An Irish Racist Party?

One day, one month, one year- how long is it before we see the creation of the Irish National Party? The roots for the basis of an Irish fascist party has been thin for many years. It was not a feature nor a requirement of any section in Ireland. Of course the far left has kept watch on the attempts by people such as David Irving to come and speak in this country. For your information, the historian Irving is now in a Viennese jail on account of his holocaust denial.

Interestingly the watchguards of the Irish anti-fascism AFA have disappeared off the radar. This group formed in the late 1970s to fight fascist trends in Ulster loyalism and the National Front and later were seen disrupting student society meetings where David Irving attempted to speak. Meticulous in their intelligence research on fascist attempts to source a base group in Ireland over they years, they have been like the passenger waiting for a bus for so long that they have given up.

This week the case of the Afghan asylum seekers has polarised public opinion into hostile camps of activists in the small minority and hardened opponents of the asylum seekers in the other. The supporters of the hunger strikers never successfully managed to persuade public opinion that it was either a case of being with Mc Dowell or being against him. This might have been a popular axiom in which to judge the mood.

It turned out that Phil Flynn had not been invited by Bertie Ahern but by Rosanna Flynn as mediator. What a spectacular comeback that would have been for Flynn if he had have resolved the cases of the two big stories of the week, the other being the train drivers dispute. However Bertie's man is not Flynn as suspected but it is Mc Dowell. Those in support of the Minister will be impressed as it has all ended well, whereas the prevailing mood in the last week is that the issue was messy and would end in a mess.

Afterall isn't everything a mess in this country. Our schools are a mess as parents are left camping out for days in tents in a queue for school places just nine miles north of Dublin, while elsewhere schools are closing for lack of numbers. Our health service is a mess. The minister said so when declaring a national emergency. Our transport system is a mess with late trains, buses and cars stuck in gridlock traffic. All very messy. Yet there was something smoothly judicious in how the hunger strike ended.

Gardai secured the area and unlocked the doors and took the men out. No one died and no one was harmed and the government did not give in. The result is that there will be no hunger strikes again by any asylum seekers in Ireland. They all now know that the government have a way of dealing with this method of protest. Asylum seekers wishing to engage in protest are going to have to find other ways. The church, mosque or cathedrals are no longer places of sanctuary in Ireland. What that means theologically is a matter for the churches themselves.

This week was a watershed in Irish politics as it is the first time that racism has been cogently organised into something reflecting more than just the bizarre opinions of a select few. As well as the counter protesters there were random passersby who would exercise their vocal chords hurling abuse at the hunger strike supporters.

Unlike the Kunle case and others in Athlone and Monaghan, there was not widespread public support for the Afghan asylum seekers. Unlike Kunle and others there could even be said that there was more a mood of suspicion than compassion. Recently the BNP had a double page spread on Ireland. It was not about how racially inferior we are but it was a penned piece by their Dublin correspondent evaluating the political scene in Ireland.

The theme of the article was the need for the building of an Irish National Party. They lumped Sinn Fein in with other left and centre parties of the establishment. The formation of an Irish National Party will draw its support from socially excluded elements. Marx called them lumpen proletariat while Jack London called them 'People of the abyss'. Others call them chavs and knacker scum.

At the protest yesterday there was a face I recognised holding up a placard reading 'Send them home'. The standard bearer is a chronic homeless alcoholic who holds me in regard as I made countless attempts to assist him into accommodation and off the drink. These elements were also evident in protest against the 'Love Ulster' march. Not if there is an Irish National Party but when and who will organise them. The picture is ugly and it follows declining turn out and alienation, the bowling alone phenomenon.

Social partnership and social quiescence will be ripped apart in the next period but it is more likely that reactionary and racist politics will feature more prominently rather than the politics of the left. It isn't about personalities, it is history unfolding. What is to be done?

I was robbed!!!

It is quite some time since my last blog. About ten stories enter and leave the other side of my head each day on average. There is for example the interesting disussion on BBC5Live at the moment where the commentator reads out a text. The texter wonders why it is that prisoners get paid for cleaning and doing menial jobs while in custody yet a prisoner who engages in education while in custody receives nothing.

It is quite easy to rant and rave about any subject but there is so much to say and not the space to say it and in the case of a blog, possibly no one to read. All this leads to frustration. One thinks of the bus drive rampage on the Naas Dual Carriageway last Sunday week. While I have sympathy for the family and to the numerous drivers who have had their cars damaged - I will return to this matter shortly- one has to wonder what provoked the former employee of a private bus company to steal a bus and engage in his own version of Speed.

It is great to be working again as it is allowing me to pay for those normal every month expenses out on theft. Last month it was 335 for a new bike following the theft of my bike of the same model. This month it is 1,000euro for crash repairs further to the Nike imprints placed in my now dented Daewoo Nubira.

Since returning to my car and unburdening myself with the disgust, I have encountered quite a casual attitude towards insurance. If only it was so but it is the case that the damage done to my car by vandals in an attempted theft means that it is not the insurance company who takes care of the vehicle. It is the owner of the car. My insurance last year at 1360Euro is threatened with losing its existing no claims bonus of 19% if I claim, and with a further 40% load on top of the standard price. It is cheaper for me to pay out direct.

While I am being drawn towards the hang em and flog em brigade on account of my 5 bicycle thefts, the graffiti outside my apartment block and the 6 repeated thefts of my previous car and the current situation with my present car, retribution of society must also find its way to the insurance companies.

What is the point of insurance if the result of vandalism and theft is that neither the criminal nor the insurance company pays out but the policy holder. This process demonstrates what exists is a fraud. If one does not have their car insured they are fined. This legislation calls into question the legitimacy of insurance companies operation in the field of car insurance.