A small meeting in East Wall.

A giant leap for the rest of us.

“They're talking about unvetted men and a Councillor here isn't telling them there's anything wrong with that.”

Molly - volunteer helper in the East Wall refugee centre

Last Thursday, the 3rd of August, a public meeting was held in the Sean O'Casey Community Centre in East Wall. It was billed as a meeting to discuss the general situation in East Wall. That's what it could have been but, as the organisers were expecting, all anyone wanted to talk about was the policing emergency caused by the "refugees" in the ESB building, the expected arrival of more "refugees" in to the Google offices and the lack of anything like the facilities needed to deal with all of this.

There were three things of note about this meeting, the first being that it was indoors. The organisers had succeeded in finding a venue - but not without a hiccup. The generally accepted story is that local residents had originally got the consent of the Parish Priest - the much liked Fr John Ennis - to hold a meeting in the Parish Hall. That seems to have been thwarted. But then Councillor Nial Ring, Independent (ex Fianna Fail), seems to have stepped in to secure the use of the Community Centre. Why it made sense for Niall Ring to do that and what it means going forward is what we are going to look at here. 

That's the second thing of note, Niall Ring himself; the meeting was chaired by Ring, a sitting Councillor, together with the Sinn Fein rep in the area, Declan Hallissey, and Nigel Murphy, one of the figures associated with the protests. Ring appeared at the very first of the East Wall protests and after that didn't want to be seen. But here we are nine months later and he's stewarding meetings that are focused on the same issues.

And the third thing is that in a room of say 120 people there were only two or three from outside East Wall. A small number attending, maybe twenty, would have been involved in the protests, but the vast majority of people at the meeting wouldn't have had any thing to do with protesting. Some even went out of their way to say that they didn't approve of the protests - but, nonetheless, these same people were repeating word for word our concerns, our objections, our talking points.

The ESB building is still open as a Direct Provision Centre. As mentioned there's talk of putting more "refugees" into the vacant Google offices just down the road from it. Locals have had no success in closing these centres. But one job of work is done. Something bigger has been achieved in East Wall. This was a meeting between local residents not at all connected with the protest movement and local politicians. A meeting in which non political people, ordinary voters, were voicing their objections to government immigration policy and the consequences for their community.

Go back to last November in East Wall (or look across to England today) and see just how odd it is to have ordinary people talking about the problems of immigration out loud, unapologetically, as part of the normal political discussion.

We did that. We made that happen. (Well us and a ridiculously bad immigration policy)

These non political people talking to those leaders about our issues without us needing to be involved. This is the direction in which political power lies. This is how things get changed.

A revolution in white gloves.

As she was walking in the door one woman told her friend that she had been living in East Wall for 10 years and never been to a political meeting before.

Nial Ring took the minutes of the meeting and promised to pass on requests and questions to the Council and to Minister Roderic O'Gorman despite, as he said, it being impossible to get anything useful out of O'Gorman.

The Sinn Fein rep in the area, Declan Hallissey, didn't say much throughout the meeting - he didn't push back on anything either - but promised to pass on everything that was said to Mary Lou. In conversation afterwards he was asked about Mary Lou's silence in relation to East Wall and his answer, interestingly, was if she had spoken up what could she have done - she's only in opposition.

It's not about whether the messages from the meeting will be passed on to the Minister or up the chain in SF, it's not about whether they'll then be taken on board. It's the fact that this dialogue is happening and these issues are now being dealt with as part of the normal political process.  

It's not even about Nial Ring or Mary Lou - what matters is that an event of this kind sends a signal to every other politician in the country that it's now OK to organise such a meeting. The votes of these kind of people, saying these kind of things, are on the table and it's time to go after them. The downside risk of engaging with the issue isn't there any more.

Nigel Murphy, one of the faces of the protests in East Wall, did most of the work of being the chairman, passing the microphone around the room, keeping the sometimes very excited discussion under control.

The first item on the agenda, and the main one, was the demand for increased Garda presence in East Wall, more men on the beat, happy memories of Barry the previous community Guard. The current community Guard would have been there - he supported the meeting - but speaking on the phone to Nigel just before the meeting started he said he expected that if he showed up he would just have been shouted at and it seemed to be accepted that that's what would have happened

One woman after another referred to how they didn't feel safe in East Wall any more. How they feared for their children's safety and how they felt restricted in their movements in East Wall. They described a loss of community.

References were made to the foreign born people in the audience who were well known and as welcome as everyone else. Foreign born local businessmen were name checked. The "mayor" was foreign born. East Wall was a diverse and welcoming place when those people were arriving at a pace that meant they could be integrated. But what was happening now was the opposite.

GP services are hard to get. The amount of money being spent on local projects was no help when people were afraid to leave their homes.

One woman said she didn't favour protesting, she hadn't been on any protests, if there were protests they should be done outside the Dail. But she wanted to know, she demanded answers about, whether they will be putting more refugees in the Google building.

One man was upset, angry, irate. One of his foster children, who was black, had twice been threatened with being raped by one of the teenagers from the building.

One woman, Molly, was there to present the alternative point of view. She is a member of EastWall4All. She also volunteers in the ESB building - which the room thought was admirable. She came across very well which wasn't easy given the general mood. She wanted to emphasize the lack of services in the centre, the lack of a counsellor for what she claimed were 85 children in the building. She hadn't a ready answer when asked, given the lack of services available, would she oppose the idea of even more men being put in the Google offices. But she was treated very respectfully by the crowd.

Contrast that with the treatment of Shinner (or at least Sinn Fein adjacent) Alan Whelan. Unlike Molly, Alan didn't read the room and got a very hostile reaction when he complained that the meeting was only focused on delinquent behaviour that was coming from the building. He then doubled down saying there had been plenty of criminality before the refugees arrived. Hearing that, the man whose foster children had been picked on nearly lost it. It got so tense at that point that some people even left. There couldn't be a better symbol of the split in Sinn Fein on this issue than Alan perched up at the back of the room voicing the old pro immigrant stance and Declan, the SF rep on the podium, being determinedly neutral: the clear gap between where they've been up until now and the new direction they seem to be taking. Ocean liners take time to turn around.

To sum up the evening: Alan of old Sinn Fein and Molly of EastWall4All couldn't have been more isolated. The opening question of the night was are you more fearful for your safety in East Wall and a room full of people put up their hands. They were there to demand more policing, they were there worried about the expected influx into the Google offices and the greater part of the room, 9/10 of the room, were unconnected with - and you would guess disapproving of - the protests. Nigel Murphy on the stage, one of the organizers of the protests, went out of his way to cut off any mention of the protests. This new, respectable, wouldn't be seen dead at a protest, audience are the kind of people it's inviting to organize a meeting for if you're a Councillor looking to be re-elected. No one's going to attempt to call them names or label them or you. You can secure a venue and know you won't be kicked out of it. There's a rich seam of votes to be mined and the reputational danger has dwindled to nothing

The spark from the East Wall protests spread like wildfire around the country. Like-minded ornery individuals went out protesting in their own communities. All of us together made it possible to talk about things that couldn't be talked about before. What's happened now in East Wall is that the spark of opposition has jumped the firebreak cutting us off from the respectable voter and the respectable politician in search of the respectable voter.

A couple of months ago Castlebar Councillors wouldn't give Stephen Kerr the time of day. As of a couple of weeks ago they are now engaging with him. How long before one of them does a Nial Ring and helps organise a meeting for locals about the Breaffy House Centre?

The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed

Political success doesn't come from clever ideas, innovation or brilliant insights. It comes from spotting small successes that are happening already and fanning the embers. How do other communities replicate what happened in East Wall last Thursday? What encourages a local Councillor to secure a venue in which to hear from respectable non protesting residents? When, not if but when, that starts happening and it may be happening already in places and have gone under the radar, when Thursday's meeting starts being replicated in a way that the East Wall protests were replicated, real political power and real political change is all downstream from that.

It might have been a wet July but the political tinder around the country is bone dry and ready to go up.