In this article from 2002, which feels stiflingly, upsettingly pertinent to the Ireland of 2025, author Bryan Fanning addresses the ‘usefulness’ of racism in politicss and the re-codification of racism from being overtly race-based in public discourse to that of ‘cultural differences’.
Modern readers may note that “Clumsy or even unwitting expressions of racism and xenophobia can damage political careers” and “Nothing since has quite matched the shrill tenor of media coverage of asylum seekers during mid-1997” are overtly no longer the case in democracies across the West.
Bryan Fanning is UCD’s Professor of Migration and Social Policy. His research interests include the modernisation of Irish society and the intellectual history of social policy, and his current research focuses on how different understandings of moral issues and public morality influence thinking about social policy. A long-time contributor to Studies, he also edited the anthology An Irish Century: Studies 1912 – 2012, which showcases the rich array of contributors to Studies over its 100+ year history.
Bryan Fanning, ‘The Political Currency of Irish Racism: 1997 – 2002’, Studies: An Irish Review, Vol. 91, No. 364 (Winter, 2002), 319 – 327. JSTOR link: https://www.jstor.org/stable/30095578
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The title of this article refers to forms of actual and potential exploitation of racism in Irish society within politics. It considers the period from 1997, when the hysterical response of some portions of the media to the arrival of growing numbers of asylum seekers signalled the arrival of a new political issue…
…Mainstream political parties and politicians in Ireland and elsewhere strike populist positions on social issues aimed at creating and maintaining broad support. Inevitably this involves a ‘big tent’ approach to accommodating diverse interests and opinions. The political mainstream inevitably reflects societal prejudices against ethnic minorities such as Travellers and anxieties about immigrants and asylum seekers, which are grounded in racism and xenophobia. At the same time it embodies perspectives, which might be described as forms of political correctness but are generally shared within society, that some manifestations of racism, such as ‘hate-speech’, are patently unacceptable. Mainstream politics, as such, can reflect a range of responses to societal racism at any given time. Extreme positions, such as those held by National Front groups in various European countries, may not be sustainable within the political mainstream.
Yet, mainstream parties may seek to encroach upon the positions of such groups to maintain or broaden their appeal, as has happened in recent years in the case of asylum and immigration issues. The political centre on such issues has moved to the right in a number of European countries. At the same time some forms of racism have never been more unacceptable. Clumsy or even unwitting expressions of racism and xenophobia can damage political careers. Efforts by politicians to exploit societal racism can backfire. Yet, the ways in which racism in society are exploited in politics have become more sophisticated. In such a context, politicians punished for racism are penalised for being inept rather than for their views.
Racism has a political currency because it proffers exceedingly simple explanations for complex social problems. For example, housing shortages or urban decline might be blamed on immigrants or ethnic minorities rather than upon, say, bad planning or inadequate funding. In such a context societal racism is a commodity with potential political value. Secondly, racism justifies various forms of inequality and exploitation, which may be politically endorsed. Slavery, colonialism, apartheid, the denial of civil rights and formal and informal discrimination in areas such as education, housing and employment have all been ideologically justified or fostered by racism. The ideological power of racism is that such inequalities can be depicted as natural. They are blamed on the presumed moral, biological or cultural inferiority of excluded black and ethnic minority groups.
Extreme populist movements will claim that they respect diversity – but do not want their culture swamped or diluted by immigrant cultures.
Racism has always drawn on the authority of dominant paradigms of knowledge and truth. Racist stereotypes are anchored in a long history of representations of non-Western peoples as inferior. Nineteenth century abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass sought to contest the popular perception that slavery was sanctioned by God. Anti-Semitism, too, was sanctioned by religious doctrine. Religious justifications for racism were succeeded by justifications based on scientific knowledge and subsequently, when biological ‘scientific’ racisms became discredited, by cultural racisms rooted to a degree in social science…Racist beliefs have had the status of truth for centuries in the west. The displacement of religious justifications for racism, as in the case of anti-Semitism by the time of Vatican Two, and the discrediting of racism grounded in assertions about biological inferiority after the Holocaust have not led to the demise of racism. Instead, ‘race’ became coded as culture. It became assumed, within a pseudo-biologically defined culturalism, that the qualities of social groups are fixed, and are in fact natural. Difference is explained as deviance.
The political currency of contemporary racism is fixed to the gold-standard of dominant cultural values and norms. In recent decades extreme and populist right-wing parties and even skinhead movements have ceased to use overtly racist arguments and instead have come to argue for the exclusion of ‘others’ on cultural grounds. The French National Front, the Austrian Freedom Party, the Pym Fortune List and the Irish Immigration Control Platform argue, at times, that they respect diversity, but do not want their culture to be swamped or diluted by the cultures of immigrants. Such cultural fundamentalism relies to a degree upon the subconscious acceptance of a hidden text of racist claims about the threats posed by outsiders. The proponents of the ‘new racism’ can tap into deeply-rooted codes, which can be easily employed in political discourse. This allows politicians opposed to the presence of black and ethnic minorities to deny racism (‘of course we don’t believe that black people are inferior’) and at the same time, pursue racist goals of exclusion by alluding to the imagined grievances of the (white) community.
An analogy for such forms of racist discourse can be found in advertising. Fifty years ago manufacturers claimed that smoking cigarettes soothed sore throats. One much reproduced image showed Ronald Reagan extolling the health benefits of Chesterfields. Subsequently, manufacturers were required to include warnings about the health risks of smoking on their products and restrictions were placed on advertising. They were prevented from depicting people smoking in advertisements or even from showing the product. Yet manufacturers continue to spend huge amounts on print images aimed at reinforcing their brands. The Marlboro cowboy no longer smokes himself but he still sells cigarettes.
Racism in politics is similarly sophisticated. Racist fears can be conjured up, alluded to or endorsed without resorting to crude denigrations of people on the basis of their colour or ethnicity. Racism in politics appeals to deeply-rooted stereotypes and beliefs. Newspaper headlines proclaiming that Ireland is being flooded, swamped or invaded by an influx of asylum seekers tap into visceral fears. In 1904 Fr. Creagh in Limerick had declared from the pulpit that Jews were leeches that sucked the lifeblood of the Irish nation. Arthur Griffith used his platform in the United Irishman to similar effect. There is a clear continuity in the imagery which fuelled the Limerick pogrom of 1904 and that which viewed the arrival of a few thousand asylum seekers as a national crisis in 1997.
Nothing since has quite matched the shrill tenor of media coverage of asylum seekers during mid-1997. Headlines such as ‘Crackdown on 2000 “sponger” refugees’, ‘Floodgates open as a new army of poor swamp the country’, ‘Why Irish Eyes aren’t smiling on the great Romanian invasion’ and ‘Refugee Rapists on the Rampage’ were matched in tone by the responses of some politicians and officials to what was represented as a national crisis.
Asylum did not emerge as a formal election issue in 1997. Instead, it was the subject of a political consensus that traversed the Rainbow Coalition and its successor in government. This consensus was marked by the use of anti-asylum seeker rhetoric to justify restrictive policies. These included the non-implementation of refugee legislation, border controls that appeared to breach obligations under international law, punitive welfare policies and the dispersal of the perceived burden of asylum seekers. The Fine Gael Minister of Justice, Nora Owen, and her successor in the next government, John O’Donoghue, both endorsed policies aimed at discouraging people from seeking asylum in Ireland. Both also endorsed excluding asylum seekers from participating in Irish society. As put by Nora Owen, ‘I do not consider it appropriate to allow people, with temporary permission to remain in the State, to work and put down roots’. In the dying days of the rainbow government, she introduced new border controls which effectively allowed immigration officers to turn away people attempting to seek asylum at ports, airports and along the Northern border. By October 1997 some 800 people had been refused entry to the state. There is some evidence that the order was implemented in a racist manner. For example, a black British citizen on a visit to Ireland was deported to the North and students of Chinese origin from Coleraine University en route to a seminar in Dublin were turned back by Special Branch officers stationed at Connolly Station.
John O’Donoghue made the case for punitive welfare policies aimed at discouraging asylum seekers from coming to Ireland in a speech to the Irish Business and Employers Confederation on 30th September 1999 by depicting them as welfare scroungers. As he put it: ‘Our current economic boom is making us a target’. Subsequent welfare discriminations against asylum seekers, in the form of a system of direct provision, were introduced alongside a plan to disperse asylum seekers around the country. There was a good case for a regional settlement programme. However, the case made by some Dublin politicians emphasised the dispersal of the burden of asylum seekers by either claiming that their constituencies had more than a fair share of this burden or by reinforcing stereotypes that asylum seekers were welfare scroungers and exploiters of the Irish people.
All-party consensus was reached on: non-implementation of refugee legislation; border controls that appeared to breach obligations; punitive welfare policies; countryside dispersal of the perceived burden of asylum-seekers.
…Some statements of community opposition to dispersal in the summer of 2000 reflected a broader racialised discourse, which portrayed asylum seekers as ‘AIDS’ ridden and as criminals. Arguably, these reflected the tone of a broader politically sponsored hostility to asylum seekers within Irish public policy. In reality, there was little to distinguish mainstream political responses to the asylum seeker issues from the position of ‘extreme’ groups such as the Immigration Control Platform, which had most of its policies adopted by the last government. These included the deportation of rejected asylum seekers, proposed amendment of the Nationality and Citizenship Act so as to limit the rights of Irish-born children of immigrants to reside in the state and opposition to a right to work for asylum seekers.
The Immigration Control Platform was launched in Ennis in December 1997. A few weeks earlier the Clare Champion ran a front page article under a headline ‘Refugee Influx Causes Concern’. This was fairly innocuous compared to some which appeared in the national press. However, the article reported, at length, ill-informed claims by some local councillors that the presence of asylum seekers would result in the withdrawal of funding from local heath services and that local people in need of accommodation were being discriminated against by asylum seekers. As stated in large bold type at the beginning of the article; ‘Concern has been expressed this week that people on local authority housing lists in Clare are being neglected and discriminated against while state agencies off load refugees in Ennis as a cost saving measure’. The article was balanced by an editorial that pretty much summed-up the context within which contemporary racisms are manifested in discussing the temptations of blaming marginal outsiders for social problems:
Because of economic success Ireland is attracting immigrants of its own, but the benefits of the commercial boom haven’t filtered down to the poor and marginalised in our own society. In short, we have failed to grasp the message that success brings increased responsibility to those excluded from a share in the new prosperity. In providing refugees with good quality accommodation in the Ennis area the State is rightfully fulfilling its obligations under international law. The problem is that it doesn’t appear to have the same conscience when it comes to accommodating its own children. The irony is that the simmering resentment is being directed at the refugees and not towards the government.
At one level these events were a storm in a teacup. A political vacuum was temporarily exploited by a few councillors with no direct remit for asylum seekers. Anti-racist groups interrupted the inaugural meeting of the Immigration Control Platform in Ennis. Perceptions of a race crisis in Ennis contrasted somewhat with a generally positive response to asylum seekers. The town has come to be held up as an example of good practice largely due to the efforts of the voluntary sector and the Mid-Western Health Board. Yet, black and ethnic minorities in Ennis, as elsewhere, do encounter racism.
At another level comparisons could be made between responses to asylum seekers and Travellers. Opposition to asylum seekers in Ennis pales in comparison to a long history of anti-Traveller racism…In Clare, Travellers have been depicted as a threat to the dominant community by local politicians on an ongoing basis within a racist discourse that bears some similarities to that associated with Enoch Powell in Britain. If there was no references to ‘rivers of blood’, there were plenty of apocalyptic ones by councillors and officials to ‘explosive situations’ and ‘fuses that have been lit’. Most local authority debates on Traveller issues in Clare between 1963 and 1999 were characterised by vehement anti-Traveller rhetoric.
By the time of the 2002 election the main political parties effectively had manifesto positions on the asylum issue. The parties had agreed to adhere to an anti-racism protocol devised by the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI). The few instances where politicians openly courted anti-asylum-seeker prejudice met with controversy, notably in the case of Noel Flynn, T.D. for Cork Central. His statements were described as a populist effort to exploit anti-asylum racism by candidates from other political parties and indeed his candidacy was endorsed by Áine Ní Chonnail, leader of the Immigration Control Platform, who had stood unsuccessfully for election in the 1997 in Cork South West.
Government adopted most of the Immigration Control Platform’s policies: deportation of rejected asylum-seekers; proposed legislation limiting the rights of immigrants’ Irish-born children to reside here; opposition to right to work.
They were also the subjects to an investigation by the Gardaí under the Incitement to Hatred Act (1989). Although the leadership of Fianna Fáil distanced itself from Deputy O’Flynn, no disciplinary action was taken and he topped the poll in Cork North West.
The Incitement to Hatred Act (1989) made it an offence to incite hatred against any group of persons on account of their ‘race, colour, nationality, religion, ethnic or national origins, or membership of the Travelling Community. A decade after it was first introduced, just one case involving an alleged breach of the Act had been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions. In March 1999 a Mayo county councillor, John Flannery, was acquitted of inciting hatred at the Galway District Court. He had described Travellers as dogs and argued that they ought to be tagged so that the authorities could keep track of them.
In September 2000 the first and only conviction to date under the Act was secured against a Dublin bus driver. Earlier that month the Minister of Justice, Equality and Law Reform acknowledged that the Act was ineffective and stated that new legislation was necessary. This was because of the extensive burden of proof required to prove that racist acts had been incited. The Act was introduced, in part, to counter the publication of racist materials by far-right groups from other countries in Ireland. In the era of the Internet, this goal has become more problematic but it is also the case that such groups now employ more subtle modes of racist discourse. The website of the Irish People’s Party, a Dublin-based racist organisation, in the run up to the 2002 election made its case using a selection of newspaper stories about asylum seekers.
The asylum seeker issue was pretty much a damp squib in the run up to the 2002 general election in contrast to recent elections in France, Holland and Britain. Unlike 1997, the main parties had identifiable policy positions and candidates from some the larger parties were expected to keep to the party line. Fianna Fáil opposed allowing asylum seekers to work and favoured lesser welfare entitlements for asylum seekers. Individual candidates did not break ranks on these issues. Fine Gael supported a right to work after six months (the position taken by the Irish Refugee Council and other NGOs) and promised to review direct provision. The Labour Party adopted a similar position. Individual candidates from Progressive Democrats, Green Party, Sinn Féin, the Socialist Party and the Workers Party openly supported both the right to work and the repeal of direct provision. Áine Ní Chonnail achieved 926 first preferences in Dublin South Central out of a total poll of 44,768 (under 2.1 percent). She was eliminated on the fifth count.
Her votes were distributed to candidates who both shared and opposed Immigration Control Platform policies. Just under 21% of her transfers went to Fianna Fáil, just under 12.5% to Fine Gael, almost 19% to Labour, almost 24% to Sinn Féin, just over 9% to the Green Party and just over 7% to the Progressive Democrats. The presence of just one candidate on an anti-asylum seeker ticket can be read two ways. On one hand, single-issue candidates tend to poll well on topical issues. For example, public concerns about health services were reflected in voting for independent candidates standing on a health ticket. An optimistic reading suggests that most Irish people do not have problems with asylum seekers. On the other hand, single-issue candidates might fare poorly on issues that have been absorbed into the mainstream. This suggests that anti-asylum seeker feeling is adequately addressed within the political mainstream, notably within Fianna Fáil.
The Irish Justice Minister – contrary to the formal position of the Irish government – supported a proposal to with hold overseas aid from countries failing to restrict their emigrants.
By contrast, the mainstream parties openly exploited anti-Traveller racism in the run up to the 2002 election. A bill which sought to criminalise Travellers who halted on unofficial sites, put forward by a Fine Gael T.D., Olivia Mitchell, was endorsed by the government. The Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act (2002) was passed with unseemly haste by an overwhelming cross-party majority and without any evaluation of the adequacy of current Traveller accommodation plans, discussion of the needs of Travellers or consultation with Traveller organisations. Anti-Traveller racism has long been a staple of local politics. The 2002 elections marked its emergence for the first time within national party politics. On 16th July 2002 the caravans of four Traveller families were ‘forcibly removed’ to Ennis Garda station following the first successful prosecution under the provisions of the Act. Ennis has been without a permanent halting site since 1997.
Societal racism is a commodity with potential political value. It is mobilised within local, national and international politics. Yet, it must not be forgotten that racism, discrimination and sectarianism can be and are opposed within politics. At its best, politics provides the basis of tolerance, pluralism, innovation, peace and prosperity. To date, political responses in Europe to the complexities of immigration have been marked by simplistic xenophobic posturing and oppressive measures. One result has been the criminalisation of immigration into a European Community which needs about 1.2 million immigrants per annum to maintain its existing population levels. The response of many mainstream parties in a number of European countries to apparent increases in racism has been to move to the right.
In the Europe of today, ministers charged with developing policies aimed at promoting tolerance and contesting racism play to the gallery with tough talk that serves to endorse racism. The 2002 Seville summit saw some European leaders stoop to new lows in proposing that overseas aid be withheld to pressurise emigrant countries to restrict the movement of their own populations. Yet, these proposed sanctions were opposed by France and by Holland where extreme right-wing parties have performed strongly. They were put forward by Britain where such parties perform poorly and are routinely castigated as racist by government ministers. The new Irish Minister of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Michael McDowell, publicly endorsed the proposals of Britain and Spain at Seville contrary to the formal position of the Irish government.
The wild imagery of 1997, ‘the year of the great flood’, has been put to one side but racism in Irish society has arguably deepened. Here, it is important to distinguish between manifestations of racism, which have increased as the black and ethnic minority population of Ireland has grown, and the creeping internalisation of racism within society and politics. Crude rhetoric has been superseded by a new brutalism. It is now respectable to discriminate against asylum seekers or imprison them. The notion that the constitutional rights of some Irish-born children can be undermined by the state has become politically legitimate. There seems to be a casual acceptance that ‘guest workers’ should have lesser rights and entitlements than their Irish-born colleagues. It has become normal to deport non-citizen neighbours. The homes of Travellers can be confiscated. The year of the flood was not the high water mark of Irish racism.
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