I can spend a day out and about in Dublin without ever talking to a native Dubliner. My post office staff, my bus driver, the shop assistants in my deli, my supermarket cashiers, my coffee shop baristas, my newsagents, the staff in most of the pubs I visit, all are recent immigrants, for whom English is a second language, and often a poor second at that.

That they are all, unfailingly, polite and friendly, is something to note; indeed the Polish staff at my local Lidl in Thomas Street are far more pleasant than the staff in the old Quinnsworth (now Tesco) in Rathmines, when I was growing up.
This is nothing new for most of you living in this city, but as a recently returned Dubliner it feels strange. The problem with discussing it, and naming the pros and cons of this massive cultural and socio-economic shift, is that to criticize the phenomenon is to risk allying oneself with practised speakers on race and immigration whose motives have an unsavoury whiff of hatred, of fear of difference, of an instinctive, irrational tribalism.
It’s worth mentioning here that one of the best aspects of living in London for so many years, for me, was precisely the mix of cultures, the sheer variety of people I met there, and the warmth and kindness of the little Bangladeshi/Indian enclave that was my neighbourhood was a lifesaver.
The journalist Mark Simpson was visiting recently and posed an interesting question. In time, what will be the purpose of coming to Dublin, if everyone a tourist encounters isn’t Irish?
I’ve had a few guests from England stay with me recently, some for the first time, and so it’s been a pleasure to take them around, to do the tourist thing, and to see the city through their eyes. It’s a fair city, and I’m proud of it. But I’ve visited one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city, the Guinness Storehouse, twice, and, both times, not one person who served us was Irish. Walking through the city centre, one is hard-pressed to hear the English language in the crowds sometimes.
There is an English critical perspective on immigration and multiculturalism that I have time for, and it’s one that is based on a love for English working-class culture, and the perception that its values and character are being undermined and diminished. Most importantly, the working-class English are as peripheral to the interests of the Westminster elite, as any other grouping without economic (and therefore political) clout.
Until the advent of reality TV, however, the Sun-reading, bawdy, irreverent and generally rambunctious lot were not properly represented in the mainstream media. The abhorrence that many have for Big Brother et al is often a class-based dismay at how revolting the natives are, although there are other reasons I find that programme so distasteful (and yet compelling), most notably its inherent sadism.
Writers like Simpson and Julie Birchall are passionate defenders of the English working class, and do so not from a position of xenophobia, but from love; Simpson, in particular, brazenly expressing affection for English working-class men.
But English working-class culture has also been marginalised by the imposition of a bloodless, politically correct, institutionalised egalitarianism, masking a hypersensitive caution about offending minorities. Its origins are admirable, but its implementation has not shown evidence of much intelligence, or awareness of just how different people can be. Simpson points out that it is in this PC “hands-off” atmosphere, that fundamentalist Islamic terrorism has mushroomed, of a home-grown variety that is rare in the Western world.
Perhaps it’s the Achilles’ Heel of the English establishment mentality, not wanting to be seen to offend or provoke a fight; projecting irrationality and bloodlust on to other cultures, such as the mad Irish or the lunatic Arabs. Yet it is precisely this capacity to disavow emotion and promote a spurious rationality that drives other cultures berserk.
The English education system has been distorted by its class system. The comprehensive system has been ruined by an aversion to imposing necessary boundaries or standards, because, for too many teachers, such discipline is associated with bourgeois or upper class values, and is therefore anathema.
The English upper class male, in particular, through the public school system, is often crippled with emotional repression; the working class male, it could be said, suffers from no such inhibitions. And that’s a characteristic of British life that I don’t see changing in the near future, that tension, that dynamism.
Irish working-class culture, in comparison, has never been monied, and generation after generation has limped by on the inadequate dole. Now that relatively full employment has arrived here, it will take time for the effects of this to filter through.
But this is where it gets confusing – for the working class now, in Ireland, are increasingly immigrants. As the Irish navvies built the Channel Tunnel, so, now, the Poles and other East Europeans have built the Dublin Port Tunnel.
Why does this matter so much? Because the working class matters, in any culture. Ireland’s politics has been driven by the passions and fury of the working class enclaves in Belfast and Derry for generations. The violent response to the Love Ulster march in Dublin exposed to everyone the hitherto unexamined frustrations and concerns of the city’s working class male – thereby revealing the middle-class consensus that governs the Irish media.
I suspect that behind one particular negative English response to immigration is guilt; a once great Empire, that had the arrogance to impose its values on other nations and cultures, (and still does with Iraq), isn’t too comfortable with dealing with those very same cultures at home, doesn’t really understand them. But it’s not helped by the blind spot that the establishment has about working class culture, regardless of racial origin; it is this blind spot, this embarrassment, that allowed July 7th to happen, in combination with, and in response to, the warmongering activities of Tony Blair.
But the Irish response to immigration has to be taken in the context of Irish history. Having long been a people that depended on the kindness of strangers, with generation after generation emigrating out of economic necessity, the ball is now on the other foot.
It is a moot point whether or not the new workers in Ireland will stay or not. Some may go back home after a few years, indeed most that I’ve talked to miss home very much. But of course many will stay and marry, and in a few generations we will have school-leavers entering the workforce named Kaczinski and Chung and Ngomi..
The important point is that they are given the best education and funding possible, in the working-class schools, which is where they will be sent, because the wages we pay immigrants are so low. Now, more than ever, we have to prioritise, understand, and properly support the Irish working class, because it is its values they will inherit, it is their accents they will speak with, and it is their passion and energy that will drive our economy and country for generations to come.