I want to start with an expression of sympathy, solidarity and pride that we’re all out here today. The outpour of solidarity has been so important and so big throughout this week, with people coming together from all walks of life.
But what I want to talk about today is a term that we use a lot—anti-social behaviour. It oftentimes sounds like a euphemism, like something that we sweep under the rug. Yet, the important message to remember is that anti-social behaviour does not start on the street, it starts in government buildings.
In 1987 Margaret Thatcher declared that there was “no such thing as society”. Successive Irish governments have taken that as a textbook lesson. The series of moves, from public-private partnerships, through the demise of the trade unions in the last 35 years to the lack of investment in working class communities, all represent deliberate efforts to undo the fabric of society; to undo and destroy communities.
We’ve seen drugs go into communities, we’ve seen organized crime that hurts the working class disproportionately and almost exclusively. And on the back of that organised crime, we have seen racists enter our communities. We have seen them peddle lies, put targets on the backs of the most vulnerable people in our communities, and we see the results of that week through week.
The government sees it as clearly as any one of us, but it is not an issue for them to solve as much as one to exploit. It’s not an issue for a neoliberal government that is trying to get Ireland tied firmly into the imperialist world. The government that tries to erode our neutrality is the government that will let this society to be as racist as old imperial states built on racism, built on colonialism; and that’s where the antisocial behaviour starts. And that’s where we take our fights.
Because our fight is common, our fight as communities, our fight as the society, our fight as the society under this tricolour flag. We bear it as the sign of sovereignty of the Irish people, everyone who lives in Ireland. Our sovereignty as people enshrined in the Constitution demands that we challenge our government. We need to challenge racist systems, discriminatory systems that are selling out the country–because that’s exactly what’s happening.
And fundamentally, by challenging what’s going on from the top, from the anti-social behaviour of deliberate policy interventions, we challenge the racists who try to enter our communities as well, because they’re just carrying water for “big” politics.
They are weaponizing fear. They are weaponizing peoples misinformation, social media tools structured to erode society, to move it into a direction we don’t want to go and fundamentally end working class solidarity and class power because they’re afraid of it. The political class and the racists are afraid of the working class, afraid of the people. Look at the erosion of the trade unions—I’ll finish with that point.
The Industrial Relations Act of 1990, stopping us, at least within the legal framework, from doing so much within our organising. Solidarity strikes, for example; easier transition into industrial action. Imagine if we took industrial action over the issues that brought us together here, if we mounted a challenge in our workplaces, with the working class power we hold. To challenge racism, to challenge anti-social behaviour and the discrimination so many of us face, we need to reclaim it. That is the task of the working class, and of organising the working class. We are together in this, every one of us.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.Speech delivered at a march and rally held outside Leinster House on Saturday 26th July in solidarity with migrant workers who are experiencing increasing attacks across the country by Harun Siljak on behalf of the Communist Party of Ireland
