On Easter Monday in 1916, two flags were hoisted above the GPO as the Rising began: Eamon Bulfin, born in Argentina to Irish parents and a former pupil of St Enda’s, raised the Green flag of the Republic, while a cousin of Michael Collins, Gearóid O’Sullivan, hoisted the Tri-Colour.
As most schoolchildren will know, the Tricolour was first “proudly borne” and presented by the Irish nationalist and leader of the Young Irelanders, Thomas Francis Meagher in 1848 when he said: “I present it to my native land, and I trust that the old country will not refuse this symbol of a new life from one of her youngest children.”
“The white in the centre signifies a lasting truce between the ‘orange’ and the ‘green’ — and I trust that beneath its folds, the hands of the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic may be clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood,” he said.
At the time Meagher presented the Tricolour, a number of types of flags were being used by the Irish nationalist movement. Though my own preference would have been the green flag with the harp, the Tricolour had been building in significance – featuring prominently at the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa – and flown over several of the buildings seized in the Rising. It was adopted as the official flag of the Irish Republic in 1919.
Flags, of course, have particular meaning and have done so even prior to the idea of the nation state when they signified clan and allegiance, brought to battle as banners not just of identity but of loyalty. As nationalism rises across Europe, the flag remains a powerful symbol of a shared history and culture, representing pride, belonging, and meaning. Most of us have no allegiance to the EU flag, for example. We’re not really, in any meaningful way, citizens of Europe or the world. We’re Irish: that’s the significant identity, much as the bureaucrats in Brussels might wish otherwise.
It was pretty astonishing then, to hear the claim being made yesterday on Newstalk that a house flying a tricolour is more likely to be a “racist house”. Although I’m clearly wrong, I though the media had moved – or rather been dragged – away from the narrative that people who are nationalistic or opposed to uncontrolled immigration are racist.
“When you pass a house now that has a tricolour outside it, certainly I’m much more likely to think ‘that’s probably a racist house’, rather than think there’s any sort of national pride,” political correspondent Seán Defoe said, claiming that the flag had been taken over by “far-right agitators”. Sounding like a prissy schoolmarm in an appeal to respectability he said that most people wouldn’t want to be associated with said scruffy flag wavers – and that he was upset that the flag had been “taken away from us”.
The ever-reliable Mick Clifford said all the usual guff about ‘hate’ and ‘intolerance’ and complained about people misappropriating the flag (as if he had been appointed Chief Adjudicator in the use of tricolours), while Shane Coleman said that we didn’t do enough in schools to engender a love of the country’s flag. Clifford added that seeing the national flag flying outside a home would indicate, at the very least, that those who lived there were “anti-immigrant”.
Newstalk have now taken the video down from X, most likely because of the backlash it was receiving, or maybe because these were such vapid yet pernicious statements to make in the first place, or maybe because the notion that journalists could decide who can and can’t wave an Irish flag is fundamentally undemocratic.
But what is a “racist household” exactly? In the narrative being sold by the Irish media, is it simply people who feel that immigration is out of control in Ireland, given that at least 22% of the people living here are foreign-born?
In that case, are the 72% of Irish people polled who said they wanted strict limits on immigration and felt the government had lost control on the issue likely to be living in a racist household?
Immigration is now an issue around which there is broad public support – for limiting the numbers coming to the country and questioning the government’s handling of those arriving both legally and illegally. That public consensus has happened despite the media’s persistent attempts to shut down debate and depict ordinary communities as hateful and racist.
Their narrative broke down precisely because this issue began to negatively impact so many communities: from East Wall to Carna; from Ballyvaughan to Coolock; from Rosslare to Carrickmacross. In towns and villages across the country, packed meetings were attended by local people who then began daily protests which were maintained by dint of sheer commitment to their community and very often in the face of nasty media hostility.
Were they all living in racist households? Or were they simply people who were practising their Constitutional right to protest and to oppose harmful and dangerous government policies.
The Tricolour began to appear at these protests precisely because local people weren’t being listened to by their government, so they looked to something greater, more enduring, more inspirational and meaningful than those sitting in the Dáil spouting platitudes – they looked to what the Proclamation described as the old tradition of nationhood, to what the flag actually represents, not the empty promise of globalism, but the ancient call of belonging to a people whose have been rooted in this land for thousands of years.
The talking heads in the Irish media generally don’t like nationalism, mostly because its a strong and powerful instinct they can’t control, and also because they wanted Irish people to buy into the idea that there was nothing more to the nation and the country than to be a hub for global investment and profiteers seeking to drive down wages while house prices soared, our young people emigrated, and the cost of living made actual living almost impossible.
Shane Coleman was right about one thing – the state has never done enough to encourage national pride or to engender a love of the flag – just as they have always dragged their heels on the language and on traditional music, and even in some cases seemed reluctant to support Gaelic games. Something to do with what Micheál Martin decries as “backward-looking sovereignty”, perhaps.
In the past month, a sea of tricolours has accompanied huge numbers of protesters opposing out on control immigration in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, and will likely be seen again on June 22nd when another march is planned. People at those marches and elsewhere are free to wave whatever flag they like. They are Irish, proud to be Irish, proud of their flag, and proud of their collective identify as an Irish nation. Nothing about that is “racist” or a “misappropriation”.
The pearl-clutchers must be left regretting that the hate-speech bill has been scrapped (for now): if it had passed perhaps the great and good could have troubled an Garda Síochána to deliver severe warnings to a select number of household for their suspicious and hateful flag waving; issuing stern cautions against feelings of national pride, and watching out for any signs of questioning the establishment on immigration or any other issue. As it is, they are left with the usual name-calling and vilification which isn’t working any longer, as people fly their flags in defiance and pride.
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