Editorial - Ireland for the Irish? Some people don't understand their own history

They pit themselves as an indiginous, beleagured group - victims really - the David to the Goliath, or as some of them would term it ‘the invasion’, of migrants coming here. They see themselves as defenders of people, tradition, culture, resources, land. They cast aspersions on people they have never met and refuse to live among or get to know.

The world keeps turning and changing just as it has always done, whether people like it or not.

And yet they seem to have forgotten that for hundreds of years Irish men and women were forced to rely on the hospitality of other nations because their lives, livelihoods, fortunes and those of their families back home depended upon it.

Today we still have thousands of young Irish people living and working all over the world. They were leaving long before the current bizarre anti-immigrant movement in Ireland bared its teeth. They continue to leave because they can’t afford to be here and/ or can have a better quality of life and better opportunities elsewhere. Migrants didn’t price them out of their own country. Refugees weren’t responsible for the long-standing housing crisis, the health crisis, the education crisis or the cost of living soaring.

There are today likewise thousands of young Irish people abroad. Are they met with placards and rage on arrival? No. Just like the well-heeled tourists or Americans and others who can afford to relocate here they are generally met with a positive reception.

But what if, like millions during, before and since An Gorta Mór you were forced to leave all you know because of poverty, war, starvation, persecution or a chance at a better life and you arrived here? Can you too expect céad míle fáilte? You’re as likely to get a petrol bomb through the window in some areas and that is the real scourge blighting Ireland today.

Is it going to a take a child, family or an entire apartment block full of people to be burned to death before the idiots involved in this type of activity and in spreading this malignant hatred and utterly ridiculous conspiracy theories come to their senses? Would they even care if that happened or are they so far gone, so far removed from reality as to no longer see people as people?

If those caught up in attacking facilities and whipping up frenzy really loved Ireland they would change their ways. They would honour our ancestors and theirs by extending the kindness and compassion so many of them received when they too arrived in a vulnerable state in unfamiliar shores with nothing, and through that kindness in turn helped their families back in Ireland survive and shape the country we have today. They are us. And we are them.

There is also something in Irish culture that means a lot of people here are obsessed with keeping up appearances, overly bothered by how we are viewed by each other and by those beyond our shores. There are people who actually get embarrassed when visitors come and Ireland is not the quaint thatched little green place full of charming, witty locals portrayed in films or books, a land where nothing ever changes and everyone knows everyone else. But oftentimes that image stuck because people who didn’t fit in that picture were hidden from view, exiled, reviled and dispatched to institutions or had to go elsewhere just to be themselves. Communities purged themselves.

But the truth is the romantic notion of Ireland in years past is just that – a notion; a fiction as untrue then as it is now.