A noticeable aspect of the widespread protest movement against the siting of refugee accommodation centres has been that the organisers and participants appear to have few supporters among what is perhaps euphemistically referred to as the “community” sector.
When the protests began to escalate in places like East Wall, Ballymun and Finglas in late 2022 the amount of groups who were clamouring to denigrate the protestors as racists and fascists and outside agitators would have persuaded you that there was no genuine support for the movement. The same occurred in other locations. New “community” groups launched to tackle the opposition, bearing the title Gloccamorra For All and such like.
When the protests began it was also noticeable that there were few elected representatives prepared to stand with them. That situation has changed as a large number of candidates including independents, members of smaller parties, and some who were or still are members of Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin and Fine Gael but who defied the party line, not only supported the locals but were re-elected largely or in part on the basis of their support for the protests.
On the basis of the local and European election results, I calculated the “anti-establishment right” vote at more than 20%. The evidence of the elections, and of several opinion polls, would perhaps point to a gap between the “community” as represented by those NGOs or self-styled community groups and politicians claiming to be its voice, and what the actual community might have been thinking. Why was this?
Based on what we know of the NGO sector I have no difficulty in stating that the monolithic consensus on this issue is attributable to their almost complete dependence on the state. They are dependent on the state for funding and they are also dependent on it for being able to lobby the state in pursuit of its objectives, and of course for more funding.
It is an insidious circle and, while dependent on the state, the NGOs have also been able to exert considerable influence on the state and on the political establishment. It is also true that while much of the impetus and seed capital for the NGO sector came from the foundations and in particular Chuck Feeney’s Atlantic Philanthropies, that the NGOs have been grafted onto the state through their strategic targeting of state funding.
A Benefacts 2021 report showed the extent and the timeline of the exponential growth in the NGO sector. There were almost three times as many NGOs incorporated in the 1990s as there had been in the 1980s, and a staggering 4,747 incorporated during the period of expansionary budgets between 2000 and 2010.
Bertie Ahern was Minister for Finance and then Taoiseach during much of that period and he clearly regarded the expansion of the “community” or NGO sector as both a social good, but also politically expedient. As the table, and the graph from the Benefacts report, tell us the period of take-off largely overlapped with Ahern’s periods in office.
Ahern and Fianna Fáil were not solely responsible for the NGO boom which was part of the “social partnership” project as both Labour who were in coalition over much of that period, and Fine Gael also bought into the idea. Indeed, it was the Fine Gael/Labour coalition that incorporated the place of the NGOs in policy making through the Public Partnership Networks that were given statutory recognition in the 2014 Local Government Act.
As with many other issues, the Irish political establishment was hugely influenced by what Bill Clinton had done during his period in the White House as President of the United States. His tenure between 1993 and 2001 neatly fits in with a similar NGO trajectory.
The key period of the expansion of the American NGOs was also during the 1990s and the early 2000s. 1990 is often cited as a key year in studies and the numbers of non-profits grew by 75% between 2000 and 2016. In 2020, the US based private foundations, which are major funders of the NGOs had assets of more than one trillion dollars.
The Clintons themselves are still part of that through their own foundation. Yet while the mostly-liberal foundation money is crucial to the American NGOs they receive annual federal funding of around $350 billion, 80% of their income. There are 1.5 million non-profits, and they employ 10 million people, which is over 10% of the workforce.
So, while the US is considered to be less statist than the European economies the American state exercises massive influence as it does here through this means. It is also of course the case that there has been a large degree of institutional capture – the famous “March through the Institutions” celebrated by the post 60s liberal leftist elite.
This has shifted the Overton Window markedly to the left, if not on economics, then on “social policies” such as abortion, policing, education, gender and so on. We know that one.
We have seen previously the enormous clout that the Atlantic dollars had in creating key parts of the NGO sector, and consequently in shaping much of the social policies of the Irish state, particularly as they related to the family and marriage and, of course, abortion.
The foundation money and NGOs and the state funding that came through that was also a key factor in bringing an end to the conflict in the north. Ending the armed conflict was a positive thing and was largely the product of internal debate in the republican movement and its supporters. However, in using the republican leadership to bring that about, the Irish and British states with the backing of Washington as well as the foundation, EU and state grants that were available, also hoped to bring about an effective end to radical Irish nationalism itself.
Sinn Féin and the communities it represents is almost totally dependent now on its relationship with both the British and Irish states and largely owes its party infrastructure to that funding and the €780,000 which was given to it by Chuck Feeney, not to mention other windfall gifts. Astonishingly quickly, Sinn Féin accepted the liberal establishment position on Partition, the EU, abortion, immigration, multinationals and more.
Bertie in helping to create and seed fund the NGOs was successful in incorporating potential dissent. What he also did, by way of unintended consequences, was to provide a huge boost to his political enemies – for the beneficiaries of that state dependency have been the Left and in particular Sinn Féin who dominate the NGO sector and therefore are in a good place to create a class of community sub-dependents who rely on them to mediate with the state for funding.
So you might say that the Bert “took one for the team.” He adopted and implemented a model that is good at channeling and diluting potential opposition to the state itself, regardless of who the governing party or parties happen to be. Beyond that, it also creates a dependency on the part of sporting and cultural and other organisations which surely is not healthy in the long run. Community initiative ought to be facilitated by the state. It ought not be dependent upon it, nor ought it to replace organic volunteerism and initiative.
If there is any comfort for us ‘dissidents’, it is that in the referendums last March were a sound thrashing for the same creatures of the foundations and the entire political establishment and mainstream media, unions and anything else state dependent and colonised by the liberal-left and far-left.
They were bate, and it can be done again if we learn the lessons. We need to do as Irish nationalist and cultural dissidents have done before. Ignore the state, build our own organisations and media just as did the Douglas Hydes and Michael Cusacks and Arthur Griffiths and the founders of the agricultural co-ops and Irish trade unions and many others in the past.
So while the lack of support for the current anti-establishment dissent across a whole range of issues from the NGOs and other state dependents might be regarded as a weakness, it is clearly not. Nor is the naked dislike which the state and the establishment and their creatures hold for us dissidents.
No more than was their lack of funding for and engagement with the Gaelic League and the GAA and Connolly’s ITGWU.