A Total Loss of Narrative Control

The protests that have convulsed Ireland aren’t going away, and there is no way they can be brought into the mainstream

The issues of Asylum, immigration and housing have so devoured the Irish political discourse that it’s difficult to select one headline to encapsulate the crisis. In the last week we had a competing mass protests both for and against housing of asylum applicants happening a few streets away from each other on the same day; speculation on the implementation of protest exclusions zones; and the announcement of a clampdown on passengers arriving in Ireland without travel documentation. What are the prospects of the Irish system finding a way back to stability?

The signs are not good. Since protests kicked off in October, both extremes have been galvanised by the understanding that we are only at the beginning of this crisis. Leaked research indicates Ireland will need to build 62,000 houses a year to meet demand, rather than the existing official target of 33,000. Government briefing papers indicate that 180,000 people could be seeking refuge in Ireland by 2023. In January the government explicitly asked refugees not to travel to Ireland as they could not guarantee accommodation.

Fine Gael, the largest party in government, are the party to most clearly articulate that the crisis is causing them electoral concerns. This follows a party meeting in January, where a leading Senator noted “she was concerned about raising the issue of immigration in the past but felt she had to now”. Another Senator noted that the location of refugee accommodation in his constituency was a factor in him losing his seat. Since then, Fine Gael ministers have been the face of increased Immigration checks on new arrivals.

Conversely, Ireland’s numerous small left wing parties have chosen to stay the course. As the current holders of the Ministry of Integration and Equality, the Greens (the smallest party in government) are the most identified with the crisis. The Minister has stated he would like to see the a system to be widened to include a new category of people fleeing the effects of Climate Change.

(It’s not unusual in coalition governments for the smaller party to take the heat for the more unpopular or divisive policies, and the relationship between the Greens and FG reflects that.)

The most interesting position is that of Sinn Féin. They are an outsider party whose views on immigration and asylum are indistinguishable from the insiders. Their failure to provide a natoinalist stance on these issues means they are often the most hated by protestors; a placard picture of Mary Lou MacDonald bearing the word “traitor” was lustily booed at the original East Wall protest.

Their leadership has tried to thread this needle by limiting talk on the issue, and casting anti-asylum protestors as having misguided but justified concerns on the government’s housing policy. They have managed it so far but of all the big political parties, SF are the ones with most to lose from the current crisis. Recent polling indicates that 61% of their voters believe Ireland has taken on too many Asylum applicants, the highest of all major parties.

Differing approaches notwithstanding, the ultimate problem remains that the discourse has passed beyond mainstream control. Over the last twenty or so years, the critical discussion of immigration, asylum, demographic change was simply not accommodated in respectable spaces or by respectable people, except by linking it to the Far Right. This approach has been a total success. As the Irish American writer Michael Brendan Dougherty has noted, of all western countries Irish conversation is amongst the freest in private and the most informally restricted in public, and around these subjects this is truest of all.

But that success created its own kind of problem. Ireland has few mainstream immigration-critical newspaper columnists, media personalities or talking heads to deplatform. There are no immigration-restrictionist parties with elected representatives you can haul over the coals in the Dail. There are no anti-asylum NGOs whose funding you can cut. The program of rhetorical ring-fencing has been so complete that mainstream politicians, media and civic bodies have successfully ring-fenced themselves out of the insurgent side of the conversation. It will carry on without their input.

In the interim the mainstream has fallen back on using the same tactics that failed to stop us getting to this point. Invocation of the Far Right, always a monotonous thrum in Irish media, has become almost an involuntary tic. Ireland’s immigration history is often referenced. There has been renewed conversation about hate speech laws and legal prosecution of people who are involved in these protests.

By contrast, in the words of one observer, the street level manifestations of anti-immigration sentiment have progressed 5-10 years in the space of a few months. Everything that caused this growth is set to intensify within the next period. Whichever of the limited range of approaches a party chooses – placate, double-down, hope it goes away – the momentum is entirely on the other side of the conflict. They can only watch and react.