A St Patrick’s parade like no other

At least it is when one reads in this morning’s Irish Independent that:

President Michael D Higgins has used his St Patrick’s Day message to condemn the growing rise of racism, forced migration, modern-day slavery and a “poisonous xenophobia”.

The President’s remarks, making clear reference to the recent anti-refugee protests around Ireland and elsewhere, come as Gardaí have also put a “robust” policing plan in place to prevent far-right protests from disrupting the country’s main parade, in Dublin city centre on Friday.

The President’s message is timely. This continues with the following:

Public order units will be on stand-by and “considerable resources” will be deployed to prevent protest groups causing havoc in the city centre.

A well-known far-right activist is believed to be behind a planned anti-immigration protest due to take place near the Four Courts tomorrow afternoon – but senior sources say they have “no information of any specific threat” to the parade arising from this event.

Here’s what the Gardaí say:

In the lead-up to St Patrick’s Day, the Special Detective Unit and officers in the Security and Intelligence section at Garda HQ have also continued to monitor the online activities of a number of far-right activists involved in anti-immigration protests.

“The protest will be policed in the way many of these protests have been over the past number of weeks,” said a senior source. “It will be low-key policing – not in any way will it be in-your-face style. People have a right to protest.

“However, public order units will be on stand-by – and in the highly unlikely event that there are attempts to interfere with the parade, people engaging in criminal conduct will be dealt with in a robust manner,” added the source.

Gardaí said “very considerable resources” had been put in place for tomorrow’s festivities. However, they had received “no tangible feedback that there are plans to cause disruption”.

“Every St Patrick’s Day, a policing plan is put in place – and this year is no different. In terms of risk projection, there is more danger of trouble from youths coming from the suburbs and engaging in anti-social behaviour in the city centre, rather than anything specific from the protest.

“But there’s no room for complacency – and, as with every protest, a specific policing plan is in place.

“The main concern for gardaí on the day is for the parade to pass off peacefully and without any interruption.

“It needs to be stressed that there are no heightened feelings of threat here,” added the source.

One hopes that this following is correct:

Gardaí say they are not expecting a large crowd at the protest, and in fact report that numbers at anti-immigration protests “have been dwindling” in recent weeks.

Certainly there was talk from those latter quarters about marches on St Patrick’s Day. Been trying to work through the logic of that. Is the idea to draw people from the parade crowds in order to swell numbers? Does that even work given the nature of the day itself? Or is it to glom on to the parade crowds to give an impression through the use of video and social media that they are better supported than the small numbers currently involved would suggest?

And there’s the monetisation aspect too.

Or is it simply opportunistic, something is happening, let’s see what else happens.