Irish people are still suffering in silence

Don’t count against the riots in England spreading to Ireland, writes Noel Baker.

AS trouble swept across London like a malicious Mexican wave, some friends of mine on Facebook made a number of pertinent suggestions.

“Why aren’t the police using tear gas?” asked one of my best friends, who lives near Hackney, before wondering, “Where are all the tasers I’ve heard about?” Another comment suggested that all those involved in the looting and destruction “should be tarred and feathered”, while a former school friend simply advocated going at them with a gun.

The widespread unrest — rioting for some, criminality in the view of others — took place in locations such as Brixton, where unrest has occurred before, and areas where the very idea of trouble is downright incongruous (Gloucester). It has prompted huge debate across the water as to why this trouble spread so quickly, the motives behind it, its sociological meaning, and a crisis in liberal circles, with columnists and others who advocate “hugging a hoodie” now wondering whether it is time to send in the army/instill proper discipline at home/emphasise the need for law and order.

We have our own well-documented troubles, and we probably shouldn’t be looking for any more, but one question worth asking is whether similar problems could happen here. As we are all too aware, the country is on its knees economically, in the grip of high unemployment and a lack of ready access to credit. Austerity measures have put a vice-like squeeze on households and many unpopular decisions have still to be made, up to and including a series of unpalatable budget cuts later this year. In addition to emigration, there are growing fears that the European Union doesn’t know what it is doing, augmented by the fear of a double-dip recession.

There are other issues as well, such as the argument that we have made little real effort to properly integrate people from other countries into Irish society. Then again, there are key differences: London is possibly the most multi-cultural place on the planet, with an accompanying, rumbling tension between different types of Britishness. Dublin and other Irish cities are much smaller by comparison, but that is not to say that poverty does not stalk the streets and, as one retired Garda said off the record, what happens in Britain today can have a knock-on effect in Ireland tomorrow.

Mass civil disorder seldom does take place in Ireland. In May 2004, a water cannon was deployed as demonstrators clashed with gardaí as a newly enlarged EU was toasted in the Phoenix Park, while in 2006 the Love Ulster event in Dublin ended in numerous arrests. Both were ostensibly about something, although the end result was similar. Only at the latter event were there certain slight similarities to the recent riots in England, in the way many people used the fractious atmosphere that Saturday to opportunistically loot some shops, most memorably Footlocker on O’Connell Street.

There were also disturbances during the Queen’s visit and at a student demonstration in Dublin City centre last November, but they were localised and flared only briefly. Even at the height of the tumult over our EU/IMF bailout and the bungled manner in which it was handled by the previous government, there was much hand-wringing but little egg-throwing or window-smashing.

Shops and businesses certainly have an interest in ensuring the riots seen in certain English cities do not cross the Irish Sea. Tom Coffey, the chief executive of the Dublin City Business Association, is remarkably phlegmatic about the possibility of any trouble, believing it simply won’t happen.

“I do not believe that there is any likelihood of problems like those seen in the UK coming here,” he says, claiming that many of the incidents witnessed across England over the past week are as a result of its colonial past.

“We are a far more homogenous society,” Coffey claims, arguing that we are a better educated, more middle-class society than England, which is “more stratified”.

In addition, he says most people here own their own home, with or without negative equity, and that the recession “is temporary”.

“The Irish are a very moderate race, we have not been out on the streets like the Greeks. If people own their own property, the last thing you are going to do is go out and burn it down.”

As for any potential lack of resources that could see the gardaí stretched in the same way as police in London and other English towns and cities, Coffey says: “We would expect [rioters] to be dealt with as quickly and as forcefully as possible.” He believes the gardaí are “at the top of their game”, and that citizens would expect results if anything were to happen. “We are not going to accept any damage to property or misbehaviour on the streets.”

As for the gardaí, they are a little more circumspect. Garda Representative Association president Damien McCarthy says: “The demand for policing is not always predictable, so it is vital to have sufficient Garda numbers available for all operational needs as they arise. The recent riots in the UK have highlighted this, and senior political figures there have now called for a rethink to cutting police numbers.

“Garda numbers are being reduced here and recruitment of new members has been stopped. This will inevitably leave gaps and could have grave repercussions if a similar level of violence were to erupt in Ireland.

“It is essential that gardaí are trained, equipped and in sufficient number to deal with all eventualities — despite this the force is enduring drastic cuts,” Mr McCarthy says.

Dr Kieran Keohane of University College Cork’s Department of Sociology also believes that rioting is unlikely here — but for different reasons.

“The first thing is the causes of it. [British prime minister] David Cameron is talking about ‘criminality’ and in a way he is not wrong, but what explains that?”

Dr Keohane believes there is a “disjunction” between the goals a society sets and the distribution of the means to achieve them; in short, the sociological view of a consumer society in which the goal is to acquire material, but where many people do not have the means.

This means that, in Britain, these “flawed consumers” have taken to deviant means to get what they wanted. He admits that while this happens every day at localised level in the form of shoplifting, “something in particular is going on at the moment” across the water.

Dr Keohane lived in London for a time and believes society there is deeply divided, one where the gaps between the classes and races are more marked than in other countries. Those behind the rioting in the past week have no agenda and therefore their actions are inarticulate, but the danger still exists that it could “find a voice”. As an aside, the role of social media in the apparent coordinating of incidents in Britain has meant authorities there are considering shutting down or disrupting those lines of communication were any similar trouble to occur in future — a proposal unlikely to find favour with a huge body of people who believe free reign in social media is a right.

The idea of “flawed consumers” is one developed by Zygmunt Bauman, and Dr Keohane believes those engaging in unrest in Britain have short-circuited the system in which they want items but cannot have them by conventional means. As Dr Keohane points out, it’s not like they were attacking Scotland Yard or Whitehall. But they weren’t attacking Curry’s either — people were simply stealing what they wanted.

So why could a similar situation not happen here? According to Keohane, “in many ways we are as or even more unequal” than Britain, with poor people here every bit as marginalised as elsewhere. Yet he thinks there are key differences that would prevent us from going down a similar road as England. We have a smaller, more homogenous population that is not as clearly stratified or ethnicised as Britain, Dr Keohane says. He adds: “What overrides all that is Ireland’s emphasis on community — that overrides everything else.” In the late Brian Lenihan’s words, “we are all in this together”.

Dr Keohane says: “I live in Limerick but the world I occupy is entirely different to somebody on welfare for four generations in Moyross or Southill.”

He believes that our innate conventionality, far removed from our self-image of Irish people as rebels and resistors, mean we are less likely to preside over an implosion of social/criminal angst like in Britain. While Irish politicians were exclaiming “we are not Greece” in the run-up to our bailout, the Greeks protesting in Athens shouted slogans including “we are not the Irish”, i.e., we will not take this lying down.

Dr Keohane does not advocate the burning of buildings or the wrecking of shops, but he does see a difficulty in our being docile and conventional at a time like this, claiming it “cannot be healthy”. The argument goes that while recent events in Britain highlight how broken or atrophied parts of its society have become, we are not having that debate at all. The rioting in parts of England are symptoms of the disease, but at least a debate may now occur about the disease. Here in Ireland, Dr Keohane believes, “we are suffering in silence”.

“We have the same sickness but we are like the patient doesn’t talk about the symptoms. People here really do not go to the doctor until they are quite unwell.”