Red Statement On Racist Attack In Tallaght

Tallaght local Jennifer Murray saw a gang of teens beating an Indian man on Parkhill Road in Tallaght. The man was begging for help and his head had been slashed with a blade. The gang had removed his trousers and he could have been killed if it wasn’t for her brave intervention.

This is the result of all the lies and misinformation being spread online by far right goblins, drug dealers and backward workers who don’t understand how our problems are caused by governments of the rich, not other workers.

And of course the big tech companies love this vile content because it drives advertising revenue. More hatred and lies means more money in the hands of billionaires like Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg.

But they’re not the only ones - billionaires like Rupert Murdoch, owner of everything from Fox News to The Sun, have been poisoning the world for decades to divide and conquer. All the better to keep the working class divided and down.

In the aftermath of a terrible attack like this many are calling for more powers to the Guards or for more Guards in working class areas. Will this stop teen violence of any kind? No, it won’t.

Even the government’s own study into anti-social violence in estates like Cherry Orchard concluded it was “deprivation” that was the main driver of violence. Youth workers warned the government that cuts to services during Covid would have a major impact.

An Oireachtas committee said: “Young people are facing multiple crises in relation to poverty, intergenerational trauma, the cost-of-living crisis, homelessness and lack of access to mental health support and it is often youth workers working directly with young people who are left to pick up the pieces.”

Patrick Gates, a coordinator with Young People at Risk, said they are seeing inner city Dublin children, particularly between the ages of 9 and 14, harbouring huge amounts of “anger and rage.”

Dr. Niamh Hourigan wrote back in 2012: “Limerick contains some of the most deprived electoral districts in the Republic of Ireland. It has the highest rate of social housing and the highest rate of suicide and self harm.”

As the African saying goes: “The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.”

That’s not to make excuses for teen violence, but to state the facts. The government is producing these kids every single day with their policies. The far right then offers a wrong target for the rage.

More Guards won’t overturn 40 years of neoliberal destruction of working class estates. And the Guards attacked people from our estates when we protested water charges or when workers went on strike like at Debenhams.

The establishment have run down working class estates on purpose to drive people into the hands of private profiteers. Then when some people break and become a burden on the community the government uses that as an excuse to strengthen the very state that’s causing the problem in the first place.

Hate speech legislation won’t work either and for the same reason - it strengthens an anti-worker state and they’d eventually make it illegal to call out your landlord or any politician!

How do we get out of this situation?

In the short term: We need to put good working class people, like Jennifer Murray, back in the driving seat of fighting for change. The far right are pulling on the confused middle ground and shifting the political spectrum right, which is great for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael - they’re back up in the polls!

We need workers with a bit of cop on and class consciousness to pull on the middle ground and that can only happen through class struggle on the key issues that are impacting the working class - housing, cost of living, health and low wages.

Let’s be honest, the mood out there is very low at the moment. But there’s no way to lift people’s spirits other than by rolling up our sleeves and fighting for our estates. When you’ve won authority from that fight you get to argue against division from within the class. That organic anti-racism is powerful.

We also have to be honest that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions calling one big housing protest in 2022 and then dropping the ball for years demoralises workers and gives an opening for the far right.

ICTU have mobilised on Palestine and anti-racism - great - but why not serious mobilisations on housing? Instead of protesting before the coming budget they’ve decided on an indoor rally on housing! That’ll show the government!

Sinn Féin too put the protests on pause when they thought they could just sail into power but the irony was that they lost 100,000 voters and after the election scrambled to find local issues to mobilise on.

In the long term: It is going to take substantial change to take violence out of the poor estates. In the 1960s they spoke about closing Irish prisons because they didn’t need them. 40 years of neoliberalism - of privatisation, outsourcing - changed that.

Of course we need to make drugs a health issue and undermine the gangs, we need far more youth workers and mentoring of teens, we need real jobs and apprenticeships, we need mental health services.

But fighting for all those things under capitalism is like pushing a rock up a hill. It wants to roll back down. Ultimately we need a stable economic underpinning to working class life and that can only be guaranteed by a socialist, planned economy.

A 32 County Workers’ Republic would put all wealth in the hands of the working class to democratically plan our future. No more would any of our kids be transformed into traumatised monsters who prey on other workers and poor people.

That’s the future the Red Network is fighting for. Join us.