Tomás Ó Flatharta

Two Anti-Racist Organizations – Le Chéile (Diversity Not Division) and United Against Racism – called a successful anti-racist demonstration in Dublin City Centre at the Spire, O’Connell Street, across the road from the General Post Office (GPO) – site of the Easter 1916 Rising.

By start time of 1.30pm over 200 people turned up – nearly two hours later numbers rose to nearly 1000 people, and the column marched to the Garden of Remembrance in Parnell Square. The mood was determined and cheerful. Several people on passing buses and trams demonstrated open solidarity. The scene is set for a bigger and broader demonstration on Saturday February 18. In recent days far-right demonstrations have spread across Dublin and other parts of Ireland like a plague.

Today’s event showed that mass opposition exists, and activists will positively work on this issue provided all shades of the left work in unity together. The photographs below are a visual record of a positive event.

John Meehan February 6 2023

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Later on the same day Far-Right demonstrators in Dublin targeted mass media organisations. The Irish Time# reported :

Some 30 minutes after the Le Chéile protest began another protest got underway outside Connolly Station with the crowd swelling to in excess of 1,000 people over the course of a lengthy march which went from the railway station to the offices of Independent News and Media.

From there the protest went to the offices of The Irish Times and then on to the similarly quiet headquarters of Newstalk and Today FM via a busy Grafton Street with the by then dwindling number of protesters moving on to Government Buildings and to the offices of FM104 close to the 3Arena.

At each stop speakers addressed the crowd with the Government, the Opposition, the unions and the media all characterised as liars or traitors with “blood on their hands”.

“We have shifted the political ground,” said Malachy Steenson a north inner city activist and a leading member of the East Wall residents’ group which launched a series of anti-immigration protests beginning late last year.

“This is the force grassroots movement that is growing from the ground up to have no leaders and no formal structures, and they just can’t understand why after lecturing us for years we don’t just say: ‘Ah, carry on lads.’”

Irish Times February 6 2023