Last night’s Breaking Point event featuring some of the leaders of the fuel was not easy to attend. As part of a co-ordinated campaign, hotel staff were contacted and threatened with protests for hosting our discussion.
There were attempts to crash our website, speakers were targeted with ad hominem attacks, and outlets misrepresented the nature of the event as an attempt to restart blockades in Cork. In one especially ugly episode, protesters threatened to ruin a wedding at a venue purely because it was hosting our event as well.
Despite it all, the event went ahead in Dublin yesterday to a packed house.
This was not the first “cancellation” attempt on one of our events. Last year, UCD’s People Before Profit chapter led a campaign to cancel our discussion, Is Ireland Safe?, ironically, on the grounds of safety concerns. While both attempts failed, they also vindicated our raison d’être: Irish political life would benefit from an injection of liberty.
The backlash to our event on fuel protests stood out for its intensity. In a recent piece for Gript, I speculated that this reaction, in particular, was because there were many, of various political stripes, both in our political establishment and on the left, who perceived a threat from the urban and rural disaffected finding a common ground and language. And so, sought to drive a wedge between these communities. If so, they were too late.
John Dallon, Christopher Duffy, and James Geoghan all remarked on the kindness and warm reception the protests received from Dublin locals. They expressed an inclusive vision of their protests, one concerned for all Irish people. Geoghan recounted a story of a Dubliner approaching him during the demonstration, saying, “We expected to see ye here years ago,” before going on to describe how Dubliners themselves had been affected by the cost-of-living and fuel crises.
During the protest on O’Connell Street, locals brought food, sandwiches, and Easter eggs to support the demonstrators. In a recent piece for the European Conservative, Sean Atkinson described scenes of Dubliners and farmers alike singing rebel songs together on O’Connell Bridge.
“There were trad musicians on the street. Fiddles, bodhráns, banjos. People gathered around them, singing as the rain came down. At the centre of it all, a group of older women danced, singing along to Grace by The Dubliners, nearly slipping on the wet pavement, tricolours hanging over their shoulders like they belonged there,” he wrote.
Further fuel protests are expected to take place before the budget in October if the cost of living crisis and fuel prices deepens, the organisers say.
Our final speaker, John McGuirk, discussed the impact that legacy Green party policies were having on all people, regardless of background, classist concerns surrounding respectability and who you can associate with, as well as attempts to other people with labels such as “Far-right” or “Racist”. As Christopher Duffy remarked “labels fall off”.
As always, we provide time for questions, answers, as well as comments at the end of our event, where members of the audience can offer their thoughts. Unfortunately, those who sought to censor the event did not bother to attend to challenge the ideas expressed, but that did allow for an interesting and constructive dialogue.
In particular, Cllr. Malachy Steenson and Cllr. Gavin Pepper, discussed how the themes and experiences of the protests found striking parallels in urban contexts: media hostility, financial pressures, political disconnect, and a cost-of-living crisis made worse by crumbling infrastructure and the pressures of mass-migration.
The core of wh
Polling released during the event captured the mood. Aontú and Independent Ireland had spiked to a record high of, 7pc and 9pc, respectively. During the reception, attendees expressed admiration for both parties. Deputy Ken O’Flynn’s speech during the vote of no confidence debate seemed to have left a strong impression. While there was a palpable sense that the Government parties had let down the country, there was also a sense, despite piecemeal efforts, that Sinn Féin was failing to grasp the full scope of discontent, something, perhaps, also reflected in this polling.
As an activist from Wicklow said during the reception “The opposition feels like more of the same but worse but we dream of something else” Explaining the banality of Ireland’s establishment politics in comparison to its street politics, the blockades and protests since Eastwall, to foreigners is difficult.
In the last election, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were able to insulate themselves from serious loses, largely due to the expansion of Dáil seats and a pre-election “giveaway” budget that used populist spending to shore up voter support, which left the Green Party to absorb much of the anti-government backlash.
Yet, the Government has failed to address the policies from the Green party that generated so much discontent in the first place, a failure now being born out in polling. There has been an efflorescence of local meetings across the country following the fuel protests, I suspect this will continue in the weeks to come.
We look forward to releasing the speeches from the event for all to enjoy.