Perspective is everything. Ten people watching the same event will tell 10 different stories. So it is with the Dublin riot of February 26. The debate fascinates as it unfolds. There are those who regard the rioters as vicious thugs bent on carnage and there’s those who explain it all as an inevitable outcome of the way our society has become.

Boiled down it comes to this: they’re to blame or we’re to blame.
Well, for sure there’s real inequality in Irish society. And there’s real poverty. But it doesn’t explain or excuse the arrant viciousness, sectarianism and even racism on show.
As the eminent criminologist Paul O’Mahony has repeatedly pointed out, while poor or disadvantaged people may be disproportionately represented amongst those in Mountjoy, the vast majority of poor people never commit a crime. And studies of British soccer hooligans show that few of them are in fact are short of cash. Most are employed and successful. Some are even wealthy…
It’s not about poverty. It’s about a lot more, much of it unpleasant and in need of repair.
As far as I can see there were at least five groups involved in the Dublin mayhem. For sure there were hardcore dissident republicans at the demonstration. On the whole, they seem to have been taken aback by the way events turned. Most demonstrated but didn’t riot.
Secondly, there were hardcore Glasgow Celtic supporters. Deeply prejudiced and sectarian, these are as close as we have to football hooligans and (ironically) the British National Party. They have been repeatedly involved in clashes with the Gardai over the last few years. The greater Celtic’s success, the more troublesome they have become. Many of these were drunk and rioting.
Thirdly, there were some hard left agitators, who turn up at all these events and try to foment disorder. I mean, I heard one of these guys being interviewed on radio during the taxi demonstrations, when one turned ugly. He said he wasn’t a taxi driver but had turned up on the day out of sympathy for the taxi drivers…
Look, no offence, but sympathy for taxi drivers beggars belief. So, where there’s any prospect of street violence, this bunch will be there. They may be few but they’re troublesome. It was a factor during the Reclaim the Streets march. These guys wanted that to turn into a riot.
Fourthly, there were some disaffected youngish males who know their history only from Celtic songs. They are easily led, angry about much (though not very clear about what), and they are well capable of getting stuck in, especially if sufficiently tanked and motivated. They were there, drunk and rioting and looting.
Finally, there were, as might be expected, opportunists who used the riot as cover, to rob, loot and attack.
Ostensibly the riot was a response to the FAIR march. But there was a wave of agitation beforehand that escalated it way beyond that. The question to be answered is this: how did the agitation find such fertile ground and how were the Gardai so ill-prepared?
There is a certain grim satisfaction to watching the smug modernists grapple with this sudden descent into atavism and to jump to whatever conclusions suit their particular ideology. As I said, it’s all to do with perspective.
Well, that’s not good enough. The essence of a republic is that different opinions can be expressed, debated and ultimately voted on. The mob, innately fascist as it is, is the enemy of the republic.
But it is also the case, as I argued in these pages some years ago, that the success of the Republic of Ireland’s soccer team (and possibly of the Irish economy in turn) drove a wedge between the two parts of the island. Insofar as soccer has a significant social or cultural effect, it is partitionist.
It’s ironic – the thugs who boo Rangers players and who wrap the green flag around them, and who attack Charlie Bird because he’s a Protestant, don’t seem to understand that someone who really believed in the old republican model would welcome Orangemen to Dublin as the capital city of the country, and would welcome the opportunity to show that the republic was about all religions and none, working together in the common good.
They don’t have any understanding of what republicanism means.
Opportunistic thieves and looters we’ll probably always have, as we will agitators from any or all of a multitude of far left and far right parties. But the football hooligans and sectarian and racist thugs we can get rid of.
Doing so means thinking clearly. In particular, those who have gone along with the appalling sectarian ranting that accompanies Glasgow Celtic matches as a harmless bit of rough have got to cop themselves on.
Harmless it ain’t. It’s Green bigotry and fascism and it should be resisted as strongly as Orange bigotry and fascism. And anti-racists need to get their heads out of the clouds too. Elements of the mob attacked foreigners as well.
As I said above, this is Ireland’s equivalent of the National Front. Respond accordingly.