Dublin
It is a tradition within Irish Republicanism for Easter Week to be marked by parades and marches to commemorate the 1916 Rising against British rule. Yesterday, Ireland’s growing if electorally marginal anti-immigration movement adopted the tradition. Outside Dublin’s Gardens of Remembrance, a woman was doing brisk business selling the Irish Republic flag of the Rising, as well as tricolours adorned with “You’ll Never Beat The Irish”, as tens of thousands of anti-immigration marchers gathered for their largest protest yet.
“They need to be dragged out by their balls,” said one older woman, carrying a commemorative wreath, of the Irish government. She transpired to be the wife of the movement’s emerging leader, the veteran Republican activist and newly-elected inner city Dublin councillor Malachy Steenson. The day was to be a reassertion of nationalist credibility after the politically damaging presence of Southern anti-immigration protestors alongside Ulster Loyalists during last summer’s Belfast riots.
As the march progressed, filling central Dublin, Garda Public Order Units in blue body armour separated the protestors from the vastly outnumbered counter-protest outside the General Post Office, a sacred site in nationalist tradition. Waving LGBTQI+ and trade union flags, and hammer and sickle placards, the counter-protestors shouted “Nazi Scum Off Our Streets” at the marchers, and were heckled with shouts of “Commie Scum” in return. “Traitors!” one young woman shouted at the counter-protestors. “Youse are worse than any foreigner.”
Prominent among the counter-protestors was a Sinn Féin contingent, a surprising and last-minute addition to the roster. Sinn Féin had lately appeared to be backing away from its full-throated defence of the Irish coalition government’s mass migration policies, in an attempt to assuage the concerns of its voter base. In the Republic, though very much not in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin voters are by far the strongest anti-immigration constituency. Scattered across a broad spectrum of microparties, Ireland’s anti-immigration movement achieved electoral success last year only in winning council seats in working-class areas of Dublin. Judging by the fiery speeches, the protest’s organisers have decided to lean strongly into capturing Sinn Féin’s disaffected urban voter base.
“We don’t need big posh people to come on and represent the working class,” independent candidate Gavin Pepper roared at the vast crowd outside the grand neoclassical Custom House. “We are the working class.” Newly-elected councillor Patrick Quinlan of the National Party, an identitarian movement standing on a platform of mass deportations and re-Gaelicising Ireland, gave a speech railing against “the den of rats inside Dáil Éireann” (the Irish parliament). It was the sort of political speech that would be recognisable to historians of Ireland’s 19th-century mass movement nationalism. “They fear not chaos but our awakening,” Quinlan roared, “The holy fire that blazed in our patriot dead […] lives on here today. The heroes of 1916 triumphed, and so shall we.”
Taking his turn at the microphone, Steenson, the protest’s organiser, told the cheering crowd that “we are building a workers’ revolutionary movement to represent the working class.” Brushing away the disappointing election results, he highlighted that this movement had already beaten the government in two referendums, and that victory was now around the corner. “In generations to come, people will remember St Patrick’s Day 2025 [when Conor McGregor, now working closely with Steenson, attended the White House] as the turning point in our battle.” He went on: “When Trump comes here we will be the ones having an audience with him.”
“We’re building a movement that truly represents the working class, not the middle classes leading the working classes to the trough and then not letting them drink,” Steenson told me after the speeches had ended. “We will be a true following on from our forefathers in 1916 who had a workers revolution, and that was defeated then in 1922 by what now passes for government,” he added, reflecting his family background in the anti-Treaty Official IRA and Workers Party, from which the Provisional IRA and today’s Sinn Féin split at the beginning of the Troubles.
“Electoral politics, in and of itself, is not gonna save the Irish people,” the National Party’s Patrick Quinlan told me. He cited the example of the early 20th-century Irish language movement: “The Irish fight has always been a cultural fight. If it’s not electoral politics alone, it’s about social cohesion, getting that fabric of what it means to be Irish back.”
Yet while a boost to an amorphous anti-immigration movement bruised by electoral failure, the purpose of these mass protests remains unclear. Coming together to maximise protest turnout, the anti-immigration movement’s different party leaders compete for the same narrow vote share at elections, diluting their effectiveness.
Neither will Steenson’s links to McGregor — and by association the Trump administration — win over the middle classes. Yet, from Steenson’s “Make Ireland Great Again” baseball cap down, the movement’s increasing tilt to Ireland’s largely conservative American diaspora for funding and political influence reflects another longstanding tradition in Irish nationalism. It’s also a front against both the Irish coalition government and its Sinn Féin challenger.
“This is very much a battle for the heart and soul of nationalism. Well, it’s for the heart and soul of the Irish people,” Steenson said. “We are the new nationalist movement. Sinn Féin no longer represent nationalism — they’re globalists.”
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeSinn Fein and the Provos were never truly nationalist or even patriotic. Like many hard left violent groups, they used (and still do) whatever opportunities arise to claim legitimacy. Reunification was convenient. Their true goal was always power; to impose some vague version of Marxism on the populace. As with most revolutionaries, they behave like a organised-criminal gangs.
There is nothing in Sinn Féin’s long record in office in Northern Ireland to suggest that “hard left”. But the Republic has perhaps the most impregnable cordon sanitaire in the democratic world. Wake up and hear The Hum when even Michael Healy-Rae may be a Minister, but never, under any circumstance, may any member of Sinn Féin, the party of the First Minister of Northern Ireland.
Up there in the Six Counties are almost all the members of the Provisional Army Council that Sinn Féin believes to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland as the legitimate successor of the Second Dáil, although that Parliament’s only surviving member in 1986, Tom Maguire, conferred legitimacy on the Continuity Army Council, so that it was the Continuity IRA that provided a firing squad at his funeral in, almost unbelievably, 1993, and so that it has been Republican Sinn Féin that has held commemorations at his graveside. Anyway, that is what Sinn Féin believes. That the Army Council is the sovereign body throughout Ireland as the legitimate successor of the Second Dáil.
With Michelle O’Neill as First Minister and with Mary Lou McDonald (a Planter surname, like Conor McGregor’s) as Taoiseach, then who would need a border poll? Why would the IRA want one? No referendum would ever endorse rule by the Army Council. Once that were established across the whole of Ireland, then the beneficiaries would never wish to give it up, and everyone else would find it practically impossible to make them. That is what everyone who matters in Dublin is determined to stop.
“Sinn Féin were never truly nationalist or even patriotic” – If there was a Guinness book of records entry for “Most inaccurate comment ever made” I’d nominate this one. Start your research in 1905 with the foundation of Sinn Féin and keep going until you are embarrassed enough to never comment again on what you don’t understand.
I presume he’s talking about the modern version.
Correct!
Prominent among the counter-protestors was a Sinn Féin contingent, a surprising and last-minute addition to the roster.
Merely underlining the fact that many among Sinn Fein were not really pro-Irish so much as anti-English.
That’s very true and anti Israel and pro Hamas which is somewhat confusing as surely we should be on the Jews side having a near identical history of reclaiming our ancestral lands from foreign invaders.
“In the Republic, though very much not in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin voters are by far the strongest anti-immigration constituency,” is perfectly true, but quite remarkable. One in five adults in the 26 Counties is a first generation immigrant, and one in five births there is to a non-national. What do the Six Counties mean to them? So much for the cry from Boston, Brisbane, Birmingham, Buenos Aires or Belfast that “Ireland belongs to the Irish” rather than to people whose ancestors had arrived a mere 400 years ago.
The newer arrivals are probably more likely to passionately want to prevent their country from becoming a third world state – than those who no longer live there. Why would they want their new home to become like the one they fled from ?
Islam is about conquest and control. That can’t happen unless there is a large influx. Look at the UK or Holland or Germany and especially France or Sweden … we don’t want that.
And yet that is what they do, everywhere they go.
Interesting to see how the Dublin media covered or did not cover the event.
Rte’s report was almost entirely footage of the Trotskyite counter demonstration whose numbers they said variously were 1000 and 2000. It seemed more like 300.
The Irish Times ignored it.
Not so much misinformation as no information.
No mention however of the earlier slogan of reversing the second plantation. Maybe Steenson’s Sticky past is resurfacing.
see it you don’t acknowledge something it does’nt exist, goes away, then suddenly it’s 200k, 500k on that march, and the media goes how’s this happen, must be Putin, some Russian bot tweeted “Ireland for Irish” and suddenly all these “low information working class yobbo’s” became anti immigrant
somehow they will blame the english as well
Yes our MSM has been effectively a State propaganda complex since the early 2000’s.
The state pays them large sums of money and journos regularly end up working for TDs and ministers … it’s very cosy.
But they have to kiss the ring. Many are left wing activists now anyway.
Sinn Fein are sell outs. They smelt an opportunity for power and forewent their Euroscepticism, working class roots and thugs without guns to being just another Globalist Liberal Elite wannabe party who despises half of their population who used to support it..
FF or FG could take advantage if they had wit, desire, cunning and some effing principles. They don’t.
Did anyone else find this argument difficult to follow? I just gave up, since without effort I could not determine which side is which.
“When Trump comes here we will be the ones having an audience with him.”
The true black pill is realising that Trump, too, is on the side of the technocrats. Whichever way we turn, they have us.
Pure Democracy is a two edged sword. Those who make the straw poll the final word in legitimacy must prepare themselves for any eventuality. And Irish nationalism has long been wedded to the idea of a ‘popular’ front which could contain both Gaelic Catholics and Socilaist Internationalists.
The alternative to popular legitimacy, however, used to be a notion known as ‘The Landed Interest’. A notion which survives now only as a somewhat archaic term of abuse. But the idea that the land, and the people who belong to that land and own that land and speak for that land, should have a over-weighted interest and say in the affairs of the nation – over and perhaps above their demographic weight – is a very old one.
Perhaps as we begin to see how we can so easily be made the loser in neat electoral equations, we see the wisdom in the old ways.
This was fantastic! In Belfast the Tricolour and the Union Jack flew together the next day.
The third world invasion, designed to dilute and weaken our western nations unity in order to usher in the globalist hegemony, (orchestrated by Soros and the UN etc) has done the seemingly impossible … united us!
I live in Ireland. This country annoys me endlessly. Shinners are thick. The Greens are thick. Our mainstream parties somehow have managed to right the ship and keep it on track. But the emptiness and simplicity of debate here is crushing. Immigration is out of control but not half as bad as the UK. I can’t see militant Islam taking off here with the IRA in place. Odd thing to say but we are perhaps grateful for that at least. So well done McGregor for making an issue of this. It might shake Martin out of his cosy and bland consensus and do something more for the young of Ireland. McGregor and Trump might just save Ireland from becoming the third world socialist hellhole that England has become.
It’s a battle about immigration policy or rather the lack of one. Sinn Fein seems to have decided to tough it out in the hope that by the next election the Ukraine War will be over, many Ukrainians will have returned home and the pressure on working class areas will have eased.
“This is very much a battle for the heart and soul of nationalism
Nothing good can ever come from this affirmation