By Andy Spearman
The lack of political debate on the tensions caused by the number of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in the Drogheda region has created a dangerous vacuum into which has sprung the right wing, some would say fascist, Irish Freedom Party (IFP).
The IFP are on a tour of the country at the moment spreading their message of extreme nationalism and racism wherever they go and last Saturday Drogheda’s was on the receiving end of this travelling circus of intolerance.
The main speaker at this rally, which drew more opposition than support, was IFP President Hermann Kelly whose speech consisted of a series of slogans stitched together:
“Ireland is full…. Ireland for the Irish People…. Irish Freedom Party is opposed to the colonisation of Ireland, it belongs not to the world but to the Irish people” and so on. You get the message.
Kelly is fiercely anti-European, he once worked with Nigel Farage the former leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) who managed to bamboozle the British public into voting to leave the EU thus cutting themselves off from their biggest trading partner. The results have been disastrous.
The IFP wants something similar for this country but they seem to have forgotten how important the EU has been to the lives of the people of Ireland. Kelly was five years old when Ireland joined what was then called the EEC in 1973 so he may not remember how bad things were in Ireland before that.
Certainly the EU is not without its faults but Ireland’s membership has improved our lives in so many different ways. But this is not about politics, it is a humanitarian issue.
How can we as the rich and developed country we have become ignore our duty to help those who have been forced out of their own countries for whatever reason? Especially when you consider our own history of oppression.
We Irish certainly punch above our weight in offering assistance, whether that be in humanitarian aid abroad or shelter in this country, and the type of rhetoric being touted by Kelly and his unsavoury gang is foreign to us in “Ireland of the Welcomes.”
The influx in the last eleven months of 70,000 or so refugees fleeing Putin’s murderous war against the people of Ukraine has certainly added extra stress to the already creaking Irish system of dealing with asylum seekers but calling for these people to leave or denying them entry in the first place is not the answer.
Coming as it does at a time when we have our own homeless crisis for the Government to deal with makes things more difficult to deal with but the ordinary people of Ireland, and Drogheda, have stood up to the plate in the face of previous crises and I believe they will do so again.
A much bigger and more civilised gathering took place, also outside St. Peter’s Church on March 5th 2022 at which the people of Drogheda gathered to show their support for the people of Ukraine. This was a show of concern for ordinary decent citizens of another country in their time of need.
I remember also the day in January 2020, when thousands of Drogheda people stood together to call for an end to the violence and misery being visited on the town by the disgusting criminal gangs of drug peddlers.
What has happened to us that we seem to have lost our compassion, which is such an integral part of the Irish persona? I firmly believe in the right to free speech but listening to people such as Hermann Kelly and his so-called Freedom Party is certainly not helping to find solutions. Quite the contrary, it is whipping up needless hatred.
During my long career I have visited some very poor parts of the world, countries suffering the effects of war and famine. I have witnessed children dying of hunger and it’s not pleasant. I have seen villages in South Sudan bombed into oblivion, I have interviewed terrified young boys in Uganda who have been kidnapped and forced to fight as child soldiers while their sisters were taken as sex slaves.
How can we in the rich world of which we are part turn our backs on them when they do manage to escape such tyranny?
