Shameful day of violence in exposes intolerance and bigotry

LET there be no equivocation: those who orchestrated the rabid intolerance witnessed in the centre of Dublin on Saturday can only be considered as implacable enemies of this State.

The very principles of republicanism they pretend to serve were dishonoured and sullied by the hatred they displayed in a frenzy of sheer violence expressed in petrol bombs, burned-out cars and general destruction.

The planned and systematic mayhem was directed by extremist republicans, aided and abetted by opportunistic looters, with the sole objective of preventing a unionist protest taking place.

It is a measure of how far this republic has advanced that loyalists could even contemplate holding a march safely in the country’s capital, and that is the democratic way as it should be.

It is a ludicrous nonsense for Republican Sinn Féin, one of the organisers of the protest against the Love Ulster march, to blame the authorities for allowing the march to go ahead in the first place.

Guilt for this vicious riot, which saw 40 people arrested, lies squarely with those who planned and arranged it, not with the gardaí nor Dublin City Council.

Extreme loyalist intolerance against Catholics on the Garvaghy Road has been cited as a reason why the march should not have been allowed go ahead.

But that is an argument which would have us forever atrophying in the ‘not-an-inch’, tit-for-tat mire that has strangled political development in the northern part of this island for far too long.

We have rightly condemned those loyalist thugs whenever their reeking hatred of Catholics has been in full-on display; and those occasions have not been rare.

But their actions should not be used as an excuse to disallow Northern victims of republican violence march peacefully and without provocation through the streets of Dublin.

We can judge our development as a democracy by the measurement of our tolerance for those who hold political views contrary to our own.

Once again over the weekend, we saw the disturbing and ugly face of the anti-democrats, the extreme so-called republicans who are a mirror image of the extreme loyalists they so detest - colour-coded bully boys on both sides, who don’t give a damn for democracy.