Last week, there was a lot of media attention given to the large number of asylum seekers and migrants who had set up tents around the International Protection Offices in Mount Street.
Reporters talked to people living in the tents who were from Ghana, South Africa and Brazil – which are not war-torn countries – and from Ukraine, which obviously is.
None of those articles pointed to the elephant in the room: that the shortage of accommodation which has people in tents is being driven by the decision of the government to invite the world here at the same time as they were telling us that there was no limit to the number of Ukrainian refugees Ireland had to take.
In effect, Roderic O’Gorman and the rest of the Cabinet are responsible for people living in tents around the Mount Street office. They caused that to happen.
But it’s looking increasingly likely that it was the far-left who set up what had all the appearances of an Occupy Pearse Street camp, seeking to use homeless migrants to add to the already significant difficulties of the area in order to make a political point.
The beginnings of a “tented city” on Sandwith Street in Dublin’s south inner city, not 300 yards from Leinster House, had the trappings, not so much of an organic creation, but of an initiative of the domestic far-left, who appear intent on provoking racial tensions in working class areas.
Take the left’s efforts to portray Ireland as a racist country to migrants newly arriving on our shores, which can be seen on Twitter, across the media’s coverage of their claims, and on the streets.
Not one Ukrainian refugees in tents. State Sponsored Racism. Brutal times for refugees in Ireland pic.twitter.com/4gQVHBQePg
— Abolish Direct Provision Campaign (@AbolishDirect) May 11, 2023
The International Protection Office in Dublin is executing Minister Roderic O'Gorman racist policy daily by leaving black and brown refugees to sleep in the tents. @DSGJustice this is why you changed departments? pic.twitter.com/azowwQZ45U
— Abolish Direct Provision Campaign (@AbolishDirect) May 10, 2023
Working people in areas like East Wall, across Dublin, and in small rural towns, who are bearing a disproportionate burden of the unsustainable numbers arriving, are also depicted as racists if they raise any objections – not just by the left, but by government TDs.
But, in my opinion, the decision to set up camp on Sandwith Street is the clearest example of how migrants and asylum seekers are cynically being used by the far left.
That provenance of the camp is evident even in the banners which festoon the fencing close to the “shanty”.
They were a collection of the usual leftie slogans about fighting racism and public ownership and what not – and one even promotes the notion of “class war” – though this is more apt than whatever clown who daubed it might have imagined.
It stretches the bounds of all credibility that migrants, newly arrived to this country, organised themselves within days into a camp festooned with banners about fighting racism and opposing NATO, and Class War, with flags and graffiti bearing the starry plough.
It’s also significant that high-profile members of PBP and other ‘revolutionary left’ were all over this venture.
Of course, it could be argued that what we are witnessing in many parts of the country is indeed a “class war.” But its one mostly waged by ultra leftist extremists, some of whom have state paid “jobs” in the NGO sector, and relentlessly propagandised across all parts of the bien pensant liberal left.
According to locals in Pearse Street, Fianna Fáil representative Liz Watson contacted the Gardaí and Dublin City Council to voice the concerns by local residents about what was happening on their doorstep, and in particular over the attempt to occupy the abandoned flats in St. Andrew’s Court. (Ms Watson has not replied to queries on the issue at time of going to press)
It would appear that the organisers were planning to occupy the abandoned building and establish a squat for migrants and asylum seekers.
Why wouldn’t local people be understandably upset about a mini-shanty town being set up where they live, with squalor from same already evident, and with obvious safety fears for people living nearby.
None of the commentators clutching their pearls about opposition from the local people would put up with tents and human waste in their areas for 10 minutes.
Several far-left activists who were involved in establishing previous squats in the city have made clear their support for the camp at Sandwith Street, and have been seen on camera at conflict points.
Previous squats in the city were closed down following incidents of violence including alleged sexual assaults and drug dealing.
So, not surprisingly, the local community close to the current venture were not enthusiastic about this latest project in the millenarian fantasy of the bourgeois left.
Among those who attached themselves to the Sandwith Street camp was apparent left-wing activist Stephen Bedford, who was arrested after knocking down a man taking part in the ‘East Wall Says No’ campaign on the North Strand several months ago.
Some of the actions of the other people at the camp in Sandwith Street will not have endeared them to the locals.
In one video, a man is seen telling local people asking about the camp that ‘80 million Irish people are in the diaspora’, which seems like a phrase that comes from the careful coaching of an NGO.
Then, in another confrontation, the same man seizes a long pole and attacks local people who are taking down the banners around the camp, before the situation escalates further.
Standing behind this chap were several masked men who, it is believed, are members of one of the myriad retro fantasy republican re-enactment groups.
Their enthusiasm for “bashing the fash” and “punching Nazis” and the devil-knows-what, did not survive the challenge of several local youths, and they left their comrade to do all the No Pasaraning himself.
https://twitter.com/allovernow2010/status/1658230620785463296
Local people told Gript reporter Fatima Gunning, when she attended a protest in the area which was being countered by lefties and NGO staff, that they didn’t recognise the peoples chanting ‘Refugees are welcome here’ from the area.
No doubt when they were finished shouting at the undeserving working-class, many of them sloped off home to Dundrum or Clontarf.
I’m being told the crowd shouting “refugees welcome here” are not in fact from the area pic.twitter.com/S8JwYe6edc
— Fatima Gunning (@fatima_gunning) May 12, 2023
None of this changes the fact that sleeping in a tent is a pretty sub-optimal situation – or that the government’s reckless immigration policies are ultimately to blame.
But the camp at Sandwith Street bore all the hallmarks of a ploy by left-wing extremists to use asylum seekers for their own purposes.
That in itself would be of minor consequence were it not for the fact that the policies and platitudes of those with actual power – including sections of the state which pays the wages of some of the “activists” – were not sustaining the climate that has led to this.
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