With friends like Katie ...

Irish Current Affairs Blog of the Year 2018

The Connemara Gateway Hotel in Oughterard

Katie Hopkins cares deeply about the people of Oughterard. She said so in a Tweet, which she posted with a video from a protest in the Connemara town.

“Bless these lovely people in Oughterard,” she wrote. “Silently protesting against the imposition of African migrants into a converted hotel in their quiet Irish town. Will Ireland follow Germany? Do we never learn?”

Hopkins is British. She’s a far-right extremist who despises immigrants, whether they are asylum-seekers fleeing persecution or economic migrants in search of better lives. If she had been writing for the British tabloids in the 1950s or 1980s, I doubt she would have had too many good things to say about the Irish.

Hopkins has been re-tweeted by US President Donald Trump and, bizarrely, given a platform by Ryan Tubridy to express how much she despises foreigners on RTE’s ‘Late Late Show’.

I very much doubt she would have been able to locate Oughterard on a map of Ireland three weeks ago. But somebody here in Ireland was compelled to send her a video of a protest against plans to locate a Direct Provision centre in the Co Galway town.

Why would she suddenly be concerned about the 1,300 residents of a small town in the West of Ireland? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the kind of fascist rhetoric used by Hopkins in the UK and ‘alt-right’ groups in the USA is beginning to take a foothold here?

Why would it bother her if there are plans to locate up to 250 asylum-seekers in a Co Galway town?

When it comes to migrants, Hopkins has form. It is quite possible that her sudden concern for the people of Oughterard is motivated far more by a hatred of immigrants – and links to like-minded Irish groups – than any real concern for the welfare of the town’s residents.

“Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants,” she wrote in her column in The Sun in 2015, before referring to migrants in Calais, France, as a “plague of feral humans” as they tried to board trucks to gain access to her beloved United Kingdom.

Not for her any concerns for nice Syrian Christians fleeing persecution as they make their way across the Mediterranean Sea in search of new lives in Britain or Ireland.

“Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit “Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984”, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors,” she also wrote four years ago.

Just the kind of person the people of Oughterard need on their side right now.

A heated public meeting about Direct Provision in Oughterard

Rowan Croft, who tweets as Grand Torino, says he cares deeply about the people of Oughterard.

“We are not the land of milk and honey for economic migrant window shoppers who, skip through European countries till they find one with weak politicians and a generous welfare system to sponge off,” he tweeted recently, using the hashtag #Oughterard.

“We are full. Ireland and Irish first.”

His message echoes the ‘America First’ rhetoric of Donald Trump or the ‘Britain First’ language of far-right British fascists who have been emboldened by the Brexit vote across the water.

Croft describes himself as an “Irish patriot”, even though he once served in the British Army and swore an oath of loyalty to the Queen of England.

Apparently, Hermann Kelly of the Irish Freedom Party cares deeply about the people of Oughterard, too.

He must do, because he was invited onto ‘Drivetime’ on RTE Radio One this week to talk about the campaign to keep a Direct Provision centre out of the town.

To the best of my knowledge, Kelly has no strong connections to the Connemara town. His main claim to fame, so far, is that he has worked as Director of Communications for Nigel Farage’s group in the European Parliament.

But people like him have been stirring up legitimate concerns in Oughterard, where local people have a right to ask questions about plans to house up to 250 ayslum-seekers in a disused hotel in the town.

Gearoid Murphy also cares about the people of Oughterard. So much so he travelled up from Cork on a Wednesday night to attend the now infamous meeting in the community centre; where concerns were raised about the prospect of turning the Connemara Gateway Hotel into a Direct Provision centre.

It was Murphy who filmed Deputy Noel Grealish, the Independent TD, claiming that African migrants were “sponging” off the system in Ireland.

Noel Grealish is concerned about the people of Oughterard. There is an election looming within the next year and he probably figures his comments have done him no harm.

He saw how presidential election candidate Peter Casey experienced a surge in support after making comments about Travellers last year. Two weeks have passed and there is no sign of an apology or retraction from the Galway West TD.

Presumably, he has never met the Nigerian woman I spoke to two years ago, who was captured and held captive by Boko Haram, who wanted to use her as a sex slave.

Trapped in a small room in a disused hotel with her daughter in Galway, she could not afford the price of a text message when she needed to postpone our interview.

There is no way she dreamed of "sponging off the system" in a disused Salthill hotel, struggling to get by on €38.80 per week, when she arrived in Ireland eight years ago.

She doesn’t fit Grealish's narrative of “good Christian Syrians” fleeing ISIS in order to make a new life, because he believes all Africans coming here are spongers.

The language Grealish came out with in Oughterard that night was exactly the kind of rhetoric being spread by the far-right in the United States in the lead-up to the election of Donald Trump in November 2017.

He has normalised the kind of language which allows us to look at Syrians or Brazilians as “good” immigrants while those who come here from Africa are “bad”.

On his own website, Grealish admits that seven members of his own family have been economic migrants. He currently has three siblings living in Boston and one each in Copenhagen, Chicago and Nebraska.

Poster for a protest against Direct Provisin this Saturday

“I can guarantee you it is not the persecuted Christians and Syrians who are coming here,” Deputy Noel Grealish told the Oughterard meeting. “It is the economic refugees that is coming in from Africa that are trying to get across the Mediterranean and ended up in Europe, and ended up in Ireland, and ended up in Oughterard.”

One wonders what kind of persecution his own family members faced in Galway before they left for new lives overseas.

Or is it ok for some people to become economic migrants, but not others?

I have spoken to three people, none of whom know each other, who attended that meeting in Oughterard. Although quite a few locals were present in the crowd of about 800, they saw people spread throughout the hall they had never seen before in their lives.

All of them said that they were shocked and intimidated by the atmosphere in the room, the stoking of fears, the anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the abuse directed at any speakers who went against the prevailing narrative.

People in Oughterard have genuine concerns and they have every right to raise them at a public meeting.

They have a right to know why they have no Garda Station at night, why it’s so hard to get housing, why there is so little information coming from the Government, or what leisure facilities would be put in place to cater for so many asylum-seekers forced to live on €38.80 per week for months on end.

They have a right to ask why it feels as though their town is being left behind while the major cities are booming.

They have a right to ask whether Direct Provision is a humane system and whether it’s right to force up to 250 people to live for years in a disused hotel in a town most of them have never heard of.

What they don’t need are far-right extremists, with links to British, American, or Italian fascists, coming along in order to hijack their protest and exploit their concerns.

Locals are set to stage a peaceful demo in Oughterard

• Two protest marches against Direct Provision take place in Co Galway on Saturday. Locals have organised a silent march in Oughterard at 11.30am, while the Galway Anti-Racism Network (GARN) has scheduled a protest for 4pm in the city. The time of the city protest has been changed to accommodate people from Oughterard.

--  * Ciaran Tierney won the Irish Current Affairs and Politics Blog of the Year award in October 2018. Find him on Facebook  or Twitter here. Visit his website here - CiaranTierney.com. A former newspaper journalist, he is seeking new opportunities in a digital world.

Looking to hire a blogger or columnist? ciaran@ciarantierney.com

Bluster over Brexit shows many wounds have yet to be healed

Irene from Manchester, England, was very upset.                                 

Nobody wants a return to border checkpoints

She thought it was terrible that a small little island has been holding up those important Brexit negotiations.

She wrote to a newspaper this week to say that the island next door to Britain was “too small to have a border” and “causes everybody a headache”.

In her opinion, Ireland “should never have been split”.

She said it was about time the Irish made up their minds, to decide whether they were “in or out” of the wonderful United Kingdom.

It seemed to have escaped her attention that the Irish pretty much made their minds up about the British Empire a long time ago.

They spent hundreds of years trying to break free; issues such as the Plantation of Ulster, the Great Famine, the Penal Laws, and the attempted destruction of their native language might just have helped the pesky peasants to “make up their minds”.

Irene was quite shocked to discover that this little island to the west had a border, the only land frontier between the departing Great Britain and its former partners in the European Union – apart from that wonderful piece of Britain down on the Rock of Gibraltar.

Presumably, when she voted for Brexit last year, Irene did not think too much about the niceties or the consequences for the farmers or commuters dotted along the border in Tyrone, Fermanagh, or South Armagh.

She wasn't alone. How many times did the 300 border crossings feature in the Brexit debate in Britain last year?

It might have been news to Irene that few of the Irish were too happy about the border when it was invented back in 1922.

She had probably never heard of Michael Collins, sent to London to negotiate a peace deal for the Irish ‘terrorists’ at the cost of a border, a terrible civil war, and the loss of his own life.

The editor of The Sun was pretty upset last week, too.

His newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch, has longed for the day when “floods” of immigrants would no longer be able to access Great Britain via the port of Dover.

The tabloid campaigned vigorously for Britain to leave the European Union and how darn annoying it was in recent weeks to see a former colony delay the Brexit negotiations because of an inconvenient land border.

Papers like The Sun and The Daily Mail were gung-ho in their calls for a Brexit vote last year and one of the London tabloid’s columnists, Katie Hopkins, compared migrants to cockroaches at the height of the debate.

It's pretty hard to have a rational debate with someone who compares human beings fleeing wars to cockroaches.

“Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants,” was the headline on one of Katie’s pieces, before she referred to migrants who try to board trucks heading to Britain as “a plague of feral humans” in The Sun.

The Sun in 2017 is the modern equivalent of the 18th and 19th century British publications which referred to Irish people as less than human, even as a million of them starved under the British Empire and poverty drove a further two million to emigrate to North America.

Irony and respect for the neighbours is lost on The Sun, who advised the Irish Taoiseach to “shut your gob and grow up” when he expressed concerns over the impact a ‘hard’ Brexit would have on communities either side of the Irish border.

An Taoiseach: told to "shut his gob" about Brexit

The Sun let An Taoiseach know, in no uncertain terms, that 17.4 million people voted for Britain to leave the European Union and reminded him that British billions “stopped Ireland going bust” as recently as seven years ago.

Arlene from Fermanagh was also upset.

On Monday, she put a spanner in the works of the Brexit negotiations.

Arlene is more British than Irish and the party she leads, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), has the balance of power at Westminster.

She found a deal which made a distinction between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, to prevent a hard border, unacceptable.

She’d rather have massive inconvenience for people in her region who regularly cross the border than any “divergence” which might separate Fermanagh from London or Liverpool.

Many people in Ireland find it ironic that the DUP see themselves as more British than Irish, yet do not want to bring in the kind of legislation which would bring the province’s abortion or marriage equality legislation in line with the rest of the United Kingdom.

When it comes to the relationships between the two islands, perhaps Irene is right after all and the smaller island really does “cause everybody a headache”.

Always has.

Murals in Belfast depict the long struggle
for Irish freedom from the British Empire

In 1847, for example, 15,000 Great Famine refugees were deported from England back to Ireland. Even though Ireland was part of the British Empire, it was made very clear by the authorities that the deaths of over a million people were an Irish – not a British – problem.

Relations have improved considerably between the two islands over the century which has passed since the 1916 Easter Rising and the executions of the Irish rebel leaders which eventually led to independence for most of Ireland.

Things have particularly improved over the past 20 years, since the Good Friday Agreement brought peace, joy, and prosperity to both parts of the island and the removal of the despised observation posts and military checkpoints along the border.

The ugly tower blocks have been removed and there are no longer British Army soldiers pointing guns at passing motorists but, clearly, less visible wounds remain.

Prior to the Brexit referendum in June 2016, when 51.9% of UK voters chose to leave the European Union, there was a long and lengthy debate about issues such as immigration, free movement, trade deals, and British sovereignty.                                             

Looking back now, the Irish border and the implications for people living and working in border counties barely featured in the debates across England.

If Ireland isn’t causing everybody a headache, it’s pretty much an afterthought for voters throughout Britain - pretty much how it has always been throughout centuries of animosity, misunderstanding, occupation, and suspicion.

Thankfully, the dispute over the border has been resolved and Irish people are delighted they will not see a return to British Army checkpoints when travelling from Letterkenny to Derry or Dundalk to Newry.

In standing up to the sabre-rattling Unionists this week, and achieving a deal which will not plunge border communities into disarray, An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has done Ireland proud.

But, if nothing else, the tempestuous ‘hard’ Brexit negotiations managed to remind Irish people that there are still some appalling attitudes to Ireland and the Irish among some politicians and commentators on the other side of the Irish Sea.



Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway. Ireland. Find him on Facebook at http://facebook.com/ciarantierneymedia

Find Ciaran Tierney on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ciarantierney

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Let's hire a racist

Let’s hire a racist.

Because it’s good for ratings and we all know that’s all that really matters in this “post-truth” world.

It doesn’t matter that she referred to refugees fleeing terror as “cockroaches”, because we know she will get people talking.                                                  

Why would those  "cockroaches" want to escape this?

She will revive our flagging show.                                
It doesn’t matter if her country is partly responsible for the terror inflicted upon them, for forcing thousands to flee their homes.

She says she doesn’t care when she sees them drowning from capsized boats or queuing up for food on a cold Greek island.

She wants to set gunboats upon them, because they have no right to land on our shores.

She mocks them when they live in squalor, when they flee bombs and bullets in search of a better life.

“Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches,” she says. They are a threat to her beloved society and built to survive a nuclear bomb.

An ideal guest for a light entertainment show on a Friday night, don’t you think?

Let's overlook the fact that her country, the UK, has played an appalling role in supporting the kind of "rebels" who terrorise ordinary people and imposed Sharia Law across huge swathes of Syria and Iraq.

Let’s hire a racist. Sure, isn’t it fantastic that we don't need to import one from the UK when we have a home-grown one of our own?

“Our own” – now, perhaps they are the Irish words of the year in "post-truth" 2016.

Why look after refugees living on €19.10 per week for the past 15 years when we have so many homeless people of our own?

Why allow Muslims into this country when we have so many people lying on trolleys in hospital wards?

Funny, how these migrants always threaten the poorest in society – not the tiny elite who bankrupt the country eight years ago or the multinational corporations who have no interest in paying a proper level of tax in the Emerald Isle?

Columnist Ian O'Doherty: racism's good for ratings

Funny how we stage protests to make sure that Apple locate their factory in Athenry, but none at all to reclaim the estimated €13 billion plus they owe us in taxes.

Yes, we do need to talk about “our own” homelessness, health crisis, and the lack of job security faced by so many.

But do we really need to hand over our TV screens to people with false claims about the number of rapes carried out by Muslims?

It's easy to forget there are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world when people who thrive on shocking us insist that there are "swarms" of them arriving on our shores, hell-bent on destroying our wonderful way of life in the West.

Most of the Muslims I met in at least 15 trips to countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco have no interest in invading the "infidels" in Britain and Ireland. They are ordinary people who just want peaceful, happy lives.

Do we really need to mock the unfortunates fleeing places like Aleppo in terror only to face derision and racism on our shores?

But it’s ok to feature commentators who thrive on hatred, because we know they’ll get people talking and watching our fading shows.

If people like Katie Hopkins or Ian O’Doherty were in New York in the 1840s, they would have mocked the starving Irish as they fell off the ‘coffin ships’ on their way to the ghettoes of the Bronx and Hell’s Kitchen.

They would have called for the gunboats to turn the starving Irish back as those desperate people sought new lives so far from home.

And now we invite the kind of people who would have erected “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs” signs in London 50 years ago onto our Friday night entertainment shows.

Trump's election has emboldened racists
on this side of the Atlantic

But it’s ok. We Irish can mock those who voted for Trump because, yes, he’s a racist, sexist, xenophobe.

Even though we now have racist, sexist, xenophobic buffoons of our own.

Who cares about ordinary people fleeing bombs and bullets in terror as they try to build new lives for their children?

Because the only thing that matters is that we look after “our own”.

And racists are good for ratings in 2016.

It could be argued that those who give people with xenophobic views a platform are just as guilty as the racists themselves.

Whether we like it or not, our annual €160 TV licence fee is being used to invite people who get a kick out of spreading fear and hatred onto the airwaves.

But don't complain about the lack of informed debate guys, because complaints will get you nowhere as Katie Hopkins showed. 

Tough luck, because racism's good for ratings ... and we should only look after "our own". 

Walking through the ruins of eastern Aleppo this week

Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland. You can hire Ciaran to ghost write your company's blog. 

Check out Ciaran Tierney Digital Storyteller on Facebook. 

Cockroaches? How easy it is to forget

If UK newspaper columnist Katie Hopkins had been a New York socialite in the 1840s, she might have referred to the Irish as ‘cockroaches’.

Imagine the sight of them, thousands upon thousands arriving at Ellis Island on the ‘coffin ships’, many of them without a word of English or a dime to begin their new lives in the new world.

About 100 ships full of impoverished, desperate people left my home city, Galway, over a three year period between 1847 and 1850.

Most of the passengers were ill-equipped for the long Atlantic crossing or the massive changes they could expect when they completed the voyage.                            

Katie Hopkins: refers to migrants as 'cockroaches',
brought to Ireland to defend Trump's racist views

But they had little choice, they were escaping the Great Famine. It didn’t matter that the British Empire had driven them to starvation or that they were escaping gross injustice – they were seen almost as the dregs of humanity by some people in New York City at the time.

As they poured into Irish ghettoes such as Hell’s Kitchen and Woodlawn, they didn’t care too much about what the ‘natives’ – all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants themselves – thought of them.

They were just glad to have survived.

They were the equivalent of Syrians and Iraqis today; escaping war, poverty, and famine to fulfil the very human need of finding some sort of a decent life for themselves and their children.

The problem with calling people ‘cockroaches’ – as the UK columnist did so offensively earlier this year – is that they then become dehumanised.

It’s easier to hate people when you don’t see them as human beings any more. It's easier to justify attacking them on buses or trains, because people who do so are emboldened by "celebrity" racists like Hopkins.

It doesn’t matter that Ms Hopkins’ own country, the UK, has played a huge part in the misery which engulfed those same migrants.

The Famine Memorial Park in Galway

It’s fine for her British Army heroes to bomb civilians to smithereens in cities and towns thousands of miles from home, but not for those civilians – fleeing in terror – to turn up on makeshift boats crying out for help on our shores.

When Celia Griffin, a little six year old girl from Connemara, died of starvation in 1847 there were thousands of people all across Ireland desperately trying to put the money together to set sail for the Americas.

Many of them died on the ‘coffin ships’ before they got to the other side as they didn’t have enough food for the voyage.

Just like the Syrian and Iraqi migrants today,

Irish people would have given their last dollar to traffickers in the hope of finding a new life – and some hope – at the end of a distressing boat journey.

In Galway, it took us a century and a half to erect a memorial to Celia - and all the Great Famine victims - because nobody wanted a reminder of such a distressing time in our history.

It was left to the late Mark Kennedy, who passed away last month, to remind us that we should never forget this harrowing period in our shared history.

In London at that time, the equivalents of Ms Hopkins had a great time mocking the starving Irish in their ‘witty’ cartoons.

In 2016, according to Ms Hopkins, migrants who flee war and persecution don't matter.

"Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches," she wrote in April. "They might look a bit "Bob Geldof's Ethiopia circa 1984", but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors."

And, according to national broadcaster RTE, there is nothing wrong with giving a platform to a person with vile, racist views on national television on a Friday night.

Hence, the decision to invite her onto the flagging ‘Late Late Show’ last weekend.

It didn’t matter that the invitation led to a flood of complaints in advance, or that her appalling views were going to be challenged. Presumably, what really mattered was that the increased ratings brought about by the controversy boosted the profile of a jaded show. She got people talking.                                                  

US President-elect Donald Trump: people are now trying
to justify some of his racist comments during the campaign

But does it matter?

Does it matter that the people Ms Hopkins referred to as ‘cockroaches’ are fleeing war and terror which her own country, the UK, is partially responsible for?

Of course it matters.

She was flown into Dublin from London to justify the racist views of a man who has just been elected President of the United States.

All week, people have been attempting to justify the indefensible from Donald Trump.

They have been wildly back-tracking and looking for glimmers of hope after an extraordinary campaign built on ignorance, hatred, and fear.

Is it wrong that the leader of a nation which was built on immigration can refer to Mexicans as rapists? What, all 122 million of them?

It’s wrong that illegal immigration is blamed for the troubles of a nation which has yet to face up to all the suffering it has caused to Native Americans. The United States of America were built on stolen land and the slave trade.

It’s incredible that the views of a man who boasted about groping and abusing women, because his wealth and fame allowed him to do so, can be defended so virulently by anyone.

Or that the national broadcaster would give a licence to someone who boasts of having racist views to do so.

It’s frightening that such a man can call from all Muslims to be banned from his country. There are 1.6 billion Muslims all across the planet and most of them, just like the rest of us, are trying to get on with happy, peaceful lives.

People seem to have forgotten already that this kind of abhorrent language was used to describe Jewish people in 1930s Germany.

It’s frightening that a man who can mock the disabled in front of millions of television viewers can be considered a suitable candidate for ‘leader of the free world’.

It’s scary that, in a nation which has a huge problem with gun crime, Trump is completely opposed to gun control.

It’s even more frightening that Donald Trump can dismiss the threat of climate change, surely the biggest issue facing humanity in 2016.

There is no doubt that Trump tapped into huge levels of anger towards the political establishment in America. That’s understandable.

What’s not understandable is how someone who can dehumanise so many people (Mexicans, women, Muslims, the disabled) can have racist or bigoted views uncontested.

Cartoonist Richard Chapman sums up Europe and America's
current attitude to migrants fleeing wars and persecution.

It was shameful that RTE chose last week, of all weeks, to invite a woman who sees no problem with describing human beings as ‘cockroaches’ onto its main weekend chat show.

Who cares about bad taste, spreading hatred, or fear-mongering? As long as the ratings are up, the national broadcaster seems happy to allow someone spread ignorance and racial intolerance.

Do we really learn from the past?

It’s a good job there wasn’t a ‘Late Late Show’ – or a Katie Hopkins – when Celia Griffin was dying of starvation in 1847.

Because imagine how horrified Irish people would have been if someone described a little six year old girl who died at the side of a road as nothing more than a cockroach.



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Ciaran Tierney is a journalist, blogger, and digital storyteller, based in Galway, Ireland.