Mute Nation
SCENES from a country in turmoil: A ministerial car pulls up for an event in the enclave of Ballyfermot in west Dublin. As Frances Fitzgerald, the children’s minister emerges from the vehicle, a surge of 20 angry men and women move forward. Eggs are thrown. Insults are hurled like missiles.
The gardaí move in and the minister retreats. A few arrests are made. Later that day, one 28-year-old man is charged in relation to the incident.
Another day, another protest. A bracing Tuesday in October and up to 20,000 farmers have assembled outside Leinster House to make their presence felt.
The source of their protest is reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but it’s unclear what the outcome of the reform agenda will be. The main thing, as far as many of the farmers are concerned, is that they are sending a message to the powers that be. Don’t mess with us. We will organise. We will resist.
Meanwhile, out in the country. A damp Sunday afternoon and over 5,000 souls parade through the town of Ballyconnell, Co Cavan, to protest at what they see as the State’s behaviour towards one family and their fallen empire.
The protest hears that the Quinn family has been victimised by the state, the law, the media, banks, and politicians.
For many beyond the catchments of Cavan and Fermanagh, the protest appears rooted in delusion. But for those present, it’s about standing by their own in a time of need.
The scenes outlined above give a hint of what protest means in this country. There has been precious little in the way of national protests, as experienced abroad. Here and there, outbreaks have occurred, like the odd gorse fire on the side of a mountain. But overall, there has been no expression of the anger that all and sundry claim to be experiencing.
“It is dangerous in a democracy that there is such silence,” says Catherine Murphy, an independent TD for Kildare North.
“A row can be productive,” she says. “The public must at least be engaged with what is going on. You have to start wondering if there’s a civic culture at all. Even in terms of public meetings and events like that, there was a lot more of it going on five years ago.”
In Greece, they burned buildings, and stamped loudly and let the world know they weren’t going to take it anymore.
Now that Spain is hovering on the edge of a troika bailout, Spanish feet have taken to the streets. In recent weeks, loud, angry protests resonated out from the Iberian Peninsula, letting the world know that the Spaniards aren’t going to be anybody’s patsy.
The contrast with this country has been stark. Only one national protest of note has occurred in the same period, and that was a rather tame affair.
The National Day of Action was organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in Nov 2010. It occurred in the shadow of the arrival of the troika in the country, and was largely in opposition to the austerity agenda pursued by the government.
Over 100,000 attended and then that was that. Protest done and dusted. Let’s move on to the next issue. Opinion differs on whether or not the people as a whole appear to have gone gently into the good night of austerity. Some say that it demonstrates a practical grasp of realities among the general populace. This school of thought has it that the various job announcements and investment in recent years would not have been made if the streets were aflame with protest, as is the case elsewhere.
The opposite opinion says that the lack of protest sends a signal to Frankfurt and Brussels that yes, we Irish, the good Europeans, can be treated as whipping boys, because we’ll just lie down and take it.
But why? What makes us so different, so compliant, such a push-over?
DON’T FORGET YOUR PLACARD
Some unlikely spots have been engulfed by protest as a result of the current economic malaise. In Iceland, the spark was a protest by a well known artist, a man who has been described as Reykjavik’s Christy Moore.
In Oct 2008, as the country’s banks collapsed under a weight of debt, Hordur Torfason began a weekly protest outside Iceland’s parliament building. He brought with him a microphone, inviting all comers to have their say on the sorry pass to which the country had come.
“Unfortunately, we had all become part of the problem,” he told this reporter at the time.
“We had been led to believe in this absurd way of living on credit and materialism.”
By January, his one-man protest had grown to over a thousand. Within months, the government fell and was replaced by a new administration. The protest was directly credited with the change.
These days, Iceland is held up by some as an example of how to tackle huge debt issues, and while far away, snow-capped hills always look whiter, the protest did bring about some change.
No figurehead has emerged in this country around which a protest could gather. All we really have in that department is a high-profile figure like Maura Harrington, of Shell To Sea. And Harrington herself would be the first to admit that she isn’t everybody’s cup of tea.
The only other person to emerge as a figurehead is Diarmuid O’Flynn of the Ballyhea Bondholder Protest. A sports journalist with this newspaper, O’Flynn kicked off the Ballyhea protest as an expression of the national frustration. Many voices have commended the movement, but it hasn’t really spread beyond nearby Charleville.
Nationally, some opposition politicians like Richard Boyd Barrett on the left and Stephen Donnelly, who might be regarded as coming from the opposite end of the spectrum, have decried the lack of take-up of widespread protest. But still, there’s nothing much moving out there in wider society.
NO ANGRY YOUNG MEN OR WOMEN
In May of last year, as Spain’s economic woes began to crystallise, thousands of young men and women took to the streets. The protesters were dubbed “los indignados”, (the indignant). They demanded jobs, better living standards, a brake put on the government’s austerity programme, and changes to a political system that appeared to be weighed against the young.
Does any of that sound familiar? Most analysis of the austerity here has concluded that it is weighed heavily against the young, primarily because they don’t hold the kind of political power enjoyed by other groups and demographics. Yet, the sound of student feet on the street has been the sound of silence.
The only time students managed to get it together to protest in recent years has been when their own economic interests were in play, mainly around the payment of third-level fees.
Last year, when the Spanish youth did take to the streets, a small “solidarity” demonstration was held in Dublin. Among those addressing the gathering was Boyd Barrett, a man who could never be described as being shy of a loudhailer. He told the protesters that he wanted to see “the Spanish revolution imported into this country”. Why? What’s wrong with our indigenous youth, and particularly students?
John Logue, the president of the Union of Students of Ireland, puts this apparent reticence down to a number of factors.
“Firstly, a lot of students on the ground have been active in anti-austerity protests. But we (in the students union) are specifically targeting education. Education is an investment, which benefits society in general. We’ve taken a more specific, direct attack position,” he says.
Logue also claims that students these days just don’t have the same time as those who went before them. “Five years ago a 2.1 degree was good enough to get a job but now lots of students have a 1.1 and yet nothing to show for it. Competition has just skyrocketed, and people are working their butts off. It’s a rat race right now.”
Another explanation for the apparent lethargic take up of youthful protesters may well be emigration. Down through the ages, many who might have been expected to be in the vanguard of any radical politics simply upped sticks and left instead.
Today, with youth unemployment rising to about 25%, a whole new generation is fleeing.
“One of the major reasons there is not more protest from the young is that they see emigration as their destiny,” says Dr Niamh Hourigan, head of graduate studies in sociology at UCC.
“They see it as nearly a shameful thing to stay in Ireland. Emigration has long been seen as a safety valve, and if you talk to many in that age group today, if they’re not going, they’re planning to go.”
Apart from students, another element of society that has traditionally been to the fore in mass protest is the trade union movement. Catherine Murphy believes that the voice of the unions has been silenced.
“All the big protests down the years were organised by trade unions,” she says. “We’ve lost that vehicle now by virtue of the private versus public debate and the credibility issue with unions at the moment. The way things have developed, the government has worked well to control the unions.”
Demographics also have a role to play in the lack of dissenting voices being heard. One of the main groups to be impacted by the current crisis are the thirty- and forty-somethings who bought homes at the peak of the market, and now find themselves in negative equity, living in commuter towns, often in the early, expensive stages of rearing a family.
Precious little has been heard in an organised fashion from this cohort.
“They often live on big, urban estates and don’t know many people locally,” Hourigan says.
“They’re working all day, so they’re not spending much time locally. A group like this don’t have what is described as pre-organisational strength, which means being involved in other organisations through which networks are established. This was seen to be the case in successful mass protests like the civil rights movement, where those involved knew each other through other organisations before getting involved in the movement.
“Young couples in Ireland today don’t have those kind of networks. This has an impact on the lack of protests coming from groups like that.”
HISTORY/CULTURE
Irrespective of specific conditions today, every country is, to a certain extent, a prisoner of its history and a subject to native culture. For mass protest to take place, the role of the nation state in society must be regarded as primary. That is not necessarily the case in Ireland. Here, traditionally, family and community have always been afforded far greater respect and allegiance than any fidelity to wider society. This fidelity to the local over the national is something that Niamh Hourigan sees as feeding into the lack of protests.
“There has always been a strong, authoritarian emphasis on the culture here,” she says. “If you look at rural Ireland in particular, the power structures locally are through family. People see open conflict as being very high risk, it wouldn’t just affect work relationships but family relationships also. The economy has changed but the role of the family hasn’t.
“A similar attitude to power is there in Catholicism. The Church encouraged emphasis on community relations rather than on society or the State. And if you look at it, people are very effective protesting for community, in issues like phone masts.”
The nature of the protests in favour of the Quinn family is a case in point. To most observers, the sense of grievance voiced in the area is entirely misplaced. But loyalty to the local family — and Sean Quinn did once employ thousands in the area — outweighs the evidence as adjudicated on by the courts, reported by the media, and acted on by the financial regulator and the Government, all of which are national entities, rather than anything based specifically in the community affected.
THE contrast between national and community dissent is not confined to geography. Groups like farmers and pensioners, both of whom have access to the pre-organisational structures referenced above by Hourigan, have been successful in articulating their dissent.
“People do see the crisis in an isolated way,” Catherine Murphy says. “I describe it as the symptoms bringing people out rather than the cause.”
The failure, however, of any national body around which dissent would gather, has been noticeable. The closest thing to a national umbrella body has been the anti-household charge campaign. Murphy says she has not paid her own charge in protest:
“There is definitely a protest on the household charge, but I think people are doing it on an individual basis rather than as part of an organised protest. People see it as a need to put down a marker.”
THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER
Murphy is from the school of opinion that says the European power centres need to hear the cry of dissent from this country. As with her fellow independent TD Stephen Donnelly, she believes that we’re being seen as an easy touch.
“When we met the troika for the first time, we said look at this, how the country is suffering so much. And they turned around in disbelief. They said, you’ve got a Government with big support (in the Dáil), and nobody is out on the streets, no protest. What’s the problem.”
Whether or not a large cohort of the public will be moved to express their anger with feet on the street at this stage remains a moot point. Niamh Hourigan says that just because we haven’t seen it yet, the paucity of dissent isn’t set in stone.
“I don’t think that we can take it for granted that there won’t be protests (on a large scale). You may see middle class networks mobilise in relation to child benefit, especially when you consider there have already been a number of cutbacks in the area of child support. Any change in child benefit could become a catalyst.
“The debt renegotiation is another issue. It’s something that people do think about as it feeds their sense of injustice,” she says.
If there is a welling up of anger out there ready to be turned into mass protest, there is certainly no sign of it yet. So far, through a combination of factors, a lid has been kept on the seething anger and sense of injustice. The maintenance of that situation is bound to be tested with the harshest of budgets in the offing.
ANTI-HOUSEHOLD CHARGE CAMPAIGN
On Mar 24 last, an estimated 3,000 people attended a rally against the household charge in the National Stadium in Dublin. The rally was the first, and so far, only real visible expression of the protest against the charge.
The deadline for payment of the charge was Mar 31, by which time fewer than 400,000 of the estimated 1.6 million homes had paid up. However, by late September, more than one million homes are reported to have paid the charge.
The campaign is made up of a range of left-wing parties, entities, and independent politicians. Joe Higgins’ Socialist Party, Richard Boyd Barrett of People Before Profit/ Socialist Workers Party, and independents such as Tipperary TD Seamus Healy have led the campaign. Mick Wallace was also to the fore, prior to the publicity generated by his tax issues and various other controversies.
The protest is predicated on the notion that the charge is a virulent expression of the austerity that the country is being subjected to, and therefore must be resisted. If successful, this protest would then beget a wider campaign to roll back austerity. That’s the theory.
Opponents suggest that the campaign is a cynical attempt by left-wing parties to generate political support, and that no real principle informs the campaign.
As a national movement, the campaign had to inevitably succumb to The Split. On the day of the rally, the jostling for position became apparent when three independent TDs in the campaign wrote a letter protesting the dominance of the Socialist Party speakers in the rally. Since then, there have also been attempts to eject Wallace, although his status remains unclear.
On the basis of collection of the charge, the campaign could claim to have been successful. However, claiming credit for all the non-compliance might be stretching the notion of success. No other rally is planned in the immediate future, so for the moment the campaign is on soft enough ground if it claims to represent a significant expression of protest against the current malaise.
OCCUPY MOVEMENT
The Occupy movement landed in Ireland on Oct 8, 2011. On that day, a group of around 60 protestors occupied the plaza in front of the Central Bank in Dublin’s Dame St. The protesters followed the lead of their kindred spirits in Wall Street and other cities around the world by declaring they were staying put until things began to change.
Other occupations followed in Cork, Galway, Waterford, and Athlone. In Cork, the occupation on the South Mall initially attracted dozens of protesters, although by the time the protest ended six months later, only three were still overnighting. The Occupy groups were loosely based with an emphasis on democracy with no hierarchical structure therein.
There were four main demands, or, as some of them put it, requests. The withdrawal of the troika from the State; an end to public ownership of private debt; the return to public ownership of Ireland’s privatised oil and gas reserves; and the initiation of “real participatory democracy“.
By any stretch, the demands were unattainable, even if the protesters intended hanging on in there into infinity. However, the dedication of those involved won the various Occupy movements many supporters, including local business people in the vicinity of the various protests, who supplied them with food and provisions.
The occupations remained in situ through the winter, but it would be fair to say they had absolutely no impact on the body politic, or anywhere that decisions were being made.
The protests began to dissipate in mid-March after gardaí began dismantling the Dublin site in order to clean up the street for the St Patrick’s Day parade. Similar camp break-ups followed in Cork and Galway.
The movement still exists as a collection of individuals and made an appearance in a protest occupying AIB branches on Oct 1, when the bank repaid a €1bn bond.
BALLYHEA BONDHOLDER BAILOUT PROTEST
Probably the protest most closely associated with the collapse of the economy. Ballyhea is not associated with any political party, trade union, or organisation. It’s merely an expression of protest against the obvious injustice that has been perpetrated through the full reimbursement of the failed gambling debts of bondholders.
It began on Mar 6, 2011, when sports reporter Diarmuid O’Flynn and 17 others marched through the Co Cork village after Sunday Mass. Within a few weeks, their numbers had swelled. A specific route and time was then agreed for the weekly gathering. At 11.45am on Sundays, the marchers gather in the church car park, walk down the village and back again. There is no chanting or shouting, but neither is it a silent march. It merely bears witness to the situation that the citizens of the country have had imposed on them.
The group has attempted a number of times to go national, including a run and a march from the village to the seat of government in Leinster House. While the movement has attracted positive reviews, it certainly hasn’t caught on. O’Flynn has vocally blamed the lack of success on media apathy and what he calls “bystander syndrome“.
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