Eamon Dyas

[This addresses the question of immigration in Ireland, but the same situation exists in Britain.]

What began as a genuine outbreak of resistance in local communities to the results of EU immigration policies has become synonymous with the right. There was always an inevitability about all of this as the left, with its ideological affinity to an abstract internationalism, was never capable of transcending that perspective in a way which enabled it to identify with this resistance. At the same time, the liberal sentiment, with its pro-European bias, could never bring itself to view this resistance as anything other than a challenge to “European values”.

At some point, local community resistance, if it has a basis in actual community experience, will assume a more organised form in opposition to government policies that have caused that experience. With both the left and liberal sentiment not only recoiling from the initial manifestation of that resistance, but dishonestly and self-indulgently castigating it as racist, the only political path remaining for that resistance to traverse was going to be defined by the right.

This has resulted in a situation where the first real manifestation of unity between the northern and southern working class since the tenant right movement is taking place in the face of opposition to it by the left and the liberals of the Republic.

At its core there should be a lesson from all of this. That lesson should be that real leadership does not consist of enticing the working class with a cornucopia of nicely crafted abstract positions which have been fashioned by an ideologically sanitised under­standing of the working class interest.

If there is a working class it exists beyond the factory floor. In fact in modern times it could be argued that it now mostly exists beyond the factory floor. It exists in the communities which provide the commonality of experience that transcends the one lived on the factory floor. So when that sense of community feels threatened, its reaction to that threat should not be dismissed as something that has no bearing on the working class interest. It can only be seen in such terms if what is understood as working class interest is a template for an abstract working class and not the actual working class.

Tragically, there is little chance of that lesson being learned by the left and that will ensure that the ideologically unwashed real working class will continue to see its interests best served by identifying with the right.