are many other cases involving non-white and/or non-British people who collectively number less than about 8 million. So if one or two particular ethnic or cultural demographics keeps appearing again and again in these cases, and that particular demographic currently has say one or two million members in the UK, or 500,000 or whatever, then I think it's fair to say that while it may not be anything like 'representative' it is certainly much more prevalent.

I am normally so anti racism, lumping people into a group, but knowing people who have actually been attacked at butlins while doing their job, I totally get why they want to prevent that happening again

Otherwise translated as:

“I am normally so anti-racism, until I actually know someone who has been attacked by a person from a particular minority group, and then BOOM! out pops the cloven hoof.”

There's a clause in the Butlins T&C's that says your booking will be cancelled until you can prove that you're on the electoral roll. It might be worth quoting that at them if they refuse to give you an opportunity to prove it.

The op has proved she is onthe electoral roll. Butlins said tough.

Also get on their Twitter page and start complaining there

I’ve done this a few times, with good results, after ‘the computer says no’

So astrid according to you, its fine to illegally discriminate against people from those ethnicities because some of them commit these crimes. That’s what you’re saying. That’s racism .

Someone has posted the thread to Butlin's Facebook page.

Where did I say it's fine?

What are you talking about?