On Monday 15 July, Coolock was woken up by protests and even elements of rioting breaking around the old Crown Paint factory, a building earmarked by the government for IPA accommodation.
Of course, far-right agitators of all stripes didn’t miss such a juicy opportunity. They travelled from all around the country to go and ‘give support to the local community’ – i.e., to stoke up the flames of xenophobia, racism and anti-immigration.
These self-proclaimed speakers for the working class have since severely injured a worker, threatened construction workers, and have set several fires in the community they claim to be protecting. With “friends” like this, who needs enemies?
They have demonstrated in practice once again that they are a danger to all workers, to all local communities, and to all oppressed groups. Any class-conscious worker can see that they must be cleared out of our streets.
But let us take no lessons on “thuggery” from thug-in-chief Simon Harris, who used the events as an opportunity to present himself as the law-and-order man for Fine Gael.
Afterall, last month, didn’t the Taoiseach himself send state thugs to smash asylum seeker tents in the inner city? Isn’t his government the one stoking up the flames of anti-immigration as a convenient diversion from the mess it has created? And aren’t the decades of austerity carried out by Fine Gael (and Fianna Fáil) the cause of the chronic lack of infrastructure that is ravaging through working class communities all around the country?
It is precisely the system that the Taoiseach protects – i.e. capitalism – that has led Ireland to the acute crisis faced by workers and young people today.
Coolock is indeed one of the worst hit areas in the country. Years of austerity, coupled with the housing crisis, had devastating effects on the local community. It has among the longest housing waiting lists in the country, a male unemployment rate of 30 percent, social programmes operating at 15% of their capacity – and yet funding to the area remains below the pre-2008 levels.
By ignoring these communities at best, and pulling out funding at worst, it is the government that has provided fertile soil for the toxic sprouts of the far right to take root.
The rise of the far right
Still, we need to keep a sense of proportion.
Any fascist is one fascist too many – but this is not a fascist tide sweeping through Coolock, or the Irish working class at large. The Irish Times reported that the main core of “protestors” in Coolock was no more than a dozen of determined far-right goons and disenfranchised youth.
Notably – for all their boasting about “representing” the local community – most of these far-right agitators have nothing to do with Coolock, and even less are representative of it in any way. In fact, Artane-Whitehall and Donaghmede returned a resounding zero far-right councillors at the local elections (despite the 5 that have tried).
However, there is no doubt that a small but significant layer of workers are lending them an ear. This is what is allowing the far right to act more boldly as of late, and even to organise protests with few hundreds in attendance.
The point is that the likes of Gavin Pepper, Malachy Steenson and co. lean on genuine class anger to win over support, which they proceed to distort beyond recognition. They put on a thin veneer of class language, posing as defenders of the interests of the working class – with Gavin Pepper even blaming the government for the protests because “they should be pumping money into [working class] communities” instead of “neglecting them.”
They point to the very real hardships faced by workers today and present themselves as the only alternative to the establishment. This, and not outright racism or far-right politics, is the only way they can garner any semblance of support.
But of course the solution they propose – i.e., kick out all the immigrants – is no solution at all.
Migration is not the problem!
Is the acute crisis faced by workers in Ireland caused by immigrants sleeping in tents, or crowded inside dilapidated factories?
Of course not.
On the question of housing – which has ravaged working class communities such as that in Coolock for more than 15 years now – the reality is that there are more than 150 thousand homes lying empty all around the country. This is more than 10 houses for every homeless person in the country.
A quick walk around any Dublin neighbourhood will show you dozens of abandoned houses. But the landlords are making a fortune out of the housing crisis and have no interest in increasing the supply available in the market.
Irish workers have the lowest ratio of wages to GDP and GNI of the whole of Europe. That is, the bosses are squeezing massive profits out of us. This amongst collapsing infrastructure and welfare cuts after 16 years of austerity carried by the government.
Most recently in their summer economic statement the government has pointed out to what in effect will be further cuts to the health budget. And yet there is plenty of money when it comes to “protecting” the underwater cables of the imperialists, handing out money to Amazon’s bosses or awarding tax cuts to vulture landlords.
The current crisis is a crisis of scarcity among plenty. Scarcity for workers, and plenty for bosses and landlords. They are hoarding massive amounts of wealth while the rest of us are left fighting for mere crumbs. Indeed, the two richest men in the country have as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent!
The wealth to solve all the problems facing workers in Ireland already exists, only it needs to be wrested away from the hands of the capitalists. What we need is class struggle.
The point is that even if you could kick out all the asylum seekers from Ireland today, the standards of living of the working class would not improve by a single iota – on the contrary.
The only purpose far-right ideas and xenophobia serve is to divide the workers’ movement – therefore weakening it. When the enemy becomes not capitalism but the poorest and most deprived layers in society, isn’t that very convenient from the point of view of the capitalist establishment?
It’s a tactic as old as capitalism itself. Pit two sections of the working class and oppressed against each other, so as to lower the living standards of both.
We have a striking example of that from our own history, with British imperialists stoking up the flames of sectarianism for centuries as a way to cut the legs off the workers’ movement, and exploit them all the better. James Connolly and Jim Larkin always fought strenuously against any and all divisions in the working class, because they understood that division is just a useful weapon in the hands of the rulers.
This is all the truer today. At a time of unprecedented crisis of capitalism, genuine improvements for the working class can be obtained only on the back of militant class struggle – as the pilots have recently demonstrated. And for class struggle to be successful we need maximum unity of the ranks of the working class.
Conversely, a working class divided along national, ethnic or other lines is only raw material for exploitation by the bosses.
For a communist solution to working-class problems
That’s the reason why anti-immigration rhetoric and xenophobia are no solution to the problems of the working class.
But who’s offering any alternatives to the toxic rhetoric of the far right?
Shamefully, on this question too, Sinn Féin has sharply veered towards the right. You can now hardly fit a cigarette paper between them and the likes of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
In their new policy released just this month, they have stressed how they wouldn’t look for IPA accommodation into areas where resources are scarce… But the point is precisely that there is not one area of Dublin that isn’t severely affected by acute crises! Unless they break with capitalism (which they have no intention of doing) they will be looking for a castle in the sky.
Unfortunately, nothing better can be said about the trade unions. Just over a year ago they were able to mobilise 30 thousand workers at anti-racism demonstrations in Dublin. And what have they done with it?
With the lack of any alternative, is it any wonder that certain layers of the working class are open to far-right agitations? Not the “backwardness” of workers, but the rottenness of the so-called ‘left’ is to be blamed.
Incidentally, those in the left who water down their programme hoping to hold on to some seats in the Dáil only end up playing into the hands of the far right, who can then pose themselves as the only real ‘opposition.’
The only way to isolate the far right is to fight for bold class-based demands. What is needed for the workers in Coolock, in Dublin and in the whole of Ireland is a revolutionary alternative – that’s the only real alternative to this crisis-ridden capitalist system.
A revolutionary programme for the expropriation of the big landlords, the banks and the construction monopolies is needed to solve the housing crisis. Nothing less will do.
In order to undertake the massive investment needed in healthcare, education, social care and infrastructure, we need to break from capitalism. Again, nothing less will do.
We need to expropriate the commanding heights of the economy and put them under the democratic control of workers – so that the immense wealth that exists in society today can be channelled into workers’ communities and not out of it and into the pockets of the capitalists.
What we need is to overthrow this rotten capitalist system and to fight for communism!
