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20 August 1998 Edition

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Fight Racism, Fight Bigotry

By Sean Marlow

I was proud to see Dublin Sinn Féin members Daithi Doolan and Martin Vernon on (a much improved) Questions & Answers last week giving a very informed advocacy of the plight of refugees in Ireland. At a time when some of the O'Reilly-owned press has succeeded in whipping up ignorant emotions against so-called ``waves of illegal immigrants'', it took great moral and political courage to come out so strongly against the cheap populist grain of blaming refugees for everything from crime to homelessness.

The enthusiastic response of the audience vindicated the stance of the intrepid SF duo and reduced that pathetic bigot, Aine Ni Chonaill, to whinging about the Q&A audience being ``biased''. This was in contrast to the easy ride that Ni Chonaill was given on the Late Late Show when Gay Byrne (who else?) scolded a member of the audience for calling her a racist.

At least Ni Chonaill, unlike many more devious racists, is upfront and consistent. As far back as 1981 she went beserk when she spotted a poster for Anti H-Block/Armagh candidate Mairead Farrell in Cork North Central. She made her own poster saying ``A Vote for H-Block is a Vote for Murder'' and mounted a one-person picket against Mairead outside a polling station.

But Mairead performed a lot better than Ni Chonaill at the polls. In the last general election Ni Chonaill stood on an anti-immigration platform and, despite lots of publicity, she got a derisory 293 votes.

And when she tried to set up Ireland's imitation of the National Front, only 20 fellow bigots showed up and were outnumbered by over 60 protesters. When Gerry Adams spoke in Kilmicheal in 1983, Ni Chonaill repeated her Cedric Wilson stunt, protesting at Adams being given ``respectability'' Unsurprisingly, she has been a member of the PDs and admires the likes of Conor Cruise O'Brien, Kevin Myers and the late unlamented James Goldsmith - as I said, she IS consistent.

Unfortunately, despite her lack of political success (so far), Ni Chonaill's scaremongering is being increasingly taken up by the more trashy side of the Irish media.

Recently, the Wexford People, in a disgraceful front page diatribe, ranted about ``anger over the flood of refugees into Wexford'' who were alleged to have commited the terrible crimes of wearing designer shirts, eating in restaurants, and relaxing on the balcony of their apartment. The Romanian asylum-seekers were even accused of trying to impregnate pure-blooded Irish girls (sic).

In a crude attempt to disguise such blatant racism, some bigots are now trying to make an argument that we should ``look after our own homeless first''. As Sr Stanislaus Kennedy of Focus Ireland, who has campaigned for years on behalf of the homeless against the same right-wing attitudes, asked ``Where was their concern for the Irish homeless before the so-called crisis about immigration? This sudden concern for `our' homeless is astounding.''

Sr Stan is right. The same quarters now feigning concern for ``our own'' homeless to attack refugees are the very ones who, in the past, have labelled Irish homeless and unemployed people as ``spongers'', ``scroungers'', ``undeserving'' and lazy'' - the very same labels they now apply to immigrants. For asylum-seekers this is doubly insulting as the state bars them from working - even though many are qualified in jobs where there are labour shortages, such as computer programming - and makes them wait for up to six years before deciding what to do with them.

Irish republicans at all levels should actively support Sr Stan (and Daithi and Martin) and oppose the likes of Ni Chonaill and her more devious fellow travellers. We Irish, of all people, should know what it is like to be subject to famine, economic exploitation and colonialism that forced so many of our people to emigrate and face the loneliness and hardship of trying to make a life in a strange country.

Finally, can I pay a personal tribute to a young woman whose strong anti-racism would have unknown to all except her loving family and friends. She was Jolene Marlow, daughter of my cousin Joe, who was killed in the terrible bomb explosion in Omagh last Saturday. I hadn't seen Jolene since she was a small child but I was very proud to read in the paper her distraught mother Bridie paying tribute to her camogie prowess and her anti-racism, saying ``I'd come home and say I was working

like a black and she'd nearly kill me for it!'' Slán agus codladh sámh, a chara.

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland