It’s a strange thing, to read on a public platform a statement from a very prominent person in Irish society that one should be “shunned everywhere by decent people”. Stranger still to see that the statement in question has been “liked” by around three and a half thousand people, and viewed over one hundred thousand times. And perhaps strangest of all, that one would not find it particularly unsettling.
Nevertheless, that was the position in which your correspondent found himself, on Friday afternoon, as the dust was settling on the Dublin riots.
A few weeks ago I said I thought Gript editor John McGuirk should be shunned everywhere by decent people and he cried about it and centrist dads scolded me, and this morning I’d like to reiterate that Gript editor John McGuirk should be shunned everywhere by decent people
— Dr Panti Bliss-Cabrera (@PantiBliss) November 24, 2023
It is, obviously, less than ideal to have the self-styled Queen of Ireland, a long time darling of the Irish media, and an honourary doctor of law from one’s own Alma Mater, tell his almost 100,000 followers that you should be regarded as an undesirable in Irish society – if for no other reason than it makes one a little bit fearful of one’s personal safety. We are often told in Ireland that rhetoric carries consequences, after all.
It becomes more bearable, however, when it slowly dawns upon you that, despite how personal the ranting feels, he is not, in fact, really talking about you personally at all.
The riots in Dublin pose a particular problem for those of a left-leaning sensibility because of the reality of how many of those who took part come, quite obviously, from working class and deprived communities. Just go through the list of those charged for taking part, published by the Irish Times over the weekend, and note the number of times phrases like “no fixed abode”, “unemployed”, or “hostel” appear. Those who have been charged overwhelmingly appear to come from Ireland’s most deprived communities, and least privileged backgrounds. This was, as one might say in the Irish Times about a riot by African Americans in Detroit, a cry for help from the helpless.
It is easier in that context – a better “look”, one might suggest – to rage and rant against a painfully middle-class writer like yours truly than it is to announce that people from the Inner City should be shunned by all decent people.
Then there’s the matter of the proximate cause of the rioting. Which is where the problems really begin. There are two potential analyses.
The first and the most consistently ventilated – the one that presumably justifies my shunning – is that the poor, helpless rioters were greviously mislead by a coalition of sinister figures who have been whipping up hatred and fear in the population for years now, leading the easily led and misguided residents of hostels and flats and no fixed abodes to hate their migrant neighbours and blame all their misfortunes on the innocent and blameless newcomers.
In this analysis, if people like me simply stopped writing about immigration as a political issue, nobody would consider it one at all, and working class communities would unite with the migrants to demand – to coin a phrase – an “Ireland for all”. This theory demands, as a foundational matter, one to believe that if we simply stopped talking about immigration in any critical way, then critical attitudes to immigration would dissipate quickly.
Gript, it should be noted, is not the only outlet to be blamed in this rather novel, and exceedingly popular, theory of the case: Our colleagues at Newstalk and the Sunday Independent are also regular targets of ire, and there is regular journalistic and NGO rage at the idea of “platforming” anybody who does not utter entirely soothing words about how there is no problem at all. This is also the motivating animus behind the regular campaigns against so-called “misinformation”: The idea being that there is only one truth about immigration – that it is an unalloyed good. Anyone who suggests the contrary is guilty of misinformation in spirit, if not in fact.
In this worldview, concerns about immigration in Irish society are entirely the fault of people like me who talk about it and legitimise those concerns. Therefore, we should be shunned.
The problem with it is this: Were I to simply retire to a monastery tomorrow, and stop writing and speaking forever, does anyone seriously believe these concerns would go away? Or that others might speak about them instead?
The second analysis, the one that I personally find much more convincing, goes like this:
For several years now, working class communities have been exposed to immigration and its consequences more than anybody else in Irish society. Personally, for example, this writer lives in a middle class part of rural Ireland which has been entirely unaffected. There are no migrant accommodation centers in my local village; and there is no attendant sense of any unfairness or misgiving inflicted upon us. We are all free, in this part of Tipperary, to be proud of the Ireland of the Welcomes, should we choose to be. I have no doubt that were such a center proposed, locals would unite – probably very sincerely – to say how this particular area is unsuitable, and highlight our dearth of resources in terms of schools and doctors and Gardai. They would be right. We have one already oversubscribed medical centre, and a part-time garda station.
They would likely also be ignored.
They have already been ignored in the inner city in Dublin. As they have been in Killarney, where some pubs and restaurants, I am told, are now advising patrons to take taxis rather than walk due to concerns about public safety. Though it dents my ego to think it, I am not entirely convinced that local women in Santry who say they no longer feel safe walking in their area at night have had that thought implanted in their brain by my writing, or by the occasional commentary of Ciara Kelly and Shane Coleman on Newstalk Breakfast.
It is also, unambiguously, true that in almost every case, people concerned about immigration and its impacts on their communities have tried to express their concerns using the most peaceful, and democratic methods. There have been regular protests. There have been public meetings. There have been marches. There have been peaceful public expressions of genuine anger. Last week alone, there were marches and demonstrations in Killarney, Sallins, and Rosslare, for all the good it will do the participants.
The response to that democratic participation has been, largely, indistinguishable from the response to last week’s rioting. In both cases – whether you are peaceful and respectful, or angry and setting things on fire – the political and chattering classes will condemn you as a racist or a bigot or, as usual, somebody mislead by bad actors like me or Niall Boylan or, just for variety, Donald Trump.
But that raises a question: If all behaviours are condemned equally, and your concerns will not be addressed regardless of how you communicate them, where is the incentive to good behaviour? If 75% of the public express in a poll that they believe immigration to be too high, and the unified political response is “get stuffed”, then what’s the point of playing by the rules, so to speak?
In recent weeks, the country has been exposed to particularly grave examples of serious crimes committed by people who came to this country and contributed little. Josef Puska did not work a day in his Irish life, before he took Ashling Murphy’s life. In Sligo, Yousef Palani was found with large quantities of unexplained cash – cash that could not be explained by his contributions to Irish society – after he murdered two men and blinded another. The person of interest in the present stabbing case is understood to have no record of employment in Ireland over the 23 years of his life spent here, and to have spent more days in court fighting a deportation order made against him in 2008 than he has in gainful employment.
Nobody, upon nobody, objects to hard working people who come here and make a contribution to Irish society – people like an absolute hero, Caio Benicio, working a low-paid job, who risked his own life, and serious injury the other day to save the lives of the intended victim. Without Mr. Benicio, and his two helpers, one Irish and one French, lives would have been lost. Heaven only knows how many.
Irish people welcome those who come here to contribute and build lives for themselves, and we honour them, and we as a country value their contributions. That is a proposition on which there is almost total national unanimity.
But to ignore the flip side – to write it off and pretend that there are not real examples of Ireland’s immigration policy making the country less safe, is to ignore something that an overwhelming majority of people in Ireland can see with their own eyes. They can also see, and hear, the words of their own Government – that we have taken more people than we can cope with. That it is causing real strain on our resources, and services. That we pay more to migrants than any other EU state. That 11,000 Irish people are homeless at the same time.
So Panti Bliss, or whomever, can blame me and others like me if they wish. But the truth is, they are blaming me for noticing what a huge number of people can see all by themselves. They would rather we all shut up. Me, and you, alike.
I suspect they will not get their wish.