Paul Murphy

“Despair has raised them to their feet fascism has given them a banner.”

Leon Trotsky, What Is National Socialism? (June 1933)

When writing about fascism, Leon Trotsky reaches again and again for despair as a crucial factor in its emergence as a mass movement. It is also a key reason for the emergence of a small anti-refugee protest movement and the growth of the far-right in Ireland in recent months.

The social base of this worrying development is alienated working and middle class people. They have seen the complete failure of the government to tackle the housing and health crises.

They have lost hope that the government can be pressured into actually seeking to use the wealth in society to benefit the majority. If there is no prospect of increasing the size of our slice of pie, nevermind fighting for the whole pie, people are primed to fight over the crumbs.

Racist prejudices have deep roots in capitalist society. As this mode of production emerged, it did so intertwined with racism. Colonisation, imperialism and the slave trade were central components of racial capitalism.[1] In Ireland, this has particularly taken the form of latent and deep anti-Traveller racism. While this explains the existence of racism as an ongoing social problem, it does not explain why it has come to the fore now.

To understand the roots of the recent ripple of reaction, it is necessary to look back to the political and social developments which have brought us to this point.

Period of struggle and hope

The years from 2014-2018 were a very positive time of mass struggle and dramatic social progress. It is worth looking back at this for two reasons.

Firstly, because it enables us to put the current reactionary movements in context. At the time of writing, the maximum the far-right has been able to mobilise on any anti-refugee demo is 1,000 people. The anti-water charges movement repeatedly outstripped that by a multiple of 100. It reminds us of what can and will be built again by the left.

Secondly, because the roots of the recent rise of the right partially lie in this moment - in the closing of this period of struggle and in a backlash against these progressive movements and the gains they won.

The straw that broke the camel’s back

The period from 2008 to 2014 saw a sense of powerlessness become dominant within the working class. This was the consequence of the failure of the trade union leaders to wage a serious struggle against the imposition of brutal Troika austerity during the Great Recession. This ended with a bang with the explosion of the anti-water charges movement in autumn 2014. Political attitudes and outlook were transformed and a period of radicalisation and activism was opened.

These charges served as the lightning rod through which all of the accumulated discontent over austerity and bank bailouts became channelled. This movement built on the experience of previous campaigns - against water charges in the early 1990s, against bin charges in the early 2000s, against the household charges and property tax from 2011 to 2013.

However, the water charges movement was not a repetition or a continuation of those. It massively outstripped all of them in a qualitative way - even the previous successful non-payment campaign against water charges in the 1990s. What set apart the water charges movement was the extent to which it was a genuinely mass movement with significant spontaneous mobilisation and organisation from below. This was illustrated by the more than a thousand ‘Says No’ Facebook groups established organically, and the thousands of street meetings organised across the country.

It was a movement which had its strongest bases in Council estates. This was epitomised by the anti-meter protests in Ballyphehane and Togher in Cork, in Donaghmede and Coolock in North-East of Dublin and the Jobstown protest against Joan Burton. Council homes had not been liable for the property tax, and therefore most residents had not experienced the defeat of the anti-property tax movement.

There were some confused ideas and even conspiracy theories at the fringes of the movement initially. Some readers will remember the phenomenon of people returning their bills to Irish Water writing ‘No contract, no consent’ on them. This was so widespread that the Sinn Féin candidate in the Dublin South West by-election even said he had returned his bill with that on it on a TV debate![2] This was an attempt to connect to the mood of support for non-payment at a time when Sinn Féin leaders were saying they would be paying.[3]

Similar ideas, such as the bizarre concept of ‘sovereign citizens’, which has its roots in the far-right in America in the 1970s,[4] had been present in the movement against the household and property tax. What was striking was that as the movement developed a mass character, these ideas largely disappeared.

Instead, a variety of left-wing views and strategies became dominant - from those of Brendan Ogle[5] and his allies at the top of Right2Water to those of the Anti-Austerity Alliance and People Before Profit. A study[6] conducted by Rory Hearne of participants in the charges movement revealed that 83.1% would vote for broadly ‘left’ candidates, with 31.7% saying they would vote for People Before Profit / Anti-Austerity Alliance (the forerunner of Solidarity) and 23.9% for Sinn Féin.

The highpoint of the movement was relatively short - from October 2014 to mid 2015. This period saw four mass days of protest of close to or over 100,000 people. The Right2Water coalition called these nationally, but they were primarily built for by the hundreds of community groups which were organising in street meetings and on facebook. The campaigning resulted in a non-payment level of 57% of the first bill which rose to 73% by the time of the final bill - far exceeding the expectation of the anti-water charges campaigners and the worst fears of the establishment.[7]

Ripples of struggle

While the highpoint had been and gone by the end of 2015, both the anti-water charges movement itself and the wider impact it had would continue. Non-payment continued to grow, another major protest was organised a week before the February 2016 general election, and water charges remained a major topic of politics. The arrests of those accused of falsely imprisoning Labour leaders and Tánaiste Joan Burton happened in February 2015 and the trial didn’t take place until June 2017. In October 2016, a month after wearing ‘Repeal’ jumpers in the Dáil, the Anti-Austerity Alliance - People Before Profit bloc hit 9% in an opinion poll.[8] The water charges were not finally abolished until April 2017 and refunds were made later that year.

Most important was the embryonic sense of class consciousness created. Amongst working class people was a real sense of us versus them, with ‘them’ personified in Fine Gael connected businessman Denis O’Brien. This had a clear left edge to it, with an anti-privatisation understanding in particular. Linked to this was a newfound confidence that it was possible to win through struggle.

This contributed to the highest level of activism on the issue of the housing crisis that we have seen, despite the worsening of the crisis since. Apollo House was occupied in December 2016 and became a powerful symbol of resistance to the housing crisis, allowing over 200 homeless people to have a home. This was followed, on a smaller scale, with the Take Back The City occupations on Summerhill Parade and North Frederick Street in Dublin in 2018. This period also saw major protests including a Take Back The City protest in September 2018, and the largest Raise The Roof protests including over 5,000 predominantly young people at a midweek protest in October 2018 and another major mobilisation in March 2019.

There was also an uptick in strike action from a very low base. Days lost to industrial action on a yearly basis increased five fold from the period of 2010-2013 to 2014-2017.[9] Strikers at Luas and Dublin Bus in 2016 and Bus Éireann in 2017 all cited the experience of the water charges in giving them confidence.

Movements for social progress

Side by side with these movements on economic issues were movements for social progress. In May 2015, a referendum passed by 62% of the population which made Ireland, a society and state traditionally dominated by the Catholic Church, the first country in the world to pass a popular referendum for marriage equality. Both the progressive forces involved in Yes Equality and those opposing same-sex marriage understood that this would be the forerunner to another major battle on abortion rights. Later in 2015, after years of campaigning by TENI and others, the Dáil passed one of the most progressive Gender Recognition laws in the world.

In May 2018, an even higher 66% voted to repeal the eighth amendment and in favour of abortion rights. This came on the back of major mobilisations led by the left - repeated protests of tens of thousands, civil disobedience in the form of the illegal distribution of abortion pills and culminated in a widespread movement of tens of thousands canvassing for a Yes vote.

Contrary to the expectations of many political columnists, the same areas which led the way on the water charges delivered some of the highest Yes votes in the country.[10] However, in understanding this period of struggle, it is useful to distinguish between two distinct waves within it with mobilisations drawing from overlapping but distinct sections of society. The first, primarily focused on the water charges, was centred on harder-pressed sections of the working class. Women were to the fore in the campaign at a local level. All age groups were present, however younger people who weren’t likely to owe water charges were less involved.

The second wave, seen in housing activism and culminating in the Repeal movement, was centred around a younger cohort. Women were even more to the fore than in the water charges. Involvement was more evenly spread across different class backgrounds, with a much higher involvement of white collar working class and middle class people.

Closing of period

As the Repeal referendum came to a successful conclusion, the period of upsurge was also coming to an end. While the water charges and Repeal were ‘simple’ issues in the sense of having clear goals and strategies for victory, the housing crisis proved more complex and difficult to develop a mass movement on.

The Catholic right, which had put everything into defeating Repeal and lost to a degree that was unimaginable to them, was embittered. The connections between the traditional Catholic right and a new section of reactionaries was forged at that moment. These are epitomised by Justin Barrett, former head of Youth Defence, and now leader of the National Party and Herman Kelly, leader of the Irish Freedom Party and former acting editor of the Irish Catholic. The Life Institute funded the launching of Gript media[11] at this time.

Leon Trotsky in ‘History of the Russian Revolution’ commented that “a revolution needs from time to time the whip of the counter-revolution”.[12] There was an element of the reverse here, where the whip of social progress created a backlash of reaction. There was a section of conservative people who felt left behind in a country that was rapidly and progressively changing.

This also took place in an international context which saw the election of Trump in November 2016 and a boost for the far-right internationally, with Marine Le Pen getting through to the final round of the French Presidential election in early 2017, and Bolsonaro winning the Brazilian Presidency at the end of 2018.

Presidential elections

This began to take political form in Ireland in the Presidential elections of October 2018. Peter Casey, a right-wing businessman, was polling at around 2% until two weeks out from the election. He ended up coming second with 23.3% after foregrounding reactionary Trumpist rhetoric about Travellers[13] in particular and claiming Ireland was “”slowly becoming a welfare-dependent state, with a sense of entitlement that's become unaffordable.”[14]

These elections were quickly followed by the local and European elections of May 2019. Anti-immigrant sentiment was a noticeable feature on the doors. Poor election results for both Sinn Féin and the socialist left reflected a retreat of the wave of struggle, with SF falling to 9.5%, losing more than a third of their vote, and the renamed Solidarity - People Before Profit dropping more than 1% to less than 2%. Although far-right candidates didn’t make a qualitative breakthrough, they did get better results than previously.

As the fore-runners of RISE wrote in the immediate aftermath:

“... the elections saw the beginnings of an electoral emergence of the far right. Although this happened to a much lesser extent than in the US or across Europe generally, where they now hold more than 10% of the seats in the European Parliament, the two far right candidates in Dublin won an unprecedented 4% of the vote between them.”[15]

From late 2018 to late 2019, the first significant anti-refugee protests emerged. Hundreds of people were mobilised against direct provision centres in Oughterard, Ballinamore. Rooskey and Achill Island. The ugliness of these protests and the fact that they had the far-right at their core were confirmed by arson attacks on centres[16] as well as at Sinn Féin TD, Martin Kenny’s[17], home.

General Election, Covid and Ukraine

The February 2020 General Election couldn’t have been more different than the previous year’s local and European elections. Although significant struggle had not re-emerged, the very fact that this was an election with the possibility of changing government fundamentally altered things.

The embryos of left and class consciousness which had been created through the previous wave of struggle came to the fore once more with the possibility of kicking out Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. This sentiment was encapsulated in the People Before Profit slogan, ‘Break the cycle’. It was Sinn Féin that became the dominant vehicle for it - soaring in the polls in the course of the election campaign itself, rising from the high teens in late 2019 to almost 25% at the election in February 2020.[18] This dynamic remains the most significant political factor today.

However, no sooner was the election over than Covid came to dominate both global and national headlines. On its surface, this was an exogenous shock - from outside the political and economic system. A deeper analysis of the sort pioneered by Rob Wallace[19], Mike Davis[20], and others revealed that in fact it was likely rooted in the metabolic rift imposed by capitalism between humanity and nature.

Contrary to the optimistic predictions of many socialists, the main political consequences of Covid have not been to the benefit of the left, at least in the short to medium-term. Instead, in Ireland and internationally, the far-right turned to Covid conspiracies, using social media to spread disinformation and fear. It was difficult for the left to mobilise significant numbers given the widespread understanding of the dangers of public gatherings. However, the right had no such scruples. For the first time in many decades in Ireland they were able to mobilise thousands of people, in the form of protests against lockdowns.

Of course, those convinced by Covid conspiracies remained a tiny minority. Opinion polls repeatedly showed the vast majority of people were far more in tune with the left and in favour of more effective public health measures than those the government was imposing.[21]

However, the far-right didn’t need to convince the broad mass in order to take a step forward. Instead, they were able to gain a toe-hold in Irish society by making more connections and significantly increasing their number of activists. For the first time in a long time they had hundreds of activists linked to a spectrum of organisations and individuals from the openly fascist National Party to right populists like the Irish Freedom Party and assorted conspiracy theorists. It also gave them a reach on social media which they had never had before.

In February 2022 came Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Another event that on the surface was exogenous, that upon closer examination reveals itself to be a product of a global capitalism which is divided into rival imperialist blocks. One immediate consequence was a significant increase in refugees, with over 70,000 Ukrainians coming to Ireland in 2022.[22] The government, eager to be ‘good Europeans’ and restricted by public sentiment from directly sending armaments, treated these refugees as a humane government would!

They gave them PPS numbers, access to social welfare and basically decent treatment. In doing so, they created a two-tier system, because they refused to extend such basic humanity to those coming from Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan or anywhere else. This discriminatory treatment, which deepened in 2023 to the extent of leaving non-Ukrainians on the street,[23] legitimised the targeting of non-Ukrainians.

The far-right took advantage of the opening of centres for migrants in East Wall to return to explicit campaigning against migrants. This was the start of a wave of anti-migrant mobilisation in Dublin.[24] While it started with an attempt to blame migrants for the housing crisis, the more blatantly racist expressions of ‘unvetted men of military age’ very quickly surfaced - tapping into a deep and racist fear of black and brown men.

The connections built in the aftermath of Repeal and significantly strengthened through Covid were put to use to spread false stories of sexual assaults by migrants and to build for simultaneous supposedly grassroots protests across the country. At the point of writing, they reached a highpoint of a protest of around 1,000 people, as well as multiple local protests of a few hundred.

Revolutionary hope

Thankfully, at the time of writing, this small wave of the far-right appears to have receded. No small thanks to this go to People Before Profit which worked with others to cohere an #IrelandForAll demonstration tens of thousands strong, together with the establishment of local ‘For All’ groups.

However, the far-right will be back. Although their rise has been halted for now, they have achieved an organisational capacity and social media reach which they could have only dreamt of previously. Ireland will not be immune to the rise of the far-right internationally, which is a symptom of the developing capitalist decay. With deepening environmental disaster and heightened inter-imperialist rivalries, there will be even more crises compelling people to flee to countries like Ireland.

Trotsky wrote that when “revolutionary hope embraces the whole proletarian mass, it inevitably pulls behind it on the road of revolution considerable and growing sections of the petty bourgeoisie.”[25] To substantially cut across the far-right, we need a new period of upsurge of class struggle.

Such a movement would focus attention on those really responsible for the housing crisis - the landlords, developers and speculators and the capitalist system they profit from. It would unite broad sections of the working class as happened between 2014 and 2018 in pursuit of common goals. It would bring the prospect of a left government closer. Crucially, it would strengthen the eco-socialist pole with its warning that such a government must break with capitalism in order to avoid disappointing the working class and opening a new opportunity for the far-right.

Article originally published in Issue 10 of Rupture Magazine. Subscribe or purchase previous issues here.

Notes

1. For a further exploration of the concept of racial capitalism, see For an insightful recent critique, see Cedric Robinson, ‘Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition’ (University of North Carolina Press, 1983 republished 2000), Ken Olende, ‘Cedric Robinson, racial capitalism and the return of black radicalism’ International Socialism Journal Issue 169 and ‘Review of Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition by Cedric J. Robinson’ Monthly Review Vol. 40, No. 4: September 1988.

2. ‘Sinn Féin's Dáil favourite: I'm not paying my water charges’, The Journal (3 October 2014) thejournal.ie/sinn-fein-on-water-charges-1704872-Oct2014/

3. ‘Sinn Féin wants water charges halted and high earners to pay more tax’ Irish Times (9 October 2014) irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-fein-wants-water-charges-halted-and-high-earners-to-pay-more-tax-1.1956902

4. ‘What is the 'sovereign citizen' movement?’ BBC News (5 August 2020)

5. For Ogle’s perspective on the anti-water charges book, see his book ‘From Bended Knee to a New Republic: How the Fight for Water is Changing Ireland’ (Liffey Press, 2016)

6. Rory Hearne, ‘The Irish water war, austerity and the ‘Risen people’ (April 2015) maynoothuniversity.ie/sites/default/files/assets/document/TheIrishWaterwar_0.pdf

7. Payment figures were hotly disputed as Irish Water attempted to manipulate the figures to present much higher levels of payment. TheJournal.ie published a ‘Fact Check’ on 1 December 2016 which largely confirmed the 73% figure. thejournal.ie/irish-water-charges-payment-statistics-boycott-3112027-Dec2016

8. RED C poll for Sunday Business Post October 2016 redcresearch.ie/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/SBP-30th-Oct-2016-Poll-Report-GE16.pdf

9. Data from CSO. Total Days lost to industrial action, 2010: 6,602, 2011: 3,695, 2012: 8,486, 2013: 14,965, 2014: 44,015, 2015: 32,964, 2016: 71,647, 2017: 50,191

10. For example, tallies indicated that Jobstown voted 87% Yes, Coolock 88% Yes, the Liberties 88%.

11. ‘Gript: ‘We are closer to the mainstream than the extreme’’ Sunday Times (20 November 2021) thetimes.co.uk/article/gript-we-are-closer-to-the-mainstream-than-the-extreme-6k7fchws3

12. Ch. 35, Leon Trotsky, ‘History of the Russian Revolution’ (1930)

13. ‘Peter Casey refuses to back down over Traveller comments’ Irish Examiner (18 October 2018) irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30876533.html

14. ‘Casey faces new storm over welfare comments’ Irish Independent (22 October 2018) independent.ie/irish-news/presidential-election/casey-faces-new-storm-over-welfare-comments-37443770.html

15. ‘Elections Setback: An Analysis from the Transform The Party faction’ (Distributed 19 June 2019) This was an article written as part of a debate within the Socialist Party.

16. ‘Attacks on Direct Provision centres: Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland & Anti-Racism Network Joint Statement’ (16 January 2019) masi.ie/2019/01/16/attacks-on-direct-provision-centres-movement-of-asylum-seekers-in-ireland-anti-racism-network-joint-statement/

17. ‘Sinister arson attack at home of Sinn Fein's Martin Kenny blamed on 'racist thugs'’ Irish Mirror (28 October 2019) irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/sinister-arson-attack-home-sinn-20745900

18. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2020_Irish_general_election

19. Rob Wallace, ‘Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19’ (Monthly Review Press, September 2020)

20. Mike Davis, ‘The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism’ (Verso, June 2020)

21. The Amárach polls commissioned by the Department of Health make for an interesting tracking of opinion during the pandemic. Available here: gov.ie/en/collection/6b4401-view-the-amarach-public-opinion-survey/

22. CSO, ‘Arrivals from Ukraine in Ireland Series 8’ cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/fp/p-aui/arrivalsfromukraineinirelandseries8/

23. ‘Asylum seekers sleeping rough on the streets of Dublin: 'I don't know what's next'’ TheJournal.ie (27 January 2023) www.thejournal.ie/asylum-seekers-rough-sleeping-dublin-citywest-closure-5980824-Jan2023/

24. There is not space in this article to detail the number of protests. This article from 10 January 2023 deals with some of these developments: rupture.ie/articles/ringingthealarmbell

25. Leon Trotsky, ‘The Turn in the Communist International and the Situation in Germany’ (September 1930) marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1930/300926.htm

The Roots of Despair & Hope