Blood, flags and idiots

So it kicked off outside Leinster House last night. A protest against the bank bailouts ends in a bit of head walloping because the flag-bearers for the Socialist Workers Party, a minority presence in the crowd, try to storm the gates of the Dáil.

The thing that worries me most about the SWP is the singular lack of imagination they seem to collectively possess. What were they going to do when they got inside? Run around the car park? It would have been worth letting them in just to see what they would do. I suspect the instructions for the revolution don’t have much detail beyond “storm the gates”; presumably there is an expectation among the Trotskyite leadership that the first few dozen will be shot anyway.

What is irritating is the knock-on effect. The protest was attended by a broad mix of people, which I took as a very positive sign (though I was at home watching telly, soft lad that I am). One apolitical friend of mine brought his kids, and it was all going well until the SWP did their best to claim some glory. Unfortunately, this behaviour alienates everyone else, so a broad coalition of protest to Government economic policy is now unlikely. Thanks a lot guys.

It is ironic too, that this comes in the wake of comments by Vincent Browne (Sunday Business Post) and Patrick Freyne (Sunday Tribune) last weekend about Irish peoples unwillingness to take to the streets to protest. Both are excellent writers and they have a point; but the papers they write for howled with derision at the protests last year led by the Irish Congress of trade Unions (Ictu). In February and November, Ictu led protests that drew 100,000 plus in peaceful demonstration against the economic policies clearly designed to force working people, children, older people and welfare recipients to pick up the tab for the well documented failure of a handful of criminally arrogant money chasers.

Were the Irish praised for their ‘lack of apathy’ or ‘fighting spirit’? Nope, the protesters were accused of being greedy, self-interested public servants hanging on to their gilded jobs, pensions and salaries. When public servants held a one-day strike in opposition to expected pay cuts, their efforts were undermined by the media (including the state broadcaster) and presented as a day that public servants migrated north of the border to do some shopping. Journalism at its very worst

A year or so of being browbeaten into ‘sharing the pain’ means that Irish people have been, to a large extent, beaten into submission. Why stick your head above the parapet? If you have a job, be grateful, hunker down and shut up. That’s the message. When people buy in to that they have no appetite for protest.

Much less when a handful of Socialist Worker vendors try gain entry to Leinster House.

The revolution will not be organised.