Ringing the alarm bell
By Paul Murphy
We have a problem.
A small but real racist social movement has emerged in Ireland. We have seen protests outside asylum centres in East Wall, Tallaght, Clondalkin, Killarney, Fermoy, Ballymun and elsewhere. There are going to be more.
The fact that over 200 people protested outside an empty school in Drimnagh on 4 January illustrates the scale of the problem. A few days later, hundreds protested in Ballymun outside a centre holding families including children seeking asylum here.
Unless we on the left get organised now, we are going to see a further qualitative step forward for the organised far-right and the embeddedness of racist ideas.
Far-right pulling the strings
Wherever these protests are, the far-right is just behind or in front. If you watch the video of the protest in Drimnagh, you will see Philip Dwyer (a dog-kicking ex-member of the National Party who was kicked out after making a propaganda video at Ashling Murphy’s grave) take leadership of it. The protest in Ballymun had members of the National Party speaking. Malachy Steenson, a speaker at the Irish Freedom Party Árd Fheis, is a leading organiser of the protests in East Wall. The Irish Freedom Party held an ‘Ireland is full’ protest in Drogheda last weekend, which was fortunately interrupted by a larger crowd welcoming refugees.
However, these protests are not just made up of the consolidated far-right. There are ordinary people participating in the protests and an even larger section of people in working class communities who are sympathetic to the protests. The idea that ‘we have to put our own first’ and that ‘there are too many coming’ is widespread. Why?
Fundamentally, there are two reasons. One is that there are real issues of resources. It isn’t an accident that many of these protests are taking place in communities suffering from deprivation, and where the housing crisis is most acute. The justifiable anger that should be pointed at the corporate landlords, the big developers and the government which serves their interests is being twisted and directed against asylum seekers.
This is able to be twisted partly because people are not feeling confident about their ability to win significant changes from the government on housing or other issues. It is now almost a decade since the height of the movement on water charges that imbued working class communities with a sense of their power, which has now been significantly eroded. If you don’t feel that you can push the government to build more houses, then the idea that more refugees will make it harder to get housing resonates more.
But we would be fooling ourselves if we thought that was just it. The second reason is that racist ideas are widely held in capitalist society - just look at the continued prevalence of anti-Traveller racism. If you listen to why people say they are protesting, significant racist and xenophobic tropes underlie many of them.
When people say they are protesting about “unvetted men of military age” what they are really expressing is fear of black, brown and foreign men. When they say they are worried about the health of their children after refugees were sleeping in their school, they are suggesting that people from other countries are in some way unclean and full of illness. When they say that they need consultation about refugees coming in, they are saying that communities should have a veto about non-Irish people coming into their area.
These ingrained racist ideas have always been present, but have come to the fore in the context of an absence of major social movements led by the left and with far-right activists agitating about the increase in numbers of asylum seekers and refugees. We cannot comprehensively tackle them overnight, but we can progressively challenge them by building a confident and mult-racial left and socialist movement.
Ignoring them will not work
If anyone was hoping that this anti-refugee movement could just be ignored and it will go away, they have hopefully woken up by now. It hasn’t gone away. It is getting bigger and more dangerous.
The hardcore of far-right and fascist activists will be working within these protests to recruit to their organisations and bring people into a long-term project. They will be aware that they made one qualitative step forward during Covid, using opposition to lockdowns and vaccines, to go from complete irrelevance to having a toehold in society. Now they have the opportunity to turn that toehold into a foothold.That doesn’t mean that they are on the verge of coming to power and establishing a theocratic dictatorship that smashes all democratic rights and turns back the clock for women and LGBTQ people. But it could mean winning some seats in the local elections and becoming more and more of a reference point for some people. The experience of other countries suggests that such a rise would also see an increase in physical attacks on migrants and LGBTQ+ people.
Even before any electoral victories for the far-right, their arguments are increasingly being voiced in the Oireachtas. Sharon Keogan in the Seanad has referred to “the agenda of governments worldwide to catapult #LGBTQIA personnel into high-level positions.” In the Dáil, Mattie McGrath used his speaking time on the day of the election of Varadkar as Taoiseach to speak against “the most powerful of all these globalists organisations” referring to the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab and the “great reset”. That such a far-right conspiracy theory got an airing in the Dáil is an indication of the impact these ideas are having.
We know that in many countries the far-right have become serious contenders for power. In Brazil, they only narrowly lost the Presidential elections after four disastrous years of Bolsonaro. His supporters staged a chaotic coup attempt seemingly modelled on the Trumpist attack on the US Congress. In France, Le Pen got over 40% of the vote in the second round of the Presidential elections. The Freedom Party is topping opinion polls in Austria. In Italy, the far-right Brothers of Italy lead the government. The far-right Sweden Democrats lead the Swedish government.
Given the coming recession, and the possibility that the next government may be perceived as a ‘left-led’ government, but one that disappoints people, further opportunities may open up for them in Ireland. If they can establish a foothold now, and a future Sinn Féin-led government disappoints people because of a failure to break with the capitalist market, they could then grow quickly from that point.
We have to do all we can to stop them now.
Establishment attitude
The political establishment and their media supporters are not going to be any help in fighting the far-right. They are responsible for its emergence - from their housing policies which have delivered record levels of homelessness, rent and house prices to their failure to communicate clearly to communities where centres will be located.
They have also played with stoking anti-migrant sentiment whenever they felt it was politically useful to them. Minister for Housing, Darragh O’Brien, the man with whom the buck for providing housing stops, suggested “economic migrants” were putting strain on homeless services! Cathal Crowe, A Fianna Fáil TD, a couple of hours after suggesting that PBP TDs were on Putin’s Christmas card list, called for caps to be placed on refugees coming from Ukraine and elsewhere, before doing a u-turn. This weekend, Matt Cooper, establishment commentator, used his column in the Sunday Business Post to call for “serious discussions about putting limits on immigration and refugees.”
We are going to see more of this. Recent opinion polls have seen Sinn Féin’s support drop somewhat. If it is established that the anti-migrant protests are a factor in this, expect to see this card played hard by sections of the establishment.
It therefore makes no sense to see the government parties or the establishment media as our allies in fighting the far-right. Instead of shielding them from criticism, we should explicitly blame them for the crises they have caused. The Tallaght For All leaflet, distributed by members of People Before Profit, Sinn Féin, the Socialist Party, An Rabharta Glas, Senator Lynn Ruane and others, provides a good example of how to do that. It argues:
“The housing crisis existed long before the war in Ukraine started, and our community has not got the investment it needs over many decades. Solving these problems is the responsibility of the Government, but successive Governments have ruled in the interests of multi-national corporations, absentee landlords and big developers.”
No pasaran
There are many activists who have been doing excellent work in combating the far-right and racist ideas. These are in longstanding organisations like Unite Against Racism and Anti Fascist Action, relatively recent organisations like the Fingal Communities Against Racism, the Far Right Observatory and Le Chéile and the very positive developments we have seen recently with the establishment of East Wall For All, Tallaght For all, Clondalkin For All, Ballymun For All and others.
The development of the ‘For All’ campaigns is extremely positive. They bring together local activists from different parties, trade unions and community organisations. It grounds the anti-racist movement in local communities, talking to the people who could potentially be swept up in these protests.
We need to bring all of these forces together in a major anti-far right conference to discuss developing a serious long-term campaign to stop the far-right, with roots right across the country. Such a strategy should include:
Major national mobilisations against the far-right and racist ideas. There are huge numbers of people disgusted at the protests outside asylum centres. They may currently feel a lack of confidence to organise locally and combat these ideas. By bringing people together in big numbers, we can embolden the anti-racists and push the far-right back. As well as a major national protest as soon as possible, we should try to bring together cultural and musical figures to participate in a ‘Rock Against Racism’ type event mobilising tens of thousands of people.
Building ‘For All’ groups right across the country. These should involve progressive forces, but explicitly exclude government parties and criticise the government. Importantly, they should root themselves in working class communities, pre-empting protests of the far-right where possible and cutting across them. They should seek to organise local mobilisations like the very successful Fermoy rally.
Working within the trade unions to win them to active participation in the fight against racist and far-right ideas. They should be seeking to mobilise their members against the attempts to divide working class people.
Producing material which tackles the propaganda of the far-right for distribution online and in communities. While we should not imply that whole communities are racist, we should not hesitate in tackling the racist lies which are being spread. While we shouldn’t imply that ordinary people are simply dupes of the far-right, we shouldn’t shy away from pointing out the role of the far-right and their real hateful record and aims.
Confronting the far-right where they seek to openly organise. The counter-protest in Drogheda last weekend which was organised at short notice illustrates how people do respond to such a call. We cannot cede the streets to the far-right.
Continuing to organise against the government
Alongside this work of directly challenging the far-right, there needs to be a continuation of organising against the government - on housing, on the cost of living crisis and on healthcare. We need to provide a positive outlet for the anger and alienation that working class communities are feeling. We need to rebuild confidence that we can win substantial changes by mass campaigning.
We should welcome refugees and call for the government to declare a housing emergency - to take emergency measures to accommodate all who need a home. We should demand the introduction of ‘use it or lose it’ legislation to bring the 50,000 homes which have been vacant for six years or more into use, a proper evictions ban, rent controls to bring rents down and a major public house building programme.
By building a movement which targets those actually responsible, and which is led by the left, we can win people to the crucial class argument against racism. That is that racist ideas are damaging to the interests of ‘our own’ - working class people, regardless of where they come from. That it actively serves the interests of the developers, landlords and private health industry to have people divided and blaming refugees for the problems the capitalist system causes.