Social Items

TPQ
Showing posts with label Irish Far Right. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irish Far Right. Show all posts
Pádraig Drummond ✊ The violence at 11 Ormond Quay, where Irish squatters were providing shelter to Palestinian and Jordanian refugees were attacked, deserves the strongest condemnation.

There is nothing republican about intimidating the vulnerable or putting a landlord’s property interests before human dignity. Those who claim a connection to the Republican cause while associating themselves with such disgraceful actions have shamed the very principles they profess to uphold.

As Wolfe Tone reminded us, “Our strength shall come from that great and respectable class, the men of no property.” 

Our tradition should stand with the dispossessed, not the powerful; with those offering shelter, not those using violence to remove them and line their pockets with the scum landlords blood money.
 
In a country gripped by a housing and homelessness crisis, and amid the devastation inflicted upon the Palestinian people in Gaza, solidarity must mean more than slogans. Irish republicanism without social justice and international solidarity is republicanism stripped of its soul.

⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.

Solidarity Must Mean More Than Slogans

Pádraig Drummond ✊ There is something magnificently Irish about the National Party’s latest internal apocalypse.


According to Cllr. Patrick Quinlan, who had resigned as leader, was asked to reconsider and was voted back in. He tried to run the organisation, but eventually got voted off the very body that had voted him back in.

All perfectly normal, apparently!

This is not a political party so much as a particularly aggressive WhatsApp group with delusions of government.

One can almost picture the scene when Quinlan, having apparently made the outrageous mistake of believing he was running an actual political organisation, asked for access to the registered membership database.
 
There must have been a moment of terrible silence. Someone probably opened the spreadsheet. Another person checked the filing cabinet. A third man stared nervously at his phone. Then came the terrible discovery: there was no membership database. The membership, it seems, was simply there in the WhatsApp group.

The entire glorious nationalist vanguard of Ireland, gathered together beneath the familiar green “online” dots, waiting patiently for the next poll.

No membership records. No proper meetings. No minutes. No accessible accounts. Just a phone screen glowing in the darkness like the control panel of a badly managed submarine.

And this is the organisation that apparently intends to challenge the establishment and govern the country.

Imagine the future, Ireland, 2032.

A national emergency breaks out. The Taoiseach calls an emergency Cabinet meeting. The President addresses the nation. The National Party responds with a WhatsApp poll:
“Should we invade the Occupied Six Counties?

 Yes
 No
 Maybe after lunch.”

The whole thing would be hilarious if it weren't so painfully revealing.

Quinlan says he wanted access to the membership, party emails, finances, proper accounts, editing tools and the basic resources required to organise political activity.

In other words, he apparently walked into the National Party asking for the outrageous luxuries of administration, accountability and functioning infrastructure.

You can almost hear the screams. “Jesus Christ, Patrick, next you'll be asking where the minutes are.”

And then comes the magnificent revelation that decisions of the Ard Chomhairle are apparently made by poll in a messaging group.

No meeting. No minutes. No proper record. Just a digital thumbs-up from whoever happens to be holding the phone.

This is not how you run a political party. This is how teenagers decide where to go drinking.

And somewhere in this strange little nationalist bureaucracy, there must be a poor bastard desperately trying to explain that democracy requires more than asking fourteen people on WhatsApp whether they fancy something.

The great irony is that Quinlan says he wanted to build a serious, disciplined nationalist movement.
Fine.

But before you can build the Fourth Reich, the Fourth Republic, or even a moderately competent residents’ association, you generally need to know who the bloody members are.

You need names. You need records. You need accounts. You need meetings. You need minutes. You need some mechanism by which a person can establish what the hell was actually decided.

Instead, we apparently have a political movement where the membership database may effectively be a WhatsApp group and the supreme constitutional instrument is the poll function.

This is not the storming of the Bastille. It is the storming of the group chat.

And then there is the international conference business. Apparently, while the great nationalist machine was struggling to establish who its own members were, somebody had the brilliant idea of looking abroad.

Because nothing says “grassroots Irish political movement” quite like flying people into a hotel ballroom to discuss nationalism while the actual political organisation back home is apparently being held together with free software and mobile data.

Forget knocking doors in Blanchardstown. Forget leaflets. Forget talking to voters. Get the PowerPoint projector. Book the conference room. Find somebody from another country.

And for God's sake, make sure the Wi-Fi password is written down, because otherwise the Ard Chomhairle may be unable to conduct its next leadership election.

The whole spectacle has the surreal quality of a revolutionary movement accidentally being run by the people who organise the office Christmas party.

And then, after all this chaos, Quinlan says he was sent a statement approved by the very people who had voted him off the Ard Chomhairle, a statement thanking those same people for supporting his decision.

That is not merely political spin. That is performance art. It is the kind of thing that makes you wonder whether somewhere in the National Party headquarters there is a secret committee whose sole purpose is to make reality increasingly difficult to distinguish from parody.

You could not write this stuff. Well, apparently you could.

They did.

The National Party now appears to have achieved the impossible: a political organisation simultaneously obsessed with nationalism and apparently incapable of maintaining a functioning domestic administration.

A movement that dreams of national sovereignty but conducts its internal affairs through a group chat.

A party that wants to challenge the establishment but apparently cannot establish where its own membership records are.

A leadership structure apparently capable of removing people without minutes, records or even the courtesy of having them present.

It is magnificent. It is almost beautiful.

Somewhere in Ireland, a man is sitting alone with his phone, staring at a WhatsApp poll and wondering whether this is how National Party icon, Michael Collins would have done it.

And the answer, tragically, is no.

Collins had couriers.

These lads have typing indicators.

Collins had an underground network.

These lads have read receipts.

Collins had intelligence operations.

These lads are still trying to locate the membership database.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the great nationalist revolution of the twenty-first century: The Republic will be reborn, immediately after someone finds the fucking spreadsheet.

⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.

The National Party 🪶 The Revolution Will Be Group-Chatted

Pádraig Drummond ✊ With A Timeline By Way Of An Obituary Nobody Asked For.


Ten years, a full decade of the National Party.

Ten glorious years of flags, fury, factional warfare and the sort of organisational chaos usually associated with a GAA club committee after three pints and an argument about the raffle.

And how better to celebrate a tenth anniversary than with another spectacular internal explosion? Some political organisations mark ten years by producing housing programmes, organising workers, building community campaigns, developing serious economic policies and offering people some vision of the future. The National Party apparently marks ten years by eating itself; Again!
.
Cllr Patrick Quinlan's latest statement reads less like the declaration of a political movement preparing to transform Ireland and more like the minutes of a particularly dysfunctional WhatsApp group that somehow acquired a flag, a constitution and delusions of national importance. Leaders resign. Leaders return. Leaders are removed. Leaders are reinstated. Membership lists disappear into the fog. Emails become strategic assets. Social-media accounts apparently require diplomatic negotiations. And somewhere in the middle of all this, an important leadership decision is apparently being settled by telephone polling. Democracy by group chat. This is the organisation that presumably wants to save Ireland.
 
Ten years, a whole fucking decade. And after all that time, what have they actually built? Where is the serious housing programme? Where is the workers' programme? Where is the healthcare strategy? Where is the plan for education, public transport, childcare, addiction services or rebuilding communities gutted by poverty and deprivation? Where is the economic programme explaining who pays, who benefits and what exactly they intend to do once the flags come down and somebody hands them the keys to the country?

There is remarkably little there to argue with because there is remarkably little there. Instead we get the same tired political magic trick: take a complicated social problem, point at somebody poorer or more vulnerable, preferably somebody foreign, and scream until nobody notices who actually owns the fucking building.

Ireland has a housing crisis? Blame migrants. Rents are unaffordable? Blame migrants. Public services are collapsing? Blame migrants. Communities are being abandoned? Somehow, once again, blame migrants. It is a magnificent political con because it costs absolutely nothing. You don't have to confront landlords. You don't have to confront investment funds. You don't have to confront developers. You don't have to confront governments that spent decades treating housing as an investment commodity instead of a human necessity. You simply point sideways.

And there it is: the great genius of reactionary politics. It costs nothing to hate sideways. It costs everything to organise upwards.

There is nothing remotely radical about turning workers against one another because of nationality, ethnicity or immigration status. Irish history should have beaten that particular disease out of us generations ago. Our own people were scattered across the world by famine, poverty, colonialism and economic necessity. Irish emigrants were not universally greeted abroad with open arms and a complimentary three-bedroom house.

The working-class tradition worth defending is not one built around bloodlines and passports. It is solidarity. The person working beside you might have been born in Dublin, Donegal, Lagos, Warsaw or Damascus. If you're both being exploited by the same landlord, squeezed by the same cost of living and working for wages that barely cover the rent, you've got considerably more in common than the flag-waving nationalists would like you to believe.

Your enemy isn't the family arriving with two suitcases. It's the landlord collecting the rent. It's the investment fund buying housing. It's the employer squeezing wages. It's the government refusing to build enough homes. It's the economic system that can find billions for property speculation while telling ordinary people there simply isn't enough money for a secure home. That is the fight. But apparently the National Party has spent ten years looking in precisely the wrong direction.

And now, on its tenth birthday, we have another split. There is something almost poetic about it. Ten years spent proclaiming the coming nationalist revolution, only to discover that the revolutionary vanguard's most dangerous enemy is apparently the bloke sitting in the next chair. You couldn’t write a better satire.

The party cannot apparently agree on who is allowed to lead it, who possesses the membership list, who controls the communications machinery or how its own internal decisions should be made, yet somehow expects the rest of the country to believe it possesses the organisational genius required to transform an entire state. This isn't the disciplined nationalist movement promised in the propaganda. It's a group chat with a flag pinned to it.

And perhaps that is the real tragedy beneath the comedy. Because Ireland's working class deserves better than this. People sleeping on the streets deserve better. Families trapped in emergency accommodation deserve better. Young workers handing half their wages to landlords deserve better. People waiting years for healthcare deserve better. Communities destroyed by poverty and addiction deserve better. And migrants and refugees who have come here looking for safety deserve better than being turned into political scapegoats for failures they did not create. They deserve politics that actually fights for them. Not politics that tells them to fight each other.

So happy tenth anniversary to the National Party. Ten years on the road to absolutely fucking nowhere. Ten years of splitting, resigning, returning, expelling, issuing statements about statements and apparently conducting revolutionary democracy through the holy sacrament of the WhatsApp poll.

The great nationalist revolution has not stormed the barricades. It appears to have misplaced the membership list somewhere between the Ard Chomhairle and the group chat. Meanwhile, the rest of us are still waiting for the houses. Maybe, after another ten years, they'll finally get around to building one.

Written in solidarity with every worker, every homeless person, every migrant and every ordinary human being this crowd has ever tried to turn against their neighbour instead of the people who actually hold the fucking power.

⏩Pádraig Drummond is an anti-racism activist.

Leader And President Resigns, Un-resigns, Gets Voted Off Anyway

Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig ★ I am encouraged, by the recent podcast by Gerry Adams ( Joe.ie ) in relation to the rise of the far right i Éireann but I’m not fully convinced.

Is Gerry now, directly challenging the Far Right’s attacks, violence and killing; and is he calling out his own party's failure to challenge the Blueshirts’ ideology that is now on the march across the country?

Remember how the Blueshirts violently attacked and tried to kill Republicans back in the 30s?

I would hope to see all progressive people and groups come together, in alliances, to closely examine what Adams has said, and to hold him and Sinn Féin, to account; and formulate a stronger action group to fight against this Right Wing 'cancer' in our society.

The Proclamation of 1916 states very clearly that society holds humanity, justice and religious freedoms for all, as its clear identity. We must be certain of one thing. We must not fall into the trap of the working class, fighting the working class; which only, has ever benefited the powerful and wealthy.

I certainly do not agree with the political direction of Sinn Féin. But progressive groups should come together in strong alliances, with a clear revolutionary understanding, to fight against the rise of the Right Wing, both i Éireann and across the world.

I call on Gerry Adams to go further and clarify his latest podcast, about the Right and Racism; and to assure everyone that it was not just tokenism. I would ask Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin to follow up on the podcast content, with action. That is, direct action against this 'cancer' in our society, on the streets.

And other questions arise here. Is Gerry Adams speaking for himself or for the Sinn Féin party? Will he now ensure that Sinn Féin changes direction so that the party moves away from it's conservative, safe, bourgeois politics; and the consistent move to the centre right, by some senior Sinn Féin politicians. That must end, if we are to take seriously what Gerry Adams has said.

I Dún na nGall we had a number of anti-racist demonstrations when fascists and some racists tried to organise i Leitir Ceanainn agus Gaoth Dobhair. Unfortunately and predictably, Sinn Féin did not support our Anti-Racist counter demonstration. Why?

Go Raibh Maith Agat to all the other politicians who did show up and took a clear stand against racism and fascism on those days.

Furthermore, will Sinn Féin stop, trying to ride two horses and clarify their thinking on migrants and migration, at the very least or is the centre right element within the party that's now in full control?

Are the consequences of imperialism and capitalism being considered, or discussed, around these issues, by Sinn Féin?

A fairly recent document on migration issues that was published by Sinn Féin called, 'International Protection: A Fair System That Works', does not exactly inspire confidence either, or indicate that they are going to go 'all out' to directly confront anti-migrant, Right Wing nationalist groups i Éireann. In fact, it reads more like a pacification document to these groups; and that SF will 'deal' with migrants and migrant issues, inter alia, to the satisfaction of the Right Wing forces, (if and) when they (ever) get into power. What could that mean? Is it a 'vote catching' document?

On the basis of Gerry A's podcast on the Right Wing groups, is Sinn Féin now going to review it's thinking on this major issue?

Will we soon see, well organised, politically clear anti-Right Wing and anti-fascist, street demonstrations by Sinn Féin? Will they, also, show solidarity and work with, all of those who oppose Right Wing politics and it's origins?

As a part of all of that will they show their total support for all minority groups i Éireann; who are regularly and viciously attacked by these same Right Wing groups?

Will we, also, now see, the clear Republican line of class struggle, anti-fascism, anti imperialism, anti capitalism and anti-Zionism, coming to the fore?

Only time will tell, but, of course, 'actions, always, speak louder than words'.

#SinnFéin

#AlwaysAntiFascists

#SinnFéinIreland

#MaryLouMcDonald

Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig 
is an independent councillor on Donegal County Council.

Gerry Adams And The Far Right

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ In recent times in the six and twenty-six counties of modern Ireland we have witnessed a level of racism not thought possible, certainly in the Twenty-Six-Counties, a few years ago. 

In the occupied Six-Counties among elements within loyalism the concept has been present for many years often manifested through sectarianism. 

Late last year, 2025, racist and fascist thugs using lumpenproletariat gangs attacked a hostel for International Protection Applicants at City West, Saggart, in South West Dublin. Scenes not dissimilar to the Nazi Kristallnacht in Germany, 1938, occurred and were organised it appeared by fascist and far right groups whose leaders kept out of the way, not wishing to get their hands dirty. Organisations taking part, one of which would have been vehemently opposed to such activities only a couple of years ago, ranged from concerned residents and parents who perhaps took least part in the rioting to organised thugs superintended by the far-right. 

The pretext for the activities at City West was an alleged sexual assault of a 10-year- old girl near the City West Hotel used to house International Protection Applicants, and a 26-year-old man, an asylum seeker, was charged with the assault. Within 24 hours the ‘incident outrage online’ had escalated into unrest and violent clashes with gardai occurred outside the hotel. This led to an arson attack on accommodation housing 2,400 International Protection Applicants and immigrants. Other attacks on migrant centres across the Twenty-Six-Counties have happened with one group travelling to the Six-Counties to show support with racist Belfast loyalists! More recently in Belfast scenes reminiscent to the pogroms carried out by loyalist groups against Catholics (when in 1969 Bombay Street was completely burned-out leaving hundreds of Catholic families homeless and bereft of all furniture) took place after a stabbing attack allegedly committed by a Sudanese man. Anti-immigrant pogroms took place across the Six-Counties chiefly, though not exclusively, in Belfast. A few weeks later another knifing incident took place in Belfast yet not a murmur of protest! Could this have been because the latter incident did not involve a migrant? Far-right groups and individuals from the UK are reportedly involved in fuelling these pogroms, the same groups incidentally who, in many cases, see the whole of Ireland as coming back under the British yolk!

Anti-immigrant feeling is certainly on the rise in the Twenty-Six-Counties but as of yet still a minority, thankfully. People once linked to the left wing of republicanism like Malachy Steenson, formerly associated with Official Sinn Fein the Workers Party, have changed their clothing, joining in with the turmoil spread by the far-right who in turn, though perhaps not realising it, are taking their lead from the British fascists. Serious political activists do not change their position every time an opportunity knocks, this is known as ‘political opportunism’. Many parliamentarians are not serious about their political positions and are unprincipled when it comes to fudging their stance on issues as the Twenty-Six-County government are bowing to far-right pressure, changing their position on Ukrainian refugees who were once made welcome, when it was fashionable! 

One reasonable sounding argument put forward by these far-right groups and individuals against asylum seekers and immigration in general, coloured immigration that is, not white migrants it appears, is that ‘Ireland is overcrowded’. The housing shortage and our health service being stretched to the limit are cited by these dangerous neo-fascist and far-right individuals and groups to “send them back”, claiming ‘Ireland is overpopulated’. The outcome of such propaganda can, and unfortunately did, result in such events as those at City West and other places resulting in an Irish Kristallnacht. Are the Twenty-Six-Counties overpopulated? Do the far-right have a point? Here are some figures showing the population density per square mile of some EU and non-EU countries.

The population density of the Twenty-Six-Counties is 201-207 people per square mile. The United Kingdom is 700 people per square mile, Monaco, one of Europe’s smallest states, 47,000 people per square mile while Malta, the EUs smallest country with the highest population density in the bloc, 4,704 people per square mile. Holland comes in at 1,402 with Belgium 1,007 people per square mile. Luxembourg has 696, with Italy at 513 people per square mile, while Poland accommodates 320 people per square mile. France comes in at 303 per square mile, Liechtenstein wades in at 663, with Germany standing at 612. Romania is at 212 with neighbouring Bulgaria at 151. Austria at 287 people per square mile, Hungary 268, Spain 253, Portugal 294. Within the EU the Twenty-Six-Counties lay 20th of the 27 member states regarding population density with seven countries only having lower figures in this regard. They are; Croatia with 176 people per square mile, Bulgaria at 151, Lithuania 114, Estonia 80, Latvia 75, Sweden 67 and Finland 49 people per square mile. As can be seen the figure for population density for Ireland (twenty-six counties) is very low and does not stack up with the far-right argument about being “overpopulated”. As for land mass, the area size of countries, Ireland as a whole is 32,595 square miles, 32 counties, with the Twenty-Six-Counties holding 27,133 square miles under its jurisdiction. Holland has a land mass of 16,040 square miles, Belgium 11,849, Luxembourg 998 square miles, Malta 122 square miles, Monaco 0.78 (about 500 acres). Monaco with the highest population by a distance also has the smallest land mass, do these figures square with the far-right argument? (EBSCO database)

With a higher land mass and lower population density the Twenty-Six-Counties should have no problem with housing, and yet it has! This is due solely to government policies since the formation of the state in 1922 and various administrations continue to promote policy not conducive to solving our housing problem. One thing for sure is the housing shortage has nothing to do with immigration or, more precisely, International Protection Applicants. Immigrants are being scapegoated by the far right because this diverts attention away from the inherent economic contradictions within capitalism. The far-right are pro-free market capitalist parties who pose no threat to the ruling-class or their economy (which is why the Gardai take an easier line with them compared to left-wing demonstrations) and use any considered viable and visible excuse to blame other than the real cause, government policy and wealth inequality. In other words the people who have been sucked into this racist avenue of blame are attacking the wrong enemy! 

A leading factor towards our housing crisis is the concentration of dwellings around Dublin neglecting other areas. Anybody would think the state began and ended with the boundaries of County Dublin! It is now time for those who have, understandably to a certain extent, followed this right-wing rubbish to turn their attention away from the straw men of immigration and start attacking government policies regarding housing and the housing crisis. Opportunistic politicians jumping on right wing populism will lead only to perdition (not in its Biblical sense). If every immigrant was shipped out of the Twenty-Six-Counties tomorrow it would unlikely improve the housing situation and leave our health service decimated.

As for our health service it is no more stretched, again down to government policies, than it would be with very little or no immigration. In fact without migrant workers we would have no health service. On this myself and the government can find common ground. Many of our nurses are of migrant origin as are some of our doctors and consultants. And a fantastic job they do along with those indigenous employees in the same jobs. 

Stop blaming migration for societies problems, they are not the root cause, start addressing the real and fundamental problems. The fascists and far-right are lying through their teeth and are using the well-meaning but mistaken people of the Twenty-Six-Counties for their own ends. I suggest those who are following these morons read the fate in Germany of some of those who did the same. Hitler had them executed once they became surplus to requirements in an incident often referred to as the Night of the Long Knives. Think about it very long and hard the next time an anti-immigration rally is advertised, you are being used and will then in all probability be abused!!     

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Fascist Propaganda And Lies In Ireland

Tommy McKearney ☭ The recent rioting and pogrom in Belfast was met with the trite, facile interpretations and responses we have grown all too used to hearing.


Proffered explanations ranged from attributing the violence to trouble-stirring social media postings, to loyalist paramilitary intervention, to lax border controls accommodating freeloading, dangerous foreigners (invariably dark-skinned).

The responses that followed were as predictable as they were anodyne. Every political party in the Assembly condemned the disturbances, although unionism qualified its criticism. At the same time, the other political parties made little effort to analyse the root causes apart from the safe option of rejecting racism and violent protests.

Missing from all this was a properly penetrating analysis as to what caused the disturbances to reach the intensity they did or, more significant still, what are the possible consequences of what happened.

Let’s not forget that, in the days preceding the Belfast pogrom, there were several racially motivated incidents. A disused premises on Belfast’s Shankill Road, being converted for use as a grocery shop by an Indian businessman, was burned out in an arson attack. In Mid-Ulster, Moygashel loyalists continuously displayed an anti-Muslim poster, deemed illegal by the PSNI. While in County Down, the DUP’s Carla Lockhart MP was joined by several elected representatives from the Ulster Unionist Party and the TUV to take part in a gathering hurling abuse at people demonstrating against the Zionist genocide in Gaza.

Against this background and in spite of some reporting, the June pogroms were clearly not spontaneous. There can be little doubt that the rioting was organised and led by loyalist groupings. Moreover, contingency planning to take advantage of any opportunity must have been in place for some time prior to the brutal attack on Stephen Ogilvie. The fact that, within hours of the knife attack, lists of names and addresses of migrants were distributed to hordes of young men dressed and ready to wreak havoc indicates the degree of preparation.

Lending a measure of spurious legitimacy and encouragement to those involved in perpetrating the pogrom was political unionism. In a well-practised routine, unionist politicians spoke from both sides of the mouth. Following their ritual condemnation of violence, they began pointing at supposed lax immigration control at Dublin airport and an open border resulting from the Common Travel Area.

Making sure there would be no mistaking the underlying racist message coupled with demands for a fortified border, Jim Allister’s TUV produced a hideous cartoon. The offensive piece was illustrated by a bus, apparently loaded with dark-skinned people including women wearing hijabs, all displaying banners proclaiming access to: free housing, free money, free healthcare and free benefits.

Whether consciously designed to do so is difficult to say, but by underlining the supposed economic objective of the so-called migrant invasion, the message resonated with many in working-class unionist areas. Globalisation has now resulted in the deindustrialisation of what once was a source of relatively well-paid employment for a majority of working-class unionists. Currently, the scene is one of unemployment and hardship, exacerbated by criminals exploiting the misery with drug dealing and extortion. All of which contributes to fuelling anger leading to the inexcusable victimisation of migrants living in predominantly loyalist areas.

There is, of course, a long and cruel history of such loyalist offensives in the North, until more recently directed against inhabitants of Catholic districts, especially in Belfast. To a certain extent, this bitter experience of previous persecution goes a certain way to explaining the very obvious absence of anti-migrant violence in republican working-class districts. In fairness too, it has to be said that Sinn Féin activists on the ground have used their influence to prevent anything similar developing in areas where they have a presence.

Nevertheless, there is no room for complacency or self-congratulatory applause. While the relative peace in non-unionist areas of the six counties is to be welcomed, there is disturbing evidence that elsewhere across Ireland, the ugly face of anti-migrant racism is all too prevalent. For three years running, 2023–25, Dublin was the setting for violent far-right racist rioting.

Last month witnessed several hundred demonstrating outside the Dáil against the EU Migration and Asylum Pact. Many protestors carried tricolour flags, others were shouting the lie that ‘Ireland is full’ and several repeated the loaded slogan, ‘Tiocfaidh ár lá’.

More alarming still was an event in Belfast, staged in August 2024, when far-right elements from the Republic joined loyalist thugs in an anti-migrant demonstration. An event made truly remarkable by the flying of both the tricolour and the union jack together, fronted by a banner reading, “Coolock says No”.

While both reactionary loyalist elements and their southern Irish counterparts remain, for the time being at least, on the periphery of mainstream society, there is cause for concern. Loyalism, while not abandoning religious sectarianism, is adopting a distinctly racist position. Coupled with a developing racist far-right presence in the Republic, there is the basis for a dangerous and potentially powerful fascist movement emerging across the island.

For centuries the empire used religious sectarianism to divide Ireland’s poor and working class and thereby facilitate its controlling stake in the country. Should a referendum, in decades to come, result in reunification rendering sectarianism ineffective, might a dark hand promote fascist-supervised racism to fill the place vacated by religious antagonism? Imperialism has for long maintained itself by practising a strategy of divide, conquer and rule.

We have a proud history in Ireland of resistance to oppression, but it is essential that we don’t let our guard drop. As Rosa Luxemburg told us, it’s socialism in a workers’ republic or barbarism under racist fascism.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist.
He is author of The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament.
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

Sectarianism And Racism 🪶 A Poisonous Cocktail

Louth For Ever ★ writing in Medium on 23-May-2026.

Four events in one week, and what they showed about the terrain the contest is being fought on.



Photo by Dimitry Anikin on Unsplash

Section I: The Week

On Tuesday 18th May, Israeli naval forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters as it attempted to deliver aid to Gaza. Around 430 activists were detained. At least 14 of them were Irish citizens, including Dr Margaret Connolly, a Sligo GP and sister of President Catherine Connolly. On Wednesday and Thursday, the Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released videos of himself walking among the bound detainees holding an Israeli flag, telling them welcome to Israel, we are the landlords, and pushing one detainee to the ground. The Taoiseach said the behaviour was appalling. The Tánaiste said it was despicable and could not be consequence free. Both declined to move the Occupied Territories Bill, which has been before the Oireachtas since 2018 and has been called for repeatedly by the opposition this week.

On Wednesday 14th May, the Residential Tenancies Board published its quarterly figures. There had been 7,062 termination notices served on tenants by landlords in the first quarter of 2026, a fifty-one per cent increase on the same period in 2025, and the highest quarterly figure since the data series began in 2022. On the same day, the Daft.ie report for the first quarter of the year showed that market rents had risen by 4.4% between December and March, the largest quarterly increase the series has recorded since it began in 2002. The new rent regime which the Coalition introduced on 1st March, advertised as a stabilising reform, had produced in its first quarter the highest rent rise in twenty-five years and the highest eviction figures on record. The country’s largest commercial landlord told its investors the new rules would produce a twenty-five per cent increase in its rental income over the coming decade.

On Friday 15th May, on Henry Street in Dublin city centre, a thirty-five year old Congolese man named Yves Sakila was held on the ground for approximately five minutes by five private security guards from a firm contracted to Arnotts, after an alleged shoplifting incident from which Sakila had attempted to flee. He had injured an elderly man in his eighties as he ran. The five men held him on the ground until he stopped responding. He was pronounced dead at the Mater Hospital. He had been in Ireland for over twenty years, had lived in a Salvation Army hostel in Dublin 1, and was described by staff at the Granby Centre as pleasant and quiet, with a deep interest in technology and a habit of attending prayer services. His family in the Democratic Republic of the Congo learned of his death online. The Congolese Community in Ireland held a vigil for him on Henry Street on Tuesday 19th May.

On Friday 22nd May, by-elections took place in two constituencies. Dublin Central was filling the seat vacated by Paschal Donohoe in November. Galway West was filling the seat vacated by Catherine Connolly when she was elected President in October. The counting began on Saturday morning. The first preference picture is now in.

This was the week

Section II: The week the framework spoke

The previous essay in this body of work argued that a hegemonic project, in the precise sense that it seeks to become the framework through which a generation makes sense of its political situation, is what is currently consolidating across these islands. It argued that this project operates on integrated terrains. Anti-immigration nativism. Patriarchal restoration. Anti-EU sentiment positioned as the recovery of sovereignty. The colonisation of working-class economic grievance through narratives that locate responsibility in external enemies rather than in structural failures. It argued that a counter-hegemonic project must hold the integrated terrain on its own terms, contesting both the political sphere and the ideological sphere, and that no party in the current Irish opposition holds the form the contest requires.

The week described in the previous section is what happens when the framework that essay named is operating in plain view across multiple terrains at once.

The flotilla story is the foreign-policy terrain. Israeli state behaviour towards Irish citizens, including the President’s sister, is condemned in the strongest available rhetorical terms by both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. The legislation that would translate the rhetoric into material action — the Occupied Territories Bill, before the Oireachtas since 2018 — remains unmoved. The Coalition is performing the position the political ground demands while declining the action the position would require. The gap between rhetorical position and material act is the gap.

The housing data is the economic terrain. The Coalition’s signature housing policy, introduced on 1 March as a stabilising reform, has produced in its first verified quarter the largest rent rise in twenty-five years and the highest eviction figures on record. The country’s largest commercial landlord has told its investors that the new rules will produce a twenty-five per cent uplift in its rental income over the coming decade. The policy serves a specific constituency, and that constituency is not renters. The economic terrain on which the far right is building hegemonic capacity is being made by Coalition policy more material every quarter.

The death on Henry Street is the ideological terrain made physical. A Black homeless man, a member of a community the far right has been targeting in pub conversations and on doorsteps and in podcasts for years, is held on the ground for five minutes by five private security guards and dies there. The Congolese Community in Ireland says it does not feel safe any more. What makes a community feel that, and what makes five men hold a man on the ground for five minutes for a shoplifting allegation, are connected to the same framework whose contest this essay is about. The ideological sphere does not stay abstract. It reaches the street.

The by-elections were the political-sphere test. The Dublin Central count has reached its third stage as this essay publishes. The Galway West first count has just landed. The first-preference picture across both is in, and the first-preference picture is what the closing section reads. Final seat allocations will arrive on their own time. The structural fact does not wait for them.

These are not four separate stories. They are one story, told across four terrains, in one week.

Section III: Henry Street

Yves Sakila was thirty-five years old. He came to Ireland in 2004, when he was thirteen. He lived here for more than twenty-two years. By the spring of 2026 he was homeless. He had been living for some time at the Salvation Army’s Granby Centre in Dublin 1, where staff described him as pleasant and quiet, with a deep interest in technology, and a habit of sometimes attending the Centre’s prayer services. He left the Granby Centre on the morning of Friday 15th May. The staff who said goodbye to him that morning were the last people there to see him alive.

Shortly before five o’clock that afternoon, on Henry Street, he was alleged to have shoplifted from Arnotts. As he attempted to flee, he knocked an elderly man in his eighties to the ground, leaving him seriously injured. Five private security guards contracted to the store gave chase, caught him, and brought him to the ground. They held him there for approximately five minutes. The footage that has been released shows him at the start of the five minutes audibly shouting in distress. By the end of the five minutes, he is motionless. He was pronounced dead at the Mater Hospital that evening.

His brothers and his uncle, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, learned of his death online. His family in Ireland, and the Congolese Community in Ireland, learned of it through phone calls and through the news.

On Tuesday 19th May, the Congolese Community in Ireland held a vigil for him on Henry Street. The vice president of the Community, Laure Zoya, said that he was more than a headline. He was a member of their community, a professional, a human being whose life mattered. Members of the community said they did not feel safe any more. Flowers were placed at the spot. Prayers and songs were offered. The vigil ended.

These are the facts of one man’s life and death.

They are also, and this is the only structural reading the essay will offer of them, the facts of what the ideological sphere produces when it reaches the street. The far right’s project, the project the sixth essay named as a hegemonic contest, has been building for years on the everyday terrain of who is seen as belonging here and who is seen as not. The conversations on doorsteps. The phrasings in WhatsApp groups. The cultural production around national identity and who counts as Irish. The slow movement of what feels like common sense about Black men in Irish cities. None of this is a direct cause of what happened on Henry Street. None of it can be. The Garda investigation will establish what happened. The case has been referred to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman, Fiosrú. The legal process will work in its time.

But the conditions under which a Black homeless man could be held on the ground for five minutes by five men in front of bystanders, in a country where the everyday discourse about who belongs has been moving in a particular direction for years, are not separable from those conditions. The Congolese Community in Ireland said that they do not feel safe any more. They are saying something the framework the previous essay named would predict them to be saying.

Yves Sakila has been denied human dignity in death by some of the framings of the days that followed it. This section has tried to refuse that denial. He was a person. He had a name. He had been in this country since he was thirteen years old. He died on Henry Street on Friday 15th May 2026 and that fact does not become smaller because it is also the fact that the framework the essay is engaging is operating.

Section IV: The position and the act

The Occupied Territories Bill has been before the Oireachtas since 2018. It was first introduced by Senator Frances Black to give material expression to Ireland’s stated position on the illegality of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. The bill has passed stages in the Seanad and the Dáil at various points in its history. It has been called for by every Irish opposition party, by civil society organisations, by international legal scholars, and by Palestinians themselves. It has not been moved into law. Successive governments have argued that the legal advice they received from the Attorney General concluded the bill was incompatible with EU competence. Successive governments have declined to publish that advice or to enact the bill in a form that would address the legal concerns. The bill has sat where the bill has sat.

On Tuesday 18th May, Israeli forces intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla in international waters. Around 430 activists were detained. At least 14 of them were Irish citizens. The Taoiseach said the interception was absolutely unacceptable. He said that it was no longer tenable that it could be business as usual with Israel. The Tánaiste said that the actions of the Israeli government were despicable and could not be consequence free. Both said that they would discuss with EU partners how to ensure the safety and wellbeing of Irish citizens.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Itamar Ben-Gvir released videos of himself walking among the bound detainees holding an Israeli flag, telling them welcome to Israel, we are the landlords, and pushing one detainee to the ground. He told Prime Minister Netanyahu in a second video to give them to him for the terrorist prisons. The Taoiseach said he was appalled and shocked by the footage. The Tánaiste said it was a further clear breach of international law and disgusting. The Coalition continued to decline to move the Occupied Territories Bill. The Taoiseach explained in the Dáil that passing the bill would not change Israel’s behaviour.

This is the structural pattern. The Coalition can describe Israeli state behaviour in the strongest available rhetorical terms — appalling, despicable, disgusting, unacceptable, breach of international law — and decline to translate the description into material action. The rhetorical position is performed at the level the political ground demands. The action is withheld at the level the position would require. The gap between the two is the gap.

The sixth essay diagnosed this pattern in Sinn Féin’s procedural absorption of structural critique. The same pattern is operating here, from the other direction. Cullinane absorbed the reproductive rights question through procedural framing about the bill’s specific provisions. The Coalition absorbs the Occupied Territories question through procedural framing about EU competence and the bill’s expected effect on Israeli behaviour. In both cases, the position is performed and the act is withheld. In both cases, the procedural framing is not invented — it is the form the structural feature produces every time the substantive question is hard.

The bill that would translate Ireland’s stated position on illegal settlements into material consequence has been before the Oireachtas for eight years. The President’s sister was among the detainees Ben-Gvir was filming. The bill still has not moved.

Section V: The terrain Coalition policy is making

The Coalition’s reform of the rental sector came into effect on 1st March 2026. It was advertised as a stabilising measure that would protect renters by introducing six-year minimum tenancies and a national two per cent annual cap on rent increases inside Rent Pressure Zones. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Housing said the reforms would bring greater security to tenants and stimulate investment in supply.

The first verified quarter of the new regime is now in the record. The Residential Tenancies Board reports that 7,062 termination notices were served on tenants by landlords in the first quarter of 2026, a fifty-one per cent increase on the same period in 2025, and the highest quarterly figure since the data series began. Sixty per cent of the notices were issued because the landlord intended to sell the property. The Daft.ie report for the same quarter records that market rents rose by 4.4% between December and March, the largest quarterly increase the series has documented since it began in 2002. Average market rent for a two-bedroom apartment has now passed €2,100 per month. The economist Ronan Lyons, who compiles the Daft.ie series, described the initial impact of the new system as an increase in market rents larger than any seen over the past twenty-five years.

In its preliminary results for 2025, Ires Reit — Ireland’s largest commercial residential landlord, owner of 3,627 rental properties — told investors that the Coalition’s reforms could produce a 25% potential rental income uplift with minimal added costs across its portfolio. The company’s chief executive said its existing rents had been assessed as approximately 20% below market value, and that the new framework would allow them to be gradually reset. The Coalition’s signature housing policy serves a specific constituency, and that constituency is not renters.

This is the economic terrain the previous essay named as one of the four terrains the far right’s hegemonic project is integrating. The colonisation of working-class economic grievance through narratives that locate responsibility in external enemies rather than in structural failures. The structural failure on this terrain is in plain view. The Coalition’s reforms have produced, in their first verified quarter, the largest rent rise in twenty-five years, the highest eviction figures on record, and a documented twenty-five per cent uplift in income for the country’s largest commercial landlord. The grievance the far right is colonising is being made more material every quarter by the policy.

The Coalition is, in a precise sense, the supply line for the project it claims to oppose. The economic conditions on which the far right is building hegemonic capacity are the conditions Coalition policy is producing. The policy is not failing to address the grievance. The policy is the source of new grievance the project has yet to colonise.

Section VI: What two electorates answered

On Saturday 23rd May, the counting in Dublin Central reached its third count by the late afternoon. The Social Democrats’ Daniel Ennis topped the poll on the first count with 4,903 first preference votes. Sinn Féin’s Janice Boylan was second on 4,348, a margin of 555 votes. The political correspondent Gavan Reilly described the seat as a done deal by midday. By the third count Ennis still held the lead. The seat will be filled by the Social Democrats. In Mary Lou McDonald’s own constituency, in the week the Coalition’s housing policy delivered the largest rent rise in twenty-five years and the highest evictions on record, in the week of Sakila, in the week of the flotilla and the Occupied Territories Bill still unmoved, Sinn Féin has come second.

The Galway West first count was completed in the early evening. Independent Ireland’s Noel Thomas led the count with 10,007 first preference votes. Fine Gael’s Seán Kyne was second on 9,647, a margin of 360 votes. The seat will be decided on transfers and the count will adjourn into Sunday. Whichever of Thomas or Kyne takes it, the seat goes to a Coalition party or to a party explicitly campaigning on cost of living and immigration from the political terrain the far right is colonising. Sinn Féin’s Mark Lohan finished seventh with 3,208 first preference votes. Behind the Social Democrats. Behind one independent. Behind Labour. Behind Fianna Fáil.

These are the answers two electorates gave to a question the political ground had spent the week putting to them. The question was whether the political form representing the constituency the Coalition is failing exists in the current Irish party system. The Dublin answer was the Social Democrats — the party clean on reproductive rights, compromised on climate, the party closer than any other major opposition formation to the framework the previous essay named. The Galway answer was a contest between the governing party that produced the conditions and the anti-immigration party that promises to restore control over them. In neither answer was Sinn Féin the form.

This is what the previous essay’s structural argument predicted. The absorption pattern is constitutive of how Sinn Féin operates. The pattern is not contingent on the issue. The pattern produces electoral consequence on the terrain where the political ground is most favourable to the party, in the week when the conditions for an opposition project building on cost-of-living grievance are most legible to voters. The argument has now been tested by two electorates on a single day and the test has produced the result the argument anticipated.

The Coalition is in a precise sense the supply line for the project it claims to oppose. The Social Democrats hold the progressive terrain in Dublin but did not hold the climate terrain on Wednesday 13th May. Labour and the Greens and People Before Profit held both terrains but the constituencies they currently mobilise are insufficient to the scale the contest requires. Sinn Féin has the scale and not the form. The form a counter-hegemonic project requires does not exist in any single party.

What the week showed is that the framework is operating on every terrain at once. The flotilla. The policy. The death on Henry Street. The two by-elections. None of these is a separate story. They are aspects of a single contest for the framework through which a generation makes sense of its political situation. The far right is contesting that framework with an integrated project across all the terrains. The Irish opposition is contesting it with parts of the framework distributed across parties that cannot or will not hold them together.

The Social Democrats won a seat on Saturday. Independent Ireland is positioned to take another. Sinn Féin finished second in McDonald’s own constituency and seventh in Galway West. The body of work is seven essays long now. The argument the previous essay made has been answered by two electorates on a single day. The form that could hold the framework does not yet exist. What is built from here is now being built by the people the argument is engaging.

References

The Global Sumud Flotilla. Reporting from RTÉ, The Irish Times, the Irish Examiner, IrishCentral, and the Associated Press, 18–22 May 2026.

Itamar Ben-Gvir video statements. As reported by RTÉ, The Irish Times, and the Irish Examiner, 20 May 2026.

Statements by Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris on the flotilla interception and the Ben-Gvir video. As reported in The Irish Times and RTÉ, 18–21 May 2026.

The Occupied Territories Bill. Introduced in the Seanad by Senator Frances Black, 2018. Statutory history available at oireachtas.ie.

Residential Tenancies Board, quarterly data, Q1 2026. Reporting by The Irish Times, the Irish Examiner, RTÉ, and The Journal, 14 May 2026.

Daft.ie quarterly rental report, Q1 2026. Reporting by The Irish Times and the Irish Examiner, 20 May 2026. Compiled by Professor Ronan Lyons, Trinity College Dublin.

Ires Reit preliminary results for 2025, as reported by RTÉ News and The Irish Times, February-March 2026.

The death of Yves Sakila on Henry Street, 15 May 2026. Reporting by RTÉ, The Irish Times, The Journal, and breakingnews.ie, 15–20 May 2026. Statements by the Irish Network Against Racism and Laure Zoya of the Congolese Community in Ireland.

Dublin Central by-election, 22–23 May 2026. First-count results as reported by RTÉ News (Samantha Libreri) and The Irish Times. Tally reporting by Gavan Reilly (Virgin Media News) and Simon McGarr.

Galway West by-election, 22–23 May 2026. First-count results as reported by The Journal and RTÉ News (Pat McGrath). Tally reporting by Gavan Reilly (Virgin Media News).

🞹The sixth essay in this body of work, No Form To Hold It, published on Medium 15th May 2026.

⏩Louth For Ever writes on Irish politics and constitutional change. Follow for analysis of Ireland’s democratic future as it’s constructed by those actually engaged in the work.

The Week The Framework Spoke

Dixie Elliot ✊We know who the first man to set foot on the moon was. 

But did you know that the first people to set foot in Ireland were immigrants?
 
That and other things you might not know:

The first people to arrive in Ireland were Mesolithic hunter-gathers who travelled across Europe and arrived in Ireland by boat around 8,000 BC.
 
So were the first inhabitants of Ireland immigrants or were they Irish?

Well Ireland hadn't got an name yet so obviously they weren't Irish.
 
Then in 4,500 BC the Neolithic Farmers came from Anatolia, which would now be known as Turkey.
More bloody immigrants!

Ireland still wasn't called Ireland so they weren't Irish either which meant that the country was full of foreigners, even before the Irish came.
 
Fuck off! Where did the Irish come from if there was nowhere called Ireland?

During the Bronze and Iron ages the Celts were moving around central Europe including Northern Spain. These people were described as Keltoi by the Greeks and they spoke a precursor to the modern Celtic languages. Along the way they integrated with other tribes, stayed in the one place or moved on.

Around 500BC the first of these Keltoi people arrived in Ireland. They didn't invade, they just arrived and kept coming over the course of time and settled here. The language these people spoke is well over a thousand years older than the English language which originated in and around where Germany is today. The Anglo-Saxons eventually brought the English language to Britain.
 
The Celts called the land they settled in Ériu, their word for describing a 'fertile land.' In their mythology Ériu became the name of a goddess and together with her sisters, Banba and Fódla, she represented the spirit of the island.

So Ireland eventually had a name.

In 795 AD the Vikings began raiding the coastal areas of Ireland, plundering and pillaging. These Norsemen, who were primarily from Norway, were a right shower of baduns. They eventually began to settle along the coast, so that they'd have somewhere to park their longships. Viking ports were eventually established at Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick, which became the first large towns in Ireland.

After they had been defeated by an army led by the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, the Vikings gave up on the idea of conquering Ireland. Instead, the Norse established coastal settlements like Dublin and increasingly assimilated into Irish society.
However, the kinsmen of the Viking Norsemen, who were also primarily from Norway, had been at the same carry-on in in what would become known as Normandy in northwestern France, which was of course named after themselves and they became known as the Normans.
 
This lot eventually got round to invading England which, at the time, had been ruled by the Anglo-Saxons, who, as I already pointed out, originally came from Germany. The Normans, led by William the Conqueror, defeated the Anglo-Saxons, led by King Harold at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Apparently he was keeping an eye on them when an arrow went clean through that eye killing him stone dead. Or so they say.
 
Over time the victorious Normans intermarried with the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts in Britain and became known as the Anglo-Normans.

In 1167 Dermot MacMurrough, the deposed King of Leinster, asked the English King Henry ll to help him regain his territory after rival Irish lords and the High King of Ireland Rory O'Connor forced him into exile. Henry told him to give a guy called Strongbow a shout. Strongbow had just discovered that if you crush apples you can get an alcoholic drink called cider, which was becoming very popular at the time, and he didn't want to go to Ireland in case others started into the cider making business while he was away invading.
 
MacMurrough told Strongbow that if he gave him a hand out he'd give him his daughter Aoife's hand in marriage. She was a fine looking colleen so Strongbow agreed to help him and in 1169 the Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland. MacMurrough became the King of Leinster again and Strongbow cider became the most popular alcoholic drink in Ireland until Arthur Guinness invented the black stuff.
Strongbow married Aoife and MacMurrough was glad to be back on his throne, although his arse wasn't on it for more than two years before he died in 1171. The Anglo-Normans went on to help themselves to the rest of Ireland.
 
Now here's the thing. Over time the Anglo-Normans assimilated into Gaelic society, adopted the Irish language, embraced local customs, and intermarried with the native clans. They famously became 'more Irish than the Irish themselves.'

The English Crown weren't having any of this as it threatened their control over Ireland, so Parliament passed the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1366. These laws strictly banned the Anglo-Normans from speaking Irish, adopting Irish names, dressing like the Gaels, or marrying native Irish people. However, these laws largely failed to stop the ongoing Gaelicisation of the Anglo-Normans.

So, in brief, the first people to arrive on these shores were immigrants. These immigrants kept coming until the first of the Celts turned up and they too were immigrants.
 
The Vikings and the Anglo-Normans came as invaders not immigrants, but Irish culture suited them just fine so they got tore into it and out came the jugs of Strongbow.

Irish culture, including the Gaelic language was as strong as it had always been. It remained that way until the time of the Irish Holocaust (The Famine) in 1845 when the deliberate starvation of the poor Irish people forced them to flee from the shores of Ireland, in coffin ships, seeking a better way of life. They went for the most part to America, where racism was waiting to greet them as soon as they arrived on Ellis Island in New York.

The London Times, at a time when the exodus was at it's most pitiful, screamed with delight in one of its editorials...

They are going! They are going! The Irish are going with a vengeance. Soon a Celt will be as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan. 

It is estimated that up to 2 million people left Ireland for North America, Australia, and Britain to escape starvation and disease between the years 1845 and 1855. Since then, between 9 and 10 million Irish born people have emigrated from this country.
 
Today the Irish diaspora; that being all those known to have Irish ancestors, is believed to be in the region of over 100 million people, which is more than fifteen times the population of the island of Ireland. Which is the reason why Saint Patrick's Day is the most widely celebrated national holiday across the world. More so than even the USA's 4th of July.

How ironic that the Far-Right in Ireland accuses todays foreign immigrants of being 'invaders' who are a 'threat to our culture' and that within twenty years Irish people will be as rare in Ireland as Eskimos in the Sahara Desert. Oh and Muslims will impose Sharia Law on the few remaining Irish people who will be driven into the likes of the Mourne Mountains or the bogs round Barnesmore Gap.
 
You don't need to ridicule that warped logic as it ridicules itself.

James Connolly wrote in July 1900:
 
All races are mixed more or less; a pure race does not exist. The modern Irish race is a composite blending - on the original Celtic stock have been grafted shoots from all the adventurous races of the continent.

Roger Casement made clear his feelings on racial purity back in 1904:

The more we love our land and wish to help her people the more keenly we feel we cannot turn a deaf ear to suffering and injustice in any part of the world . . . 
And remember that a Nation is a very complex thing – it never does consist, it never has consisted of men of one blood or of one single race. It is like a river which rises far off in the hills and has many sources, many converging streams before it becomes one great stream.
 
Bobby Sands scrawled his thoughts on racial unity on a filthy wall in his prison cell when he wrote his famous poem:

The 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 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 whole history of Ireland has been one of immigration. The immigrant came to these shores at the beginning of time in search of a better way of life. In more recent centuries the Irish immigrant was forced to leave these shores in search of a better way of life.
 
Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out. - Pierre Berton

 

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Where Did The Irish Come From If There Was Nowhere Called Ireland?

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)