It is a tradition within Irish Republicanism for Easter Week to be marked by parades and marches to commemorate the 1916 Rising against British rule. Yesterday, Ireland’s growing if electorally marginal anti-immigration movement adopted the tradition. Outside Dublin’s Gardens of Remembrance, a woman was doing brisk business selling the Irish Republic flag of the Rising, as well as tricolours adorned with “You’ll Never Beat The Irish”, as tens of thousands of anti-immigration marchers gathered for their largest protest yet.
“They need to be dragged out by their balls,” said one older woman, carrying a commemorative wreath, of the Irish government. She transpired to be the wife of the movement’s emerging leader, the veteran Republican activist and newly-elected inner city Dublin councillor Malachy Steenson. The day was to be a reassertion of nationalist credibility after the politically damaging presence of Southern anti-immigration protestors alongside Ulster Loyalists during last summer’s Belfast riots.
