Meanwhile, back in the auld sod

In Eire, Easter Week is traditionally marked by Republicans with parades and marches commemorating the 1916 Rising against British rule. The tradition has now been adopted by Ireland's fast-growing anti-immigration movement/

Outside Dublin's Gardens of Remembrance, tens of thousands of anti-immigration marchers gathered for their largest protest yet. Speaking of the Irish government, an older woman carrying a commenorative wreath ranted, "They need to be dragged out by their balls!"

In the Republic, though very much not in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin voters are by far the strongest anti-immigration constituency. Scattered across a broad spectrum of microparties, Ireland's anti-immigration movement achieved electoral success last year only in winning council seats in working-class areas of Dublin. 

Judging by the fiery speeches, the protest's organisers have decided to lean strongly into capturing Sinn Féin’s disaffected urban voter base. "We don’t need big posh people to come on and represent the working class," independent candidate Gavin Pepper roared at the vast crowd outside the grand neoclassical Custom House. “"We are the working class."

Myles naGopaleen, God rest him, always referred to them as "the plain people of Ireland". Speaking for them, he would surely have used a richer epithetn that "big posh people". He might well have called them "that ignorant, self-opinionated, sod-minded, suet-brained, ham-faced, mealy-mouthed, streptococcus-ridden gang of naatural gobdaws!" Myles was never one to sugar-coat things.

Neither is newly-elected councillor Patrick Quinlan of the National Party, an identitarian movement standing on a platform of mass deportations and re-Gaelicising Ireland. He gave a speech railing against "the den of rats inside Dáil Éireann" (the Irish parliament). It was the sort of political speech that would be recognisable to historians of Ireland’s 19th-century mass movement nationalism. :They fear not chaos but our awakening," Quinlan roared, "The holy fire that blazed in our patriot dead…lives on here today. The heroes of 1916 triumphed, and so shall we."

Source (excepting the paragraph of remarks by Myles na Gopaleen): UnHerd 27/4/2025. Thanks to BCF for pointing us in the right direction. If you want to read more of Myles' tales of the plain people of Ireland, try to find a copy of The Best of Myles, Picador Books, 1968.

Also recommended: The Rising: Ireland: Easter 1916, by Fearghal McGarry, Oxford University Press, 2010, and of course the excellent (except for Julia Roberts' performance) movie, Michael Collins (1996).