Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

In 1908 Ireland's greatest revolutionary and an immigrant, James Connolly, said, "Let no Irishman throw a stone at the foreigner; he may hit his own clansman." That is as good a summary of the reasons why thousands of people will take to the streets of Dublin this weekend, involving dozens of organisations, trade unionists, community activists, antiracism activists, housing campaigners, antipoverty campaigners and community organisations. They, like James Connolly, understand that if we are to address the very real problems that face our society in the form of a dire housing crisis, the desperate situation in our public services, particularly our health service, and the cost-of-living crisis, we need unity and solidarity. Those who preach hate and division and who seek to scapegoat foreigners, migrants or asylum seekers are the enemy of the movement that is fighting to address the housing crisis, the cost-of-living crisis and the crisis in our public services.

Connolly understood that. When he was speaking he was saying we need solidarity not to throw stones at the people we need to stand beside us to fight, to deal with poverty, the housing crisis and all the problems working-class people face. He was explicitly pointing out that we are a country made up of wave after wave of immigration. He was pointing out that the Irish in Britain and the United States were the subject of precisely the same racist stereotyping that those on the far right are now directing towards asylum seekers. The Irish were described as criminals. They were described as a danger to women. They were described as violent, drunken and illegal, and targeted by the far right as part of a strategy often by the establishment in those countries to deflect from the very real problems that existed in those countries.

On Saturday we are calling on people not to fall for the poison and tricks of the far right which seek to deflect people from a real struggle that needs to happen, which is a struggle for unity and solidarity of working people to demand that the Government solves the housing and accommodation crisis, the crisis in our public health service, the crisis of the cost of living and the poverty that many communities suffer. While the Tánaiste says that the left or those who are protesting should not try to point to those in government who are not responsible for these things, the truth is that time and time again the Government has prioritised the interests of vulture funds, corporate landlords, profiteering energy companies and those who have got very rich while other people are suffering the trauma and misery of the housing crisis and cost-of-living crisis. Of course, that builds anger and fury and creates the conditions where the far right can turn that anger against innocent asylum seekers and migrants.

We might all rightly say we must reject racism and stand up to the poison of the far right, but it would make it a hell of a lot easier if the Government, for example, stopped allowing people to be evicted into homelessness, started to deal with the land speculators and the land hoarders who sit on vacant properties and land making a fortune out of the misery that other people are suffering, and if they stood up to the profiteering energy companies that are making obscene profits on the back of the cost-of-living misery that huge numbers of people are suffering.

We make no apologies in saying that we will be out on Saturday in our thousands to say no to racism, to say no to scapegoating refugees and asylum seekers, to stand in solidarity with them but also to say the Government must own up to its responsibility for and failure to address the housing misery that people are suffering in this country and the cost-of-living crisis it has failed to address.

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