Silly Old Twit

                No one seems to know the exact number of immigrants there are living in Ireland. The figures vary depending on who you ask but a fair and conservative estimate is 500,000 polish immigrants alone. As in most European countries there has been much concern and debate around the issue of racism and discrimination. The whole issue is rarely out of the press and features regularly on tv and radio phone ins. And as in Britain and elsewhere if anyone mentions their concern about this state of affairs they are immediately labeled a racist.So much so in fact that most people now feel the need to preface any comment they might wish to make on the subject by first declaring that they are not a racist.
 It is fair then to say that the nation is somewhat preoccupied with discrimination even where there is no real reason to believe it exists. In this climate then it is fair to ask the question as to why there is no protection in law against discrimination towards the working class and socially deprived sectors of society. If we consider for a moment the fact that discrimination against the poor existed in Ireland long before there was immigration into this country and that it was and still is widely practiced it seems odd to say the least that this was not a the top of the list when immigration law was first muted.  
     It might be of interest to mention how this state of affairs has operated in relation to me. Because discrimination against working class people such as myself is very real. It is something which affects every aspect of my life and has had a truly dramatic effect on how my life is lived. And a profoundly negative effect at that. As the story of my life is too long to tell here ( and rather boring at that ) I will confine myself to writing about just one small aspect of it.
  I am a working class man of just sixty years and have never been in a night club in Ireland. The reason being that I have been refused entrance to any I have approached. When the first such clubs opened in Dublin in the late sixties or thereabouts I was a young man and like any young man at that age would love to have gone to such places but was always refused entrance. In the same way I have for most of my life been refused service in public houses. And this for one simple reason , that I am working class , and for that reason only. It’s hard to explain the effect that has on a person particularly when , as in my case , it goes on for the better part of half a century. And of course it does not happen in isolation and has to be seen in the context of the wider daily discrimination that I would be subject to in looking for employment or accommodation and one hundred and one other things. Suffice to say that it is degrading and insulting and has more often than not profound psychological consequences. No doubt it has also led to suicide. It is also a not so subtle way of society telling you that you are of no worth.
    Those who campaign for human rights and for laws to prevent discrimination rightly declare that discrimination on all grounds is immoral and has no place in a civilised society but show a total indifference to the plight of those who may be socially deprived. This can hardly be an accident or oversight as this form of discrimination has always been with us. Long before there was racial discrimination there was prejudice on the grounds of class. While racial discrimination and the various other forms of this are subject to the whims of history and come and go , so to speak , discrimination on the grounds of class has been a constant. Societies change and what may be acceptable today is tommorow’s discrimination but the plight of the underclass has allways been the same. If there ever was a ‘mark of Caine’ then surely the ‘lower classes’ are the one’s who carry it.
  As society becomes more affluent so it in the same proportion it becomes less caring.In modern day Ireland as elsewhere the marginalised are becoming ever more marginalised. They very often cease to cast a vote in elections , not because they are apathetic but because their is no point. For the underprivileged it matters little if their right to vote is taken away by some one wearing a jackboot or by other means , the end result is the same. They are not represented by the media so there no incentive to read the papers. They live a half life on the margins of society. This is discrimination on a grand scale.
  And why does this situation exist ? The reason is very simple. But to ask that question is the same as asking why do so many of those who champion the cause of immigration make a point of not living in immigrant dominated areas. And why do these people try to make the issue of immigration into a moral issue when the whole concept of importing cheap labour is inherently immoral. The huge numbers of immigrants into Ireland are often cited as a wonderful example of how welcoming we are but if we are to claim to be motivate by some higher cause should we not be bringing in our less fortunate fellow human beings from Darfur into Ireland. The truth of course that all immigration into Ireland has to do with cheap labour. And the new class of Irish home owners are making a fortune renting accommodation to them at inflated rates. Indeed many economists claim that the recent economic growth in Britain and Ireland rests on just this phenomena.
    In the last twenty five years Ireland has become a wealthy country. But that wealth has changed the nature of Irish society. Homeless people litter the streets and old people lie in the corridors of hospitals for weeks waiting to be made well. Crime is rampant. Housing stock has been sold off to the highest bidder in the name of privatization.  Those who can buy their way out of such troubles do so and the rest are left to fend for themselves. When I was growing up as a child in Dublin there was a name for societies that lived by this rule. They were know as banana republics. And such places have no interest in protecting the rights of anyone unless they feel it will magnify their own inflated self image. In a morally bankrupt society such as Ireland words such as discrimination and racism can be twisted and fitted to mean anything and as a result usually end up meaning nothing. They are part of the currency of talk shows and Sunday supplements.
  One of the ironies of discrimination law is that in including some groups and excluding others it runs the risk of being itself discriminatory and this of course is what has happened. And the reason it has happened is that the poor have no power. If the purpose of discrimination law is to protect the weak and vulnerable then it has failed. But of course that is not it’s real purpose.