“What’s behind all the Tricolours put up around the country?” RTÉ asked on Prime Time on Tuesday night, but as the segment played out, it was clear that that the real question was why aren’t these dreadful people raising up flags being dealt with?
The national flag should, of course, engender feelings of national pride and of unity, belonging and identity – as well as being a powerful symbol of a shared history and culture, which in regard to Ireland stretches back for thousands of years. The fact that our ancient culture still clings on despite centuries of colonisation followed by decades of neglect, is not only testament to the enduring strength of deep-rooted identity, but also a reminder of all of the times in our history when diversity was absolutely not our strength.
Now, at a time when the vast majority of people feel that immigration is out of control and should be curtailed, the establishment are fretting that the Tricolour is being used as a rallying cry to assert the entirely reasonable proposition that Ireland should remain Irish. Almost a quarter of people living here were born abroad, its long past time to emulate other European countries who are taking a stand to protect their own culture and identity – wishing to avoid the prospect, as British PM Keir Starmer has now belatedly acknowledged, of becoming ‘a nation of strangers’.
Anyone driving around Dublin city centre will have seen a major uptick in the number of Tricolours being flown. One house in Fairview painted the gable green, white and orange. It’s great to see it. But, clearly, RTÉ doesn’t agree.
In an interview before the Tricolour segment, presenter Sarah McInerney put it to Minister O’Callaghan that he had been accused of using a “right-wing dog whistle” in regard to attempts to encourage those who have had their asylum application rejected to leave the country. (Offering €10,000 to migrants to leave is madness and actually amounts to another pull factor, but that’s not why the Soc Dems et al are opposing it: their default position seems to be to oppose anything that might be seen to restrict immigration)
McInerney appeared indignant when she pressed O’Callaghan on the possibility of processing asylum applications in deportation hubs in countries like Rwanda – a proposal she said that human rights organisations had described as absolutely unacceptable, and shook her head when O’Callaghan defended the idea, arguing that Ireland could not ensure the human rights of migrants would be protected. RTÉ’s current affairs staff wear their opinions mostly on their sleeves. That could be said for me too, I suppose, but we’re not in receipt of hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds to provide prime-time programmes which discuss forbidding the raising of the national flag.
O’Callaghan seemed supportive of the idea of sending Dublin City Council workers, despite reported staff shortages, out to tackle the scourge of Irish flags by removing them from poles – or “forcing” people to take them down according to McInerney. Back in the studio, Miriam O’Callaghan wondered was the Tricolour being “misused” and “if so, should it be taken down”.
The absolute gall of these people – Ryan Tubridy and Leo Varadkar were two other establishment figures who fretted this week that the flag was used in a manner that did not meet with their approval. They have all become so accustomed to believing that they are the privileged arbiters of right and wrong – that they are somehow entitled to tell the Irish people how they are permitted to think – that they’ve utterly failed to grasp two essential truths: the Tricolour does not belong to them but to the nation; and that only an ever-shrinking proportion of the people care a damn for what they think anymore.
The ordinary man and woman living in East Wall or Mayo has the same right as the local council and RTÉ presenters and TDs in the Dáil to bear the flag with pride and to hang it where they see fit. I’ll not take lectures on how and when Irish people can express their nationalism from the people who have presided – and continue to preside – over a country where children with scoliosis suffer in pain, where young people are leaving in droves because they see no future, where record number of people including thousands of children are homeless, where Dublin city is full of menace and drugs, and where the entire edifice relying on corporation tax from multinationals is about to come crashing down.
Dr Anthony Haughey, who was interviewed for Prime Time, rightly said that it wasn’t possible to control how people used flags, nor should it be possible to ban a national symbol. But, fretted Prime Time, was this a “campaign of nationalism”? What on earth would be wrong with that? It was a campaign of nationalism that gave us the Tricolour in the first place. Otherwise the Union Jack might be fluttering over Leinster House.
That’s the thing about national flags – for most countries they signify not just pride, but liberty and freedom. “In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom,” reads the Proclamation, in a call that rings through the ages precisely because flags are so often the focal point of a people rallying and striking for freedoms to which we are entitled as a people and as a nation.
One of those freedoms that Irish people fought and died for is, of course, the liberty to speak your mind, and that includes the right of every person to express opposition to the enormously detrimental immigration policies of successive governments that have exacerbated the housing and healthcare crisis. That the Irish media and a plethora of self-righteous NGOs have conspired to smear the tens of thousands who packed local community halls and local and national protests in opposition to said policies as ‘racists’ is a disgrace.
By extension, their disdain and condemnation extends to the huge majorities who say in poll after poll that they oppose the current immigration policies. And that comes back to this elitist and wholly deluded view of the political and media establishment that they own the flag and can control how Irish people wish to use it.
The summer kicked off with a discussion on Newstalk where it was said that a home flying a Tricolour is more likely to be a “racist house”. Now, Prime Time is talking about forcing people to take down the national flag. One of the contributors to the programme was Prof Niamh Hourigan who would have you believe that the catalyst for the hundreds of Tricolours appearing on flags was a “collaboration” with loyalists, which is utter nonsense. The Tricolour has been part of the protests against the state’s immigration policy since they first began in East Wall – and only a handful of fringe actors have anything to do with trekking to Belfast to stand with hard heads from Sandy Row.
This week on social media also saw a claim from a crane operator who was told to remove his Tricolour being widely shared, and a letter purportedly from a housing agency warning a tenant not to display a flag. Are we drifting towards the entirely absurd and authoritarian position where the state will tell its own people that unsanctioned use of the national flag is banned? As ever with proposals to restrict freedoms – think of the bill to curtail free speech – the one sided discussion will begin on the state broadcaster. Ken O’Flynn TD made the observation on the programme that this conversation is not being had about Ukrainian flags, or Palestinian flags, or Pride flags.
The revered Irish patriot, Terence McSwiney, who was Lord Mayor of Cork before his incarceration and death on hunger strike in 1920, wrote of the importance of honouring the national flag in Principles of Freedom.
Shall we honour the flag we bear by a mean, apologetic front? No! Wherever it is down, lift it; wherever it is challenged, wave it; wherever it is high, salute it; wherever it is victorious, glorify and exult in it. At all times and forever be for it proud, passionate, persistent, jubilant, defiant; stirring hidden memories, kindling old fires, wakening the finer instincts of men.
Journalist Mark Paul, who joined Prime Time from the UK, said that flag raising in that country is indivisible from opposition to the surge in migration in that country. That’s true, as it is true that in this country, concerns about uncontrolled immigration has lead to a growth in nationalism precisely because an unprecedented and rapid change in demographics should prompt a national debate around what we – the Irish people – want the nation to be? Are we a distinct people with a distinct culture which we work to maintain, or are we simply a landing space for multinationals and for cost cutting corporations who have no real interest in what Ireland is or should be?
Freedom to fly our national flag was hard fought and hard won. It is not an expression of hatred of others but a declaration of love for one’s country. Good luck to any state body or government that seeks to ban that.