Opinion

It’s taken years of discrimination to start the fires in Coolock. It will take years to put them out

If we can’t have an honest national conversation and take steps to de-escalate, someone may die

The entrance to the former Crown Paints factory on Malahide Road in Coolock. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
Adam Doyle
Wed Jul 17 2024 - 18:16

“I can’t afford bread or milk because of yous,” screamed a woman as the line of gardaí moved people back from the site of the burning diggers.

Hours earlier, a worker had been taken away on a stretcher to jeers from the gathered crowd. As more gardaí arrived, the situation quickly descended into chaos. Bricks and fireworks were hurled, car windows smashed. In scenes caught on video, a body-armoured garda pinned a man to the ground while another struck him with a baton. The Malahide Road had turned into a battlefield.

The grotesque spectacle was broadcast over TikTok, Snapchat, Telegram and X. Videos of gardaí in riot gear formed up in ranks on suburban streets, diatribes to-camera from xenophobes soaked in pepper spray. Both sides baying for each others’ blood in comment sections. Ireland is sick and is lying on a trolley in an overworked and understaffed A&E.

By dusk, gardaí had secured a law-and-order victory, a message to the comfortable electorate, while at the same time the far right had their Alamo. As I write, the dust has settled and the protest camp is back. Asylum seekers find themselves no safer: just last night tents housing asylum seekers in the city centre were attacked. More young men are on the road to total radicalisation. Hearts are harder and the divide widens further. If we can’t have an honest national conversation and take steps to de-escalate, someone may die.

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If the November riots, along with the various skirmishes and pickets flickering in and out of life across the island – from Newtownmountkennedy to Clonmel and now Coolock – didn’t make it clear, Ireland has definitively entered a period of widespread, albeit currently “low-intensity”, civil unrest. Ireland has become the violent poster child for the anti-immigration movement across the West, an embarrassing association that has put paid to our céad míle fáilte.

This period of unrest will also be a period of political intimidation. The menacing gatherings outside the homes of Taoiseach Simon Harris and Paul Murphy in recent months or the video posted online on Tuesday night in which a masked man threatened to shoot dead Sinn Féin’s leader Mary Lou McDonald signal deteriorating societal cohesion.

The oft-repeated cry of “this behaviour does not represent the good people of such-and-such” is becoming tired. The special sitting of the Criminal Court on Tuesday revealed addresses nearly exclusively from the area of the rioting. In any situation of violent unrest, it’s very unusual that those committing violence are the majority. This is as true in Coolock as it is in Creggan or any other flashpoint on the island. But this doesn’t mean we ignore the minority.

The root cause here is a perceived unfairness – “Johnny foreigner is getting stuff handed to him while I’m struggling” – a notion happily encouraged by racists and turbocharged by the continual spew of classism exuded by politicians and talking heads in the media.

Ireland is no stranger to unrest driven by a notion of unfairness, perceived or real. From the idea that social housing was being allocated unfairly in favour of Protestants by councils in the North that gave fuel to the civil rights movement in the 1970s, to the disproportionate misery among Catholic peasants that spawned Ribbonism in the 1800s, our history also teaches us that such unrest tends to grow and can become extremely violent. This spate of unrest has a distinctly xenophobic character. Fuelled by the international online right, it relies on fear mongering and the oftentimes poor informational literacy of its adherents to spread.

The direct provision centres that act as points of tension disproportionately end up in areas with a lower socio-economic profile. Rural and disadvantaged areas tend to have more affordable property and less resources. The outsourcing of Ireland’s asylum system to private companies means that profit and cost efficiency are of paramount concern when selecting a site to house asylum applicants.

While communities are not entitled to bigotry, they are generally considered entitled to some level of consent. NIMBYism is Ireland’s second national pastime after the GAA. Affluent communities across Dublin often oppose high-density housing developments such as the 580 apartments in nearby Raheny, along with a cinema and nursing home that were blocked out of concern for a nearby population of Light Bellied Brent Geese. More deprived areas seem excluded from this NIMBY club, with some locals instead resorting to pickets and protest.

In a country of 12 per cent millionaires and 66 per cent home ownership, it may be hard for some to empathise with communities who lack resources. The impulse of those experiencing deprivation to aim their anger downward at migrants is the same impulse that causes the more well off to make jibes about social welfare or unemployment when they witness unrest.

The culture war decay of Trump-era America has burrowed into Irish society like a cavity. Tracksuits stand in for MAGA caps and Middle Ireland does battle with a reviled lumpenproletariat, frantically calling for the Defence Forces or its borrowed PSNI water cannons to teach them a lesson.

For the working class young men on the other side, the path to radicalisation is open. If you’re not afraid of being thrown in the back of a Garda car or spending the night in a jail cell, society doesn’t want you, but the far right does. It’s taken years of socioeconomic discrimination to start this fire. It’ll take years of community work, investment and social mobility opportunities to put it out.

People from minority backgrounds are without a doubt increasingly under threat as the polarisation bites harder but it’s hard to take seriously the overtures of concern for asylum applicants from a Government that dumps them up the mountains to clear the streets for Paddy’s Day.

Ultimately this is where we are now. On the trolley in the A&E department. It could go either way. How long before a centre full of people burns? How long before we can’t turn back?

Adam Doyle is an artist and film-maker who goes by the moniker ‘Spicebag’.