After the horrific and unprecedented stabbing of small, helpless school children in Parnell Square by an Algerian national one year ago in Dublin City centre, tension and anger was building in the city.
A protest was called, and those who attended were later blamed for the riot – which they denied, saying that the protest was mostly distinct from the violence that erupted and that much of the looting and smashing and burning which made headlines around the world was more to do with social disaffection, government neglect, and rank opportunism.
As cars were set alight and windows smashed, two of Gript’s team were in the thick of the chaos and violence, often filming and reporting at close quarters as other journalists were held back behind a cordon by Gardaí. Fatima Gunning saw the windows and doors of a Luas on O’Connell Street being smashed, and refuse bags being used to set the tram on fire. She witnessed an extraordinary level of vitriol and violence against Gardaí, as missiles were thrown and Garda cars were attacked.
She said that tension was rising at the protest that had been called at Parnell Square for 7pm, especially once the riot squad appeared, but it was her belief that the scene had been taken over mostly by young people – often teenagers – looking for mayhem.
She spoke to one young woman who had come to the area in solidarity with those who were injured in the knife attack but had been surprised at levels of violence committed by ‘young lads’ who ‘just seemed like they wanted to have a go at the guards’.
“During the course of the events, on around 3 or 4 occasions I heard men shouting slogans. I did not see any of these individuals attack the Gardaí. I didn’t hear any of the young men who attacked the police use any political language,” Fatima later wrote.
“Rather it seems to me that the motivation for the violent behaviour I witnessed last night was reminiscent of recent scenes from Cherry Orchard in Dublin where Garda cars were rammed as crowds of onlookers stood by and cheered on the chaos.
Many of those involved in attacking the Gardaí last night seemed to have absolutely no consideration that behind every uniform there is a human being.”
Our cameraman, who was in the absolute thick of it, said that the rioters seemed to be mostly lawless young lads, though they were joined by some older men. He said he was subjected to some racist abuse but it felt more thuggish than political, adding that the violence felt contagious on the night. “Once one Garda car was set alight, it felt like a dam burst,” he told me.
A friend of mine was on O’Connell Street as shops were smashed and looted. The whole area was swarming with people carrying off armfuls of stolen goods, often dropping an expensive trainer as they struggled to run with their heavy load of loot.
“Did they seem to be people who were rioting about immigration?” I asked him. He didn’t think so. “Quite a few of them didn’t appear to be Irish,” he said. “They were hardly anti-immigrant migrants. It just looked like a free-for-all, everyone was just grabbing what they could.”
But the riots, appalling as they were, did provide a most useful distraction from the real story: three children and their carer violently and brutally attacked – terror inflicted on an entire school and community, children and the woman who tried to protect them left grievously injured by a man wielding a knife: a man who wasn’t Irish. Instead of a conversation about migrant crime, the attention of the media and therefore the public switched to ‘the far-right’.
This was a very deliberate ploy because, at the time, the media and the political establishment had made concerted efforts to label everyone with concerns about immigration as ‘far-right’. If you attended a peaceful protest in East Wall you were ‘far right’. If you said Ireland didn’t have the resources to take in more migrants, you were ‘far-right’. If you said that Ashling Murphy was killed by a man who came to this country and lived off the sate for 10 years before attacking a schoolteacher with a knife, you were ‘far-right’ – or at the very least giving the ‘far-right’ succour.
Therefore, after the burning of busses and cars and the looting and smashing, if you had concerns about immigration you could also not just be accused of being far-right but also of being associated with violent and lawless “scumbags”, to use the phrase Helen McEntee pronounced in the Dáil.
But then, a year later, An Garda Síochana released 99 photos of some of those who were caught on camera during the Dublin riots. You may have seen some of those photos on social media since that release – and those who have not yet been identified can still be seen here.
Turns out that the observations of Fatima and my friend were right. Many of those caught on camera and now being sought by the Gardaí seem very unlikely to be part of any anti-immigration movement or protest because, as my friend had previously observed, they look like immigrants themselves. There’s a fair amount of diversity.
In fairness to John Mooney in the Sunday Times, yesterday he pointed out that the photos showed “white, black and Asian rioters ‘answered a call for mayhem'” – and said that the CCTV revealed that “diverse ethnicities were involved in last year’s Dublin disorder, complicating the case against the far-right.”
Mooney also spoke to a retired garda, Tony Gallagher who said he had never believed the riot was “purely far-right”, but rather that it was, for some, “an excuse for blood sport and late-night entertainment, with no connection to left-wing or right-wing ideology”.
Malachy Steenson, a leader of the East Wall Says No campaign and now a member of Dublin City Council told Mooney that “everyone knew the riots were opportunistic criminality” but that when he had said so at the time, he says was called a “fascist “.
He told me today that the extreme anti-social behaviour was used by the media to take attention away from the five-year little girl who had been stabbed and almost died. “We saw the State swing into damage control mode, straight away,” he said. “That little girl was left at death’s door, she nearly died, and she has not recovered. That was where our attention should have been.”
The Independent reported last week that the little girl, Emily, who turned six last month, is non-verbal and cannot walk. She is fed through a PEG tube and needs constant care. We don’t seem to be doing enough for her family.
Cllr Steenson also said that some of those in the community who had been traumatised by the stabbing in Parnell Square had been told by An Garda Síochana not to speak to the media as it might incite violence. “This man, an Algerian national, has been charged with attempted murder, but we hear very little about that,” he said, adding that “all the attention” was on the riots.
The curious thing is that the fact that many or most of those involved in rioting were opportunistic hooligans- with some of them actually being immigrants – would have been known to an Garda Síochana almost immediately since they, more than any other grouping, saw the entire night unfold at first hand. In fact, when more than 30 persons who were involved in the disorder appeared before the court on the day after the riots, amongst the many Irish names appearing such as O’Toole and O’Connell were those which were distinctly different, such as Grigorita, Salawe, and Kancz.
Yet the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris was quick at the time to blame the rioting on a “lunatic, hooligan faction driven by a far-right ideology”. That seems very strange, though it might be explained by the escalation in the use of force employed by An Garda Síochana against local protesters in places like Newtownmountkennedy where batons and pepper spray were used in almost unprecedented scenes.
Last week, a Garda press conference told Gript’s Ben Scallan that it was “fair to say” that most people involved in the 2023 Dublin Riots were simply “opportunistic” looters and vandals. The belated confirmation mostly went unreported by other outlets.
Of course, the Commissioner might now wish to revise his statement, and RTÉ might want to make a Prime Time special or a lengthy documentary examining the issue in more detail instead of insisting, despite the evidence of our eyes, that this was all far-right thuggery. But we won’t hold our breath.