Ireland’s Whiteboy summer

Growing anger at migration draws on a historical tradition

According to family lore my great-grandfather, a printer in Dublin named Michael Kenny, had to leave the country after taking part in the 1867 Fenian Rising against British rule.

Although a newspaper later described him as ‘a well-known '67 man’, my uncle, who was much older than mum and so better connected to family history, told this story with a fair degree of scepticism. Perhaps, as with the 300,000 men who took part in the Easter Rising, many old veterans of Irish freedom developed hazy memories of events as they got older. I guess we’ll never know.

That rebellion, like so many in Irish history, ended in failure against a much stronger neighbour, but the folk memory of resistance to foreign rule left a deep imprint on the country’s self-image, some of it noble, some of it ugly.

This can be seen in the eruption of anti-migrant protests which have grown in recent weeks, accelerated by the arrival of significant but unknown numbers from Ireland’s neighbour trying to escape deportation to Rwanda.

As the (London) Times reported: ‘Ireland has had 6,739 asylum applications since January, an 87 per cent increase compared with the previous year. Figures show that 91 per cent of recent asylum seekers coming into the country now come from Northern Ireland with migrants taking advantage of the lack of checkpoints on the border. The measure was kept after Brexit due to fears that a visible border could put the peace process at risk and endanger Ireland’s place in the single market.’

This has caused problems between the British and Irish governments, since the former has said it will not accept the return of asylum seekers, just as France doesn’t accept people returned by Britain.

Yet while some do indeed want to avoid Britain’s African scheme, ‘many who left the UK stat[ed] they had decided to because they viewed Ireland as a more hospitable and efficient country. For some of the migrants, who come from countries as far afield as Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan, it was Ireland’s history of solidarity with the Palestinian people that endeared the country to them.’

‘They treat Palestinians with more respect here. Ireland has better relations with Palestine than Britain and that’s why I came here,’ one Palestinian said, as ‘he gazed in the direction of Palestine and Ireland flags flying above the tents’.

That maybe true, but locals are clearly unhappy, and one shop owner told the paper that: ‘There’s something simmering. I feel like it’s on the cusp of something and there’s nobody answering with no accountability and no discussion with people in the area. It’s a dire situation. I’ve got a feeling that it’s close to kicking off.’

It certainly seems to be, with marches like that at Newtownmountkennedy in Co. Wicklow, where 60 migrants were earmarked for a town of less than 3,000 people. Last week there was a protest in Dublin, the largest yet, and Aris Roussinos described how:‘Outside the GPO, the site of the Easter rebellion that eventually created the modern Irish state, Gardaí Public Order units in body armour separated the thousands of marchers from a few dozen Left-wing counter-protestors, waving Palestinian and Spanish Republican flags and chanting “Refugees are welcome here” through loudhailers.’

The speed and strength of Ireland’s anti-migrant protests have been surprising, and far more vehement than anything seen in Britain (with the exception of Liverpool, itself a city with a strong Irish heritage). It belies the image held by many of its inhabitants, and clearly by many new arrivals, that it is a more welcoming society that stands in solidarity with the world’s downtrodden.