The United States is unique amongst western countries in that it is the one nation in the west which has a constitution which does not grant the state a functional monopoly on the use of force. While the rest of the world looks at the American attitude to guns with something between astonishment and disgust, many Americans see it differently: The right to bear arms exists precisely because the founders of the United States, having just won their independence from what they claimed to be a tyrannical monarchy (which is somewhat unfair on George III, but there’s no accounting for taste), wanted to ensure that all future rulers would have to think twice before engaging in tyranny themselves. If the public is armed to the teeth, you’d best keep them onside. That’s the entire thinking behind the second amendment.
In Ireland, like almost everywhere else, this is not the case. The state, and the state alone, has a monopoly on the use of force. The individual has some limited power over the state through the use of a vote, and some protection from the state through limited constitutional rights. But it is the state alone that can lock you up, legally invade your home, or in the case of Roscrea yesterday, legally send a force of men to your town to trample over your objections and enforce the will of the state upon you.
It is important, I think, to speak plainly about events in Roscrea yesterday: This was the state exercising raw power, and force, to suppress the objections of a local community who have been deprived of literally any say over who lives in their community.
Now, representatives of the state tend to make some well-worn and misleading arguments to justify this: Nobody, they say, has a veto over who lives in their community. This is a snappy soundbite, but it’s not entirely true. In the case of refugee and migrant accommodation, it is objectively true that people are given far less say than they would be in any other situation, since the normal planning processes have been suspended.
Let us imagine, for example, that the Racket Hall Hotel had been purchased by a developer who proposed to change its use and develop 200 apartments on the site of the former hotel. In that case, the locals would not have had a veto, but they would have had considerable legal opportunities to delay and veto and object to the plans. Indeed, many of our august politicians have made careers out of helping local communities object to new housing developments in their communities. Had the building been proposed to be transformed into accommodation for Irish working families, the locals would have had far more say over events than they have when it is to be used to accommodate international protection applicants. One might well consider this unfair – to Irish families looking for homes, if to nobody else.
Nevertheless, this is where we are at: The state, having apparently decided that the public cannot be persuaded in the matter of accommodation for asylum applicants, has now openly embraced the idea that the public must, and shall, be compelled.
Any time that a politician or a government in a democracy goes down this road, they are taking their political lives in their hands, as well as the very stability of the state. What’s more, the risk is greater the more unpopular the policy is.
Readers of a certain age will recall that Margaret Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, used force to smash the miners strikes of the mid 1980s – including infamously massed cavalry charges against striking (and rioting) miners. The notable difference is that when she did this, Thatcher had a big chunk of the British public behind her in support of the action she was taking. Even at that, it came at great cost to her public image and reputation, and earned her party a generational loathing in the affected parts of the United Kingdom that has not abated, even forty years later. Try standing for election as a Tory Party candidate in Liverpool, if you do not believe me.
The Irish Government – at least according to the most recent polling – does not have similar reserves of public support to call on in its battle with local communities over asylum accommodation.
In recent weeks, we have heard much about escalating tensions. We have heard politicians worry openly about arson attacks on buildings that are suspected of being potential accommodation centres for migrants. We have seen the homes of sitting politicians raided – and as yet, no follow up arrests or charges for those who suffered that indignity. Now we see the state essentially sending ground forces into a local town to over-ride the locals.
If you were a politician and you wanted to ease tensions, this is not the way you would go about it. If on the other hand you wished to inflame tensions, and anger people, then this is just about the precise script that you would follow.
One of the things that I fear our politicians are at grave risk of forgetting is that even without an Irish second amendment, the governance of the people is first and foremost a matter of consent. The upholding of the law requires, as a basic, the consent and co-operation of the people. Preventing things like arson attacks requires a basic fear amongst those who perpetrate them that they will be caught, and that other people in their community will condemn them and turn them over to the authorities if they have any information.
The last time a Government lost the co-operation and consent of the Irish people to govern them, it was largely as a result of policing tactics like these, and the injudicious use of its monopoly on the use of force. When His Majesty’s Government finally lost that consent, it proved impossible to get it back. Irish politicians, I fear, do not realise how close they are coming to losing the consent of a substantial portion of the Irish people.
All of this – every last bit of it – is very deeply unwise.