Dublin Riot: No to orange and green sectarians

national | miscellaneous | press release Friday March 03, 2006 16:41 by Cian - Socialist Party ComradeCian at eircom dot net Limerick 085-7077919

Joe Higgins TD's statement in the Dail on Saturday's riot in Dublin - Dail Debate, 1st March 2006

The Socialist Party condemns those who orchestrated Saturday's violence. It was a sectarian riot to prevent the Love Ulster group marching through Dublin. My party believes that the Love Ulster campaign is based on sectarianism and that its activities heighten sectarian divisions and encourage disunity among working class people, especially in Northern Ireland. We strongly oppose the political agenda and the activities of Love Ulster, but we recognise its right to march and protest in the centre of Dublin. The Socialist Party equally recognises the rights of others to indicate peaceful opposition to Love Ulster through disciplined protest, but they have no right to stop others marching as happened on Saturday in Dublin. My party strongly opposes the political agenda of both orange and green sectarians, whether in the North or on the streets of Dublin.

Let us contrast Saturday's disgusting scenes with those of a few weeks ago, when striking postal workers in Belfast, Protestant and Catholic, marched together up the Shankill Road and down the Falls Road in a united working class demonstration. With the many groups and individuals subjected to disgraceful violence on Saturday, I highlight violent assaults against workers, including migrant workers, in their workplaces, particularly shops, by the thugs who participated. Clearly, the Good Friday Agreement is not providing a solution. It could not do so, since it is the institutionalisation of sectarian division. Therefore, I register my dissent and formally oppose that section of the motion before us.
The key task remaining is forging unity among working class people within Northern Ireland and North and South and, in so doing, ensuring all communities and individuals can live free from sectarian conflict. However, the British and Irish Governments which push new liberal and right-wing economic agendas at the expense of those working class communities are not the ones to show the way forward in this respect.

I wish to issue a strong, loud and clear warning to senior Dublin City Council officials and anyone in the Government who echoes the call made yesterday by the Dublin city manager. Effectively, he called for the right to democratically organise, protest and march in Dublin city centre to be curbed and restricted. Disgracefully, the Taoiseach echoed that call today. It is disgraceful that the hooliganism of a tiny few, who sought to curb the freedom to march on Saturday, should be seized on by city council bureaucrats to curb our freedom to march peacefully and express ourselves on a whole range of issues that concern ordinary people, workers and working class communities. All, whether it be the farming community, trade unions, community organisations or political organisations, have the democratic right to come to the centre of their capital city and show their cause.

Just as working class people of Dublin, with one of their great leaders, Jim Larkin, exerted their right to bring their movement, grievances and cause on to O'Connell Street in the time leading up to and during the monumental events and struggle for justice by workers in 1913, we will not tolerate any attempts by bureaucrats or anyone else to prevent our right to demonstrate peacefully and democratically in the centre of this city of Dublin