On Saturday, O’Connell Street became a sea of tricolours held aloft by tens of thousands of marchers. Perhaps the most notable thing about the sheer size of the crowd was that those attending had gathered in response to that increasingly rare phenomenon in modern politics, a purely grassroots effort.
There were no tax-payer funded NGOs or trade unions assisting with organisation, no carefully-placed media stories helping with advance publicity, no political parties eager to show their virtue by standing with ordinary Irish people who have repeatedly told pollsters that they believe Ireland’s immigration policy is out of control. In fact, those entities – the NGOs, the media, the political parties – are always firmly on the opposing side for this contentious issue, with Sinn Féin joining a rag-tag body of comrades at the weekend who described the tens of thousands of people who likely used to vote for the party as ‘fascists’.
In general, Irish people are not instinctive protesters. To pull such a enormous crowd for a public demonstration in the teeth of persistent opposition and name-calling from the establishment is a very significant achievement. It was a reminder of the enduring power of national identity – the desire of a distinct people to embrace not just belonging and unity, but a sense of history, tradition, familiarity, and deep-rooted cohesion that collectively matters.
In this country, as in much of the Western world, the establishment mostly sees nationalism as a threat, in particular to the global financial order which values open economies and open borders above all else. They often overlook the obvious, that any government worth its salt should realise that an economy can be competitive and innovative but also put the wellbeing of the people and the nation first. There is nothing backward-looking about that kind of sovereignty, just as there is nothing narrow or insular in the basic premise of nationalism, which is that Ireland, in common with every other nation, has the right to self-determination, that her people should be free to control their destiny, and to preserve a distinct and enduring culture.
Saturday’s march was described by organisers as an Easter Rising commemoration to pay respect to “those who fought and gave their lives to preserve the Irish nation and create the Irish Republic”. It’s likely that Micheál Martin and others who are eager to downplay the burgeoning dissatisfaction with their immigration policies also underestimate the power of that call.
For many Irish people, Easter and the 1916 Rising are inextricably linked, not just because of the concatenation of circumstances that led to the fatal judgements and executions, but because of the element of sacrifice that made both events truly extraordinary.
The sacrifice of Calvary, of course, changed the world. It became the greatest story of ever told. There can be no direct comparison. But the Easter Rising changed the course of Irish history, and struck a blow for freedom that resonated not just after its leaders were executed, but for generations. In 2016, for example, Fine Gael discovered – perhaps to its electoral cost – that attempts to distort the centennial commemorations of the Easter Rising, and make of them an anodyne celebration of the British Empire and its agents as much as our own history, badly backfired.
That resistance to revisionism, that insistence that the Irish people, as much as any other nation, was entitled to commemorate not just those who fought for freedom, but also hold fast to an ancient culture that has withstood centuries of invasion and oppression and trial, is not extinguished by promises of Starbucks or avocado toast. These are deep, lasting convictions, shaped by place of birth, by roots in parish and townland, by generations of family who knew where they came from and where they belonged.
Any gathering of tens of thousands in protest around identity will always bring to mind O’Connell’s Monster Meetings, or the Land League’s success in rallying vast numbers of tenant farmers in Claremorris and Bodyke and elsewhere. It’s significant perhaps, that the words now widely described by supporters of mass immigration as racist – Ireland for the Irish – were spoken by O’Connell at Mullaghmast and echoed by many since, including Davitt and Pearse.
Only a fool or an antagonist would take those words to mean that no-one else was ever welcome: instead the statement meant then, as it means now, that without the Irish people there is no Ireland, we would simply become a collection of buildings and increasingly autonomous populations, shifting to meet the demands of global corporations rather than of our families, our communities, and our heritage. Something infinitely valuable, infinitely beautiful, and infinitely unique, would be lost.
In recent times, just as in the past, the generosity and the compassion of Ireland’s people has been used against us. We are described as bigoted and indifferent to suffering if we point out that immigration has soared while our own people are leaving in droves. We are told it is unacceptable and a threat to social order to make the entirely valid and indisputable assertion that the additional burdens on housing and health are unsustainable. And we are told that we are expressing hate if we say that the sweeping demographic changes currently being foisted on the country are accelerating the danger that Ireland will lose the traditions and culture that we fought so long and hard to keep alive.
Yet, that distinct culture matters. That feeling of national identity runs very deep, from the hurling fields of Killeagh, to the naming of an old tune, to the history that imbues the turn of the road and the mound in the field, to the fact that our language is one of the oldest in the world, our féiniúlacht is that, in the words of Davis, was that of a “proud and haughty race”.
That is, perhaps, what brought tens of thousands to crowd O’Connell Street on Saturday: to pack the main street of the city that faced down an empire for the sake of freedom, for – in the words of the Proclamation – the “right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible”. The political establishment and the chattering classes may sneer at the nationalism that seeks to lift up Ireland and her people, but the truth is that no-one ever fought and sacrificed to be a global citizen or a good European.
Despite the astroturf ‘Ireland for All’ groups, and the EU’s endless regulations, and the relentless media distortion of the concerns of local communities, Irish people are increasingly believing the evidence of their own eyes. The scale of change in the country is unprecedented and unsettling, dwarfing even the scale of the plantations, another historical upheaval which has become verboten to discuss.
More than 22% of people living in Ireland were not born here, an enormous change with unacknowledged, undiscussed consequences. If the trajectory of that change is not corrected, what will Ireland become? Are we still Ireland if Irish people become a minority? The establishment can scold and condemn all it wants, but the tens of thousands marching on Saturday will no longer be silenced on these issues.
Do the enormous crowds who gathered signify that we are on the cusp of the sort of political change that is sweeping across Europe? Because just as it is the prerogative of every Irish person to belong to a distinct nation shaped by its people, it is also the right of the Danes and the Germans and the British to assert and protect their own culture – as it is the right of those living in Pakistan and India and Ethiopia.
Meeting the challenges of political organisation and messaging and unity will ultimately decide the answer to that question. At the Custom House on Saturday, tens of thousands sang Amhrán na bhFiann together. “Seantír ár sinsear” – the ancient country of our ancestors. That is a powerful, enduring call. The coming months and years are key to how it shall be answered.