One of the experts featured in the RTÉ documentary “Inside the protests” was Aoife Gallagher. Gallagher has been a regular contributor to such media discussions since her “exposé” of those opposing the lockdown, although the broad criticisms of said lockdowns were shown to be completely justifiable: as was opposition to Covid lockdown extremism – State and leftist extremism that is.
Gallagher’s cameo appearance in the RTÉ documentary was framed as the independent expert opinion of someone with academic credentials that would justify her as having some deep insight into what is going on in a working class community of which I imagine she knows very little. From my personal experience of meeting the people on the ground in Coolock, they were unfairly represented by much of RTÉ’s efforts.
While giving the impression that she is of the Left, Gallagher works for an outfit called Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). Unlike some on the Irish left – although they are all part of a class that is directly dependent on the state or on funding from global corporatism – Gallagher moves in rather more rarefied circles.
Gallagher once worked for Storyful which was founded by former RTÉ Primetime producer Mark Little. Storyful was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in 2013, well before Gallagher went to work for Storyful, so she had no problem working for that outstanding man of the Left either. She has been with the ISD since 2020.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue emerged from the Lord Weidenfeld’s Club of Three which promoted EU centralisation, “Israel’s place in the world”, and good relations with China, and until 2016 was operated through the Trialogue Educational Trust. Weidenfeld was the first President of the ISD. which he imagined as “an activist, non-governmental body able to create networks and strategy groups and work with global leaders in tackling political, social and cultural challenges.” And how, as Billy Connolly might say.
ISD’s state partners include the British Home Office, the United States Department of Homeland Security, the US State Department and the British Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, the successor of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. This Department is the one under which MI6 the foreign intelligence agency formally operates.
Chairman of the steering group of the Club of Three is Michael Maclay, formerly of the British Foreign Office, who founded his own private intelligence group Hakluyt which employed the services of former British intelligence officers and was found to have infiltrate environmental activist groups. One of Hakluyt’s clients was Shell, which was one of the key players in the Corrib gas field controversy some 20 years ago.
In 1993, he was appointed as special advisor to the then Foreign Secretary and former Northern Ireland Secretary Douglas Hurd. None of these lads are likely to be found getting down at a Dublin anarchist squat rave. Although I am sure they have had minor representatives attend such affairs…
Private entities such as the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Club of Three – with an extensive global reach, deep elite connections, and numerous links to state departments and state intelligence services – are a growing feature in public discourse on contentious issues such as immigration. The connection between Michael Maclay with his powerful connections to the very top of the British diplomatic, intelligence and political elite is indicative of that.
Among the ISD board members is Lord Adair of Turner, the former Director of the British Confederation of Industry. Mark Bergman is President of 7Pillars Global Insights, which advises chaps on how to be ethical and make lots of cash, was a founding member of the Obama Foundation and a former member of the Democratic National Committee.
Sasha Havilcek is CEO of the ISD and is a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. Chairperson Michael Lewis is also Chair of the giant South African retailer Foschini and is married to the daughter of Earl Spencer, the brother of the late Princess Diana. Shirley Lord Rosenthal is the former vice President of Colgate. Stephen Zinser co-founded European Credit Management which controlled tens of millions of assets.
Among the funders and partners of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue are major corporations such as Accenture, Microsoft, Google and Spotify. The ISD has connections to major foundation funders including the Rowan Trust, the Gates Foundation, Open Society and, intriguingly, the Community Foundation of Ireland.
All very strange partners for any self-proclaimed person of the Irish Left. Normally speaking, that is, but given the history of the Irish Left and the republican movement over the past decades their being associated with and indeed compromised by such connections is pretty old hat now.
It is worth pointing to the irony of people with clear connections to the British Home Office commenting as part of a programme which could be seen to have portrayed an entire community in Coolock according to the actions of a small number of individuals. That includes a few eijits whose apparent association with Belfast loyalists was rejected by all of the credible local representatives and their supporters including elected members of Dublin City Council and Fingal Council.
It is also surely bizarre that people on the Left ought to be happy to associate themselves with large business owners such Paul Collins, one of the principals of Townbe the company which has the contract for the Coolock IPAS centre and has made in the region of €40 million in accommodation payments – who was sympathetically portrayed in the RTÉ documentary.
What is most interesting of all perhaps is why powerful interests and agencies as channeled through the Institute for Strategic Dialogue ought to have focused so much of their Irish resources on critically examining those who oppose refugee accommodation centres in places like Coolock and other communities around the country. Surely small beer to agencies most often preoccupied with much weightier affairs of the world, you would imagine.
