Kevin Myers, the RIRA, Dublin north side working-class housing estates and… er…cat litter… September 19, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.trackback
I’m indebted to smiffy for pointing me in the direction of Kevin Myers recent and most peculiar column about the funeral of Alan Ryan in Donaghmede. While we’re talking about that funeral it struck me there was an awful lot made of it in some media, which puzzled me, because it certainly wasn’t the first paramilitary style funeral in this state over the past ten years. But having read Myers I’m a little less surprised that the great and the good might find this offending their sensitivities.
He’s mighty exercised is Myers. No, really he is:
Excuse me, but what precisely is going on? Last Saturday, authority over an entire estate in Dublin was yielded to a terrorist organisation, while gardai watched on.
Who has the authority on the street corners and in the pubs of Donaghmede tonight and every other night? Who has the power? Who has the glamour? Who has the guns? Well, you and I both know the answer to those questions: no one who answers to the Department of Justice, or any organ of government.
Hmmmm… go on.
The gangs are winning hands down. And the response from our political classes about the largest paramilitary funeral in Dublin this century has been silence. If there is comfort of any kind it is that the gangs are at war with one another. But a St Valentine’s Day could soon sort all that out: all that is required is one charismatic, ruthless, charming and “patriotic” man.
He’s also worried about ‘us’ being “One Major Event” away from ‘serious violence and political breakdown” in the North. Maybe. But that’s another days work.
Meanwhile back in the city he apparently lives close to he asks…
Do you know what I smell? I smell Weimar. I smell the rotting corpse of a morally diseased political class lining its pockets with allowances and unvouched expenses, and which stayed silent as Donaghmede was allowed to secede from this Republic and reconnect itself in time and place with Ballymurphy, 1972.
Who is the TD who can go to any of the working-class housing estates around Dublin and give the residents uplifting lectures about the importance of maintaining high standards in public life? Which of the gallants in Dail Eireann is so untarnished as to be made as welcome in any of those estates as Colin Duffy was in Donaghmede last Saturday? And should the answer to that question not fill us with abject fear?
Erm… I’m no expert, but I’d have thought the most obvious answer to his first question in the last paragraph would be the indefatigable Tommy Broughan who from time immemorial has parked his caravan on the verge just down from Donaghmede Shopping Centre and across the road from the church the funeral took place at. I find it hard to believe that Broughan has any problems going anywhere around there.
And speaking of which… I happen to know Donaghmede too, know it well as it happens having gone to school in Kilbarrack just down the road, canvassed there during the 1980s and 1990s and have friends from there. But more recently that’s where I did my weekly shopping in Dunnes in the Shopping Centre until three or so years ago.
Most recently I was there the week before last at the pet shop buying, of all things, cat litter (in the perhaps not entirely appropriately named Wackers). I also made a stop in the music shop there where for a very reasonable price I managed to get The Old Grey Whistle Test 4 disc compilation. Pleased with my purchases I then dropped into Dunnes for something and tried to find a book in the bookshop upstairs (which IIRC is or was owned by Mary White, of the Green Party).
Now, I don’t want to pretend that Donaghmede, or indeed anywhere in particular on the North side is an oasis of tranquility and calm. Or on the south side. Or wherever. But I’d wonder what relationship Myer’s description of the area bears to reality – not least because the funeral was in the church that is across the road from the shopping centre where far from it being some sort of Weimar defeatism the Gardai fairly sensibly took the decision not to intervene.
As for a political meaning to all this, well, given it was RIRA, they don’t really do politics. And the nature of the death of Ryan would appear to raise enormously problematic issues for them whether they did politics or not. Indeed the self-limiting aspects of Republicanism without politics, particularly when there appear to be strong linkages into the criminal world, are fairly obvious and we’ve seen unhappy examples of this in the past.
And having a first hand account from someone who wandered in on the event coincidentally it would appear that the actual crowd of RIRA, or whatever one wishes to call them, was quite small and supplemented – as might be expected, by people having a gawk.
So yeah, something smells alright…
I should add that Myers has form when it comes to the North side. Two years ago local SF rep Mícheál Mac Donncha made this protest as regards an article by him about… well, read on…
there was a lot of hysteria over that funeral alright, as if it was some sort of challenge to the state. nothing about the drugs gangs that murdered him having an entire economy and disputes resolution system that goes against the laws of the state, but then to talk about that might be getting a little to close to the bone for some of our esteemed.
That’s something I felt as well, that the funeral was seen as a challenge to the state when if anything it pointed up how marginalised they are. Very strange.
i didn’t pick up on how marginalised there are, yeah i suppose there is something to that. the meanness and the venom though where very noticeable to me. the state can be provoked with a bit of ceremony. used to be said in republican circles than the difference between a FF government and a FG/lab government that under FF when they come to take you away they come to your door. When FG/Lab come to take you away you get put through the window. there stupidly predictable.
I mean marginalised in the sense that it wasn’t quite the occasion the papers painted it as…
I don’t think it’s that. If there’s one thing that middle-aged Torygraph columnists (and their readers) like to see, it’s cops beating the hoi-polloi and ‘revolutionaries’ (of any stripe) off the street.
I’d say he seems to be feeling more cruelly robbed of the satisfaction.
Do you know what I smell…I smell arrogance, however Mr Myers having his head up his own arse helps limit the stink. Ever get the feeling there is no point engaging with the likes of Mr Myers, that the point of reconciliation has been passed, that a distinct and rigid form of class polarization is getting a grip here and indeed globally???
“a distinct and rigid form of class polarization is getting a grip here and indeed globally???”
Big time. Very much agree.
I might add that it is on both sides, Romneys video being a case in point. I believe that the Romney/Myers of the world are now beyond approach, so where do we go from here? Incidently I would ‘nt consider it a good thing to happen, but how long are people suppose to put up with the likes of Myers and his buddies down at the Sindo, they have form in that respect (1913), so perhaps we should do them before they do us !!!.
I must say the painting of Alan Byrne as a combination of James Connolly and Bobby Sands is a bit sad. The reals are functioning very nicely as a hood outfit
“I must say the painting of Alan Byrne as a combination of James Connolly and Bobby Sands is a bit sad.” And that’s a dynamic we’ve seen before too.
The bizarre thing about Myers’ article isn’t the fear of and distaste for the lower orders, both of which are par for the course with Colonel Blimp types. It’s the sheer hysterical lack of proportion. A few dissidents in masks shooting over a coffin and we’re straight to the fall of the Weimar Republic.
In fact, the cops played their hand pretty shrewdly. They didn’t risk a gunfight at a funeral but apparently used the event for intelligence purposes.
But it gives an inkling to Myers and his ilk’s greatest fear, the use of violence! They know that they control democracy et al, they fear the only thing that can remove them … violence. If you scan the 1%’s media esp Indo, you will see , any type of violence where people take that ultimate step, no matter how small is given headline space … in the last few days RTE programme on the riots in Dublin over the Orange Order march, look at this big spread given to Manchester police shootings http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/police-shootings-family-pay-respects-to-beautiful-daughter-3235424.html , london riots etc . Myers never gave a damm about working class estates but he like all the 1% fear ‘contagion’ not in the markest but among the working class, look at the last paragraph in this
http://cedarlounge.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/carthago-croke-park-delenda-est-er-why/
True, Mark P.
Take this fine, reasoned prediction from September 2007 -
‘Immigration is now not merely the dominant feature of Irish life, it is the greatest threat to the existence of the Irish nation as a coherent, and cohesive whole.’
Proportion?
I was in the Donaghmede shopping centre doing my shopping on the Saturday of Alan Ryan’s funeral. There was alot of RIRA folk floating around & alot of onlookers but particularly just regular people going around doing there shopping. The gardai were not in a poition to intervene in this because this could have fuelled disorder. The Gardai did quite clearly use the event for intelligene purposes. I found the whole thing rather surreal & facinating and most likely I will never see quite an event in my lifetime again.
You weren’t the only person on this site who happened coincidentally to be there Aoife
‘If you scan the 1%’s media esp Indo, you will see , any type of violence where people take that ultimate step, no matter how small is given headline space … in the last few days RTE programme on the riots in Dublin over the Orange Order march, look at this big spread given to Manchester police shooting’
Just take a step back there. What kind of violence? Not all violence is progressive, arguably the violence of the anti-agreement republicans is regressive. The violence used by criminals to enforce their authority is reactionary. The media will of course cover all this- why wouldn’t they? In my experience people love reading about gangs, guns etc.
The RTE programme was an Irish-language half-hour (Scanall) on the biggest riots in Dublin in 20 years. Be odd if they hadn’t done something on them.
It is very rare for policewomen in these islands to be killed in the line of duty (none ever in southern Ireland) and for two to be killed in a gun and grenade attack is pretty newsworthy.
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