Not 10 miles from the village of Dundrum in Co Tipperary, is the Rock of Cashel, where Brian Ború – mighty slayer of Viking hordes, and victor at the history-making clash in Clontarf – once sat in kingship over Gaelic Ireland. Not much further on is Clonmel – Cluain Meala or the Meadow of Honey – a town whose walls date from the 13th century, and where, in 1650, some 1,500 men under Aodh Dubh Ó Néill gallantly withstood a three-week siege by Oliver Cromwell, inflicting significant casualties on his New Model Army in a rare victory of sorts against the massacre, savagery, and plantation that marked the Cromwellian invasion.
Dundrum played its own part in that conflict. It was part of the stronghold of the O’Dwyers whose courageous resistance against Cromwell were remembered in song and story for centuries. The lands held by Clann Uí Dhuibhir were seized and given to Robert Maude, who like many others in receipt of such stolen property, had served in the Cromwellian army which had inflicted such appalling atrocities on Irish men, women and children.
These huge estates were established as a way of effective and ruthless plantation, the native Irish driven to the margins, or forced by destitution to slave in sugar plantations in Barbados and elsewhere. The rights and the desires of a sovereign people and an ancient culture mattered not a jot to Cromwell or the rapacious planters he put in place. Their purpose was to control and subdue.
In Dundrum this week, as a “small army” of Gardaí succeeded in pushing through three busses of migrants into a centre which has been implacably and steadfastly opposed by the locals, signs at the protest said “Save our village”, “Protect our children” and “When will the Irish government listen to the Irish people and stop the plantation”.
To some observers, the use of that word – plantation – raises hackles. For those on the left who claim to be republican but who are, in fact, more red than green, it prompts reiterations of a shallow view of history summed up with meaningless assertions about the Irish “going everywhere”, as if centuries of forced emigration, coffin ships, and starvation are now somehow to be celebrated. Others feel that its an exaggerated, loaded term which uses historical crimes to evoke inaccurate modern resonations.
Some facts, however, are inescapable. Dundrum is a tiny village, of around 200 inhabitants. The government is forcing local people, at the point of a riot squad baton, to accept at least 280 people who are claiming asylum – with a possibility that this will be expanded to more than 550 strangers arriving. As the locals have repeatedly said, they will be a minority in their own village.
As is now well established, many of those who say they are asylum seekers are, in fact, from safe countries. Thousands have come – and continue to come – without documentation or identification. And in the case of Dundrum, the ratios are absurd: it is the equivalent of landing 30,000 asylum seekers in Dún Laoghaire, or 20,000 in Malahide, without expecting serious oppositon or concern.
Locals say they are anxious and fearful, and that the village as they know it will be destroyed. Speaking mostly to local radio or to platforms like Gript, since they are largely ignored by the rest of the media, they say that their wishes are being ignored and that a migrant centre is being bulldozed through by the might of the State, using the riot squad to bully local residents into submission.
Bullying can be defined as the use of force or threat to aggressively dominate another or others, especially when there is an imbalance of power. That sounds pretty much like what the government is doing to Dundrum.
That’s an important distinction: the perpetrators – the people at fault – in each and every instance where this is happening are those in government, and those in Opposition who support them – not the people they are bussing in. Understanding that distinction is not only morally important, it is key to taking the actions necessary to put a stop to the current reckless, destructive immigration policy.
There was a “pall of sadness” in Dundrum on Tuesday morning, local radio presenter Fran Curry said, pointing to the fact that locals had held vigil at the entrance to the former Dundrum House Hotel for 77 days until the busses were forced through.
The locals did everything right, in terms of what is considered acceptable engagement and peaceful protest. They signed petitions, held peaceful demonstrations, met with the Department of Integration, tried to make the case in court: it was all in vain. They were told to “get out of the way” and threatened with batons and arrest if they blocked the way. When the Department eventually came to talk to them, it was to tell the locals what was happening, not to have a consultation. More of the ‘no veto’ nonsense scripted for TDs from every party from Fine Gael to Sinn Féin.
Fran Curry’s interview with local councillor, Liam Browne, is worth listening to in full below.
“Is this the way we are going to run the country from now on?” Browne asked, with local concerns ignored and the government refusing to listen to its own people.
Why was there a need for a large Garda presence for people who have never caused any trouble in their lives, he asked. The public order unit was brought in to threaten ordinary, decent people, he added – to make it clear to the locals in Dundrum that they would be “beaten off the road” and arrested just as people in Newtownmountkennedy and elsewhere were when they attempted peaceful resistance.
He described what was happening as the “slow destruction of democracy” and said that a pushback by the people was inevitable as increasing numbers across the country came to realise that their wishes were being ignored by the authorities – and that riot squads were being used to enforce government policy.
"We're looking at the slow destruction of democracy in the country.. it's like a dictatorship"
— Irishman (@IrishmanIRL) August 13, 2024
Independent Cllr. Liam Browne speaks about the events in Dundrum on Tipp FM pic.twitter.com/z8GG8fZdvB
“The slow destruction of democracy”. It’s a powerful phrase, and in my opinion, an accurate one. There’s a need to look at the bigger picture and the context in which all of this radical change is being forced on Ireland. This is happening without consent – although consent is both the cornerstone of democracy and a current buzzword seen as essential to all forms of engagement, until, it seems, it comes to immigration.
It’s pretty obvious that small villages like Dundrum are being chosen precisely because their small population means they are less able to resist – and the government parties have calculated that losing 200 votes is a risk worth taking.
It’s also obvious that the same parties believe they can rely on the endless spin from a compliant media to distort the shameful bullying of communities from Finglas to Dundrum to Buncrana, and create false narratives while simultaneously shouting about ‘disinformation’. That media support for government policy is the real reason for the endless hysteria about the ‘far-right’ (a distraction from the real issues), and the parroting of government press releases about increased deportations ‘expected’ when the reality is that the number of migrants claiming asylum continues at record levels, and the establishment continues to try beat us all into submission to accept their policies.
(There are historical parallels here too in regard to state propaganda. Wildly exaggerated accounts of the 1641 rebellion were used by Cromwell’s propagandists, who included the poet John Milton, to whip up hatred against the Irish and justify extreme cruelty by the army in the invasion of Ireland. The power they wielded in doing so lay in the control they had over most forms of communication, a power sought, as we have seen, by the authorities here and elsewhere today.)
Is democracy working when 72% of people say they want “very strict limits on the number of immigrants coming to live in Ireland”, yet the government treats their wishes with contempt? Little wonder that only a third of those polled agreed that politicians were trustworthy, and that some 51% said that “special interests/ lobbyists/NGOs have too much influence on legislation” with just 12% disagreeing. Aren’t these all signs of a democracy being slowly eroded?
And so it continues. The swaggering arrogance of Roderic O’Gorman who doesn’t seem to care what the people of small towns or of disadvantaged areas in cities think as long he can continue dumping record numbers of asylum seekers – again, mostly from safe countries – on top of mostly already-stretched communities. The insistence that Ireland must increase migration without limits as if we hadn’t already a housing and cost of living crisis that is driving our own people, and our young people in particular, out of the country.
The payments of billions continue to a small number of companies who are making an absolute fortune of of so-called asylum accommodation. Right now, the foreign investment funds, the well-connected millionaires, the people who are well-placed to milk this particular taxpayer-funded cash-cow, have never had it so good.
The wealthy and powerful can distort democracy too: wielding influence in political and media circles that often goes unseen but lead to precisely the situation we’re now seeing – where the police force of a constitutional republic is being used as a battering ram for the benefit of private business.
The outright lies of the government also continue: the promise, after the controversy in Roscrea, that any town with only one hotel would not be obliged to give it up for migrant accommodation was immediately turned on its head in Dromahair and Dundrum.
The only thing left for people to do is to wrest political control away from the current government and reverse the tremendous harm that is being caused by this current immigration policy. That is a mammoth task. Building political alternatives – or ensuring existing political alternates can be heard – is an enormous challenge, especially given that most of the media and the entire structures of power are complicit in, and supportive of, unlimited immigration.
But as Liam Browne said on Tipp FM, ordinary people, in increasing numbers, are realising that enforced change, without consent, is being forced upon them. The results of the last local election showed that a huge number of candidates who spoke out strongly on immigration were elected. The slow destruction of democracy can yet be halted.