We are all astute enough to know that being against anti-fascists does not necessarily make you a fascist but writing such nasty, racist threats on the side of a van of an organisation in charge of local housing certainly does.
Of course, there is pressure on housing. It's not due to immigration though. It's due to a lack of regulation; little if any protection for tenants; rampant speculation on the housing market where corporations and businesses buy up houses and drive up prices out of reach of families.
There are no rent controls, no limits on how many houses a person/business can buy, no security of tenure.
The unregulated market coupled with the governments, North and South missing their targets of new-builds causes the shortage. Many houses lie empty all over the island. There were 163,000 empty houses (excluding holiday homes) in the Republic of Ireland in 2022. The Irish government missed the target of new-build social housing in 2025 by 15%. In Northern Ireland the new-build target has recently dropped from 3,000 per annum to 2,300.
Google, for example, owns a portfolio of properties that includes Boland's Quay. 37,000 square metres of office, residential and retail space. Don't forget NAMA and the numerous vulture funds ripping the heart out of local communities.
They call themselves Republicans. I'm sure you have Republican racists just as you have Republican drug dealers or Republican sex offenders or Republican touts. Every demographic, including Republicanism, has it's repugnant element. It's how we deal with that element that counts.
Republicanism has a long proud history of internationalism, as far back as the very first Irish Republicans, the United Irishmen. Don't forget Mary-Ann McCracken worked her entire life to help women and the downtrodden. She campaigned tirelessly against slavery. The racists are happy to have cheap goods from all over the planet but wince if a person comes over. The racists value commodities over people.
I'm not going to turn this into a history lesson but would like to remind the racists that the seven signatories to the Proclamation were human rights driven. Way ahead of their time. Cherishing all children of the nation equally. It's doesn't mean children literally but citizens. Equal rights for all. The leaders of the Rising were to the forefront when it came to fighting for women's rights.
Roger Casement was a beacon of human rights and an exemplary Republican.
James Connolly was a firm internationalist, driven by socialism. The fascists on the other hand are driven by hate and ignorance.
Bobby Sands spoke up for many anti-colonial fights in his poem Rhythm of Time.
"It is found in every light of hope,
It knows no bounds nor space
It has risen in red and black and white,
It is there in every race.
It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
It has reached the peak of mountains high,
It comes searing ‘cross the skies.
It lights the dark of this prison cell,
It thunders forth its might,
It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
That thought that says ‘I’m right!’"
The Irish far-right invited a loyalist bank robber to speak outside the GPO, a member of the UVF, an organisation which took up arms to murder fellow Irish people purely because they were Catholics. An organisation which bombed Dublin and Monaghan. The loyalist in question describes the Irish language as a foreign language. Amadán gan mhaith mar a deirtear.
No demographic can be held to impossibly high standards. No demographic can possibly be immune from criminality. Let the punishment fit the crime. Let perpetrators be held accountable and not the communities from which they come.
There were riots in Ballymena directly after the arrests of two Romanian teenagers accused of rape. I can't remember any riots when a certain unionist politician was accused of rape. This was never about protecting women. It's pure bigotry.
⏩ Hedley Lamarr is a student of the conflict out of which has developed his strong interest in justice.
Your mind may be a raging torrent Hedly, and yet I hear no creative alternatives or solutions.
ReplyDeleteAnd for the record, just as we had ego driven advanced nationalists in the PIRA leadership masquerading as Republiccans, we had sex fiends, drug dealers, informers, agents, and racists doing likewise.
'By their deeds shall you know them'.
IMHO, unlike Schrodinger's cat, one can't be an Irish Republican, a democrat, and a partitionist and certainly all at the same time.
Hedley Lamarr comments:
DeleteMy mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.
Alternative to spray painting a van- just don't do it. No good comes out of it. Focus your energies elsewhere.
Alternatives to housing problems - I listed a lot of problems in the piece. The solution lies in regulating the housing market and tackling the problems listed to keep a high level of available and affordable stock. With regard to tenants' rights these need a heavy overhaul to ensure security of tenure, rent ceilings, right to buy etc. There could be limits on the number of properties people can own.
Corporations and developers should be compelled to build a proportion of social and affordable housing if they are to build at all. Housing should be made available for every homeless person with a dedicated government support worker for each person to help deal with other potential problems like psychological or addiction problems.
The problems with the West taking advantage of lower wages, child labour and slavery across the globe to buy cheap, disposable fashion and goods is too wide to be discussed here but there are solutions and alternatives.
Alternative to far-right rallies - don't have them. Hatred won't solve anything. Focus your energies into campaigning for education from the earliest age on consent and why someone who withholds consent should be respected. Educate people on the harm of violent pornography. Teach people that people too drunk or too high to give consent should be assumed to be not giving consent. Educate people particularly judges that it doesn't matter how someone is dressed, they should be free from sexual violence. Character references should not mitigate crimes of sexual violence.
Campaign for equal rights for women- they're still behind in the workplace, behind in salaries, top positions etc. The status quo only "others" women, treats them as less than men due to them being valued less. It all combines to make life harder for women, creates a societal mindset that they're lesser beings which together with other factors feeds into the violence.
Alternative to inviting loyalists to rallies outside the GPO. Build relationships with progressive unionism to solve the problems you say need fixed. Refugees are not the root of your problems.
As I said, let perpetrators be held accountable for their crimes and not the communities from where they come.
We should be taking more refugees. Even if it means our quality of life taking a hit. The UK government's role in creating the wars from which the refugees flee gives an onus on them ethically and morally to accept more refugees. They create the situations but don't want to accept any responsibility for their actions. The same with the Republic of Ireland and allowing Shannon to be used by the USA. Responsibility springs from these actions.
There will be more climate refugees in the future. The West's much higher production of carbon per head of population gives a similar responsibility to that of fueling global wars to accept more refugees. If you create the problem or are at least a main player you should accept to deal with some of the outcomes.
We take pitifully low numbers of refugees compared with other countries. Deal with the actual problems on a principled basis as there are solutions. Sloganeering based on racism is not going to help anyone.
Obviously these are my views and I'm only an individual. A conversation is needed, maybe in civic forums to gather different views and create the solutions.
one can't be an Irish Republican, a democrat, and a partitionist and certainly all at the same time
Deleteisn't that just at the heart of it!
I don't see a solution to the housing problem any time soon.
DeleteRadical solutions are proposed and then stealthily moved away from once the responsibility turn dial points at the proposer. Then all manner of excuses are found as to why it can't be done.
The immigrants and refugees at the minute are finding it increasingly harder to find accommodating. The government welcomes them with a cold wet street. Seems more cruel than compassionate to me.
The problem require a radical solution but there are no radicals that will ever find themselves in a position to implement one.
As the state works assiduously and incessantly to bleed radicalism out of opposition and make it safe for government, society is presented with more of the same.
The state moulds the opposition in its own image. A sure way of ensuring the dead hand of conservatism puts a brake on radical progress. Look at how tame SF has become.
I suspect that because the Left has no solutions that it can make work it resorts to cancel culture to suppress those who call it out on its shortcomings.