Working Class Action
Immigration, Racism and Class
First published in Fourthwrite Magazine, Issue 4
by Mags Glennon
The recent phenomenon of immigration to the Republic has created widespread controversy and exposed some nasty home truths about the racist attitudes of both the State and the Irish people.
75,000 people immigrated to the 26 counties in 1998-99. Less than 10,000 of these were asylum seekers. The Department of Enterprise says that 200,000 extra workers will be required over the next seven years to tackle the labour shortage and sustain the current level of economic growth. The government is currently sourcing these in ‘white’ countries - Germany, Canada, America and New Zealand. Most asylum seekers here are denied the right to work.
Surveys show that 95% of African immigrants in Dublin have been subjected to racial abuse. Publicised racial attacks have become a weekly occurrence. Young people, who have grown up in the relative plenty of the ‘Celtic Tiger’, are the most racist. A recent newspaper poll indicated that 75% of the population wanted curbs on refugee numbers. Whole rural villages have mounted protests to oppose the accommodation of a handful of refugees in their areas. Only 1% of Irish people actually know even one asylum seeker. Politicians from all the main parties use the rhetoric of ‘looking after our own’, ‘preventing ghettoes’ and ‘scrounging bogus refugees’ to grub a few votes - such statements will increase as an election approaches. A recent immigration act provides for internment of failed asylum seekers until they are deported. The police routinely arrest and beat up Africans. Recently a 12 year old Nigerian girl was deported, alone, to Gatwick detention centre in London and her father was savagely beaten and jailed when he objected.
All the familiar and ugly rumours are trotted out as ‘fact’- beggars, scroungers, thieves, spreading disease, taking our houses and women, receiving extra Social Welfare, etc. - and can be heard in almost any social gathering; the middle class ones use more polite language. The one scare not heard is ‘they are taking our jobs’ - such is the labour shortage that anyone could have two or three badly paid jobs if they wished.
What happens when the economic bubble bursts, built as it is on tax breaks for multinationals? When the world market for computer software collapses? When Irish prosperity is undermined as the Euro continues its crash against the dollar?
Ireland is unique in Western Europe in its lack of an organised political far-right movement. Anti-immigrant and ‘pro-working class’ rhetoric gained the fascist right 11 million votes in the last European Parliament elections. The strength of fascist youth gangs means whole areas of Eastern Germany are ‘foreigner’ free. In France the fascist National Front is the party with the largest working class vote. Liberal social democracies such as Denmark and Sweden have seen a massive rise of the right. Austria, similar in size and economy to Ireland, has a fascist party in government. Europe-wide racism has become the focus for working class dissent against rampant free market capitalism and the far right has grafted it’s policies onto the legitimate concerns working class people have for their communities, their prosperity and the future of their children.
Official anti-racism in Ireland is peddled by a variety of state sponsored quangoes such as the ‘National Committee for Interculturalism’. Grants, funding, jobs and interminable conferences for a notional multi-cultural sector are presented as somehow ‘fighting racism’. In Ireland all the failed policies adopted by liberal anti-racists throughout Europe are being repeated. Anti-racism is viewed as a brand of political correctness or merely a career advancement path for middle class social workers. Two years ago a small but nasty outfit called the Immigration Control Platform attempted to set up a national organisation. Anti-Fascist Action stopped the meeting - severely impeding the future growth of the ICP - resulting in howls of outrage from liberal anti-racists and the press. The fact that racism lays the seedbed for fascism was totally lost on them.
Somewhere during the course of the 20th century the legacy of working class anti-fascism disappeared. In the 1930s it was widely understood that fascism was a war between classes, not between races. The Republican and Socialist heritage that fought the fascist Blueshirts off the streets in Ireland in the ‘30s was repeated with far greater savagery throughout Europe. Now, as the working class votes the far right into power across the continent, it is the task of all progressive groups and individuals in Ireland to ensure that a politically independent and pro-working class anti-racism prevents this happening here.
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