Protest swingers

It’s been an interesting few weeks. I mean, for a start there was the civics lesson learned by secondary school students. Then there was the marketing and PR lesson learned by their teachers. The former watched the latter parade up and down outside the schools waving placards and shouting slogans. And they obviously realised that this is what you do to get your way, so they followed suit.

After the dust has settled, they have probably learned there are two laws in education, and that the one that applies to young people is not the same as the one that applies to teachers. But in addition, they have noted that it helps to be organised. Whether their fledgling union will sustain is open to question – the points race, the summer and the weekends to come may prove too disruptive. But who knows?

As for the teachers, surely they’ve learned that PR is not to be ignored. Ever.

What a fiasco. From public sympathy to odium in a few quick steps. But hopefully they also noted the reactions of parents as well as students. If so, they will be more interested in a consumer perspective on education in the future. It isn’t enough to say you do a good job. You have to do it as well.

As for the student demonstrations, ya’d be baffled by the outbreaks of aggression and violence. Unless it’s more of the rugby shenanigans that splatter blood outside bourgeois dancing and scoring nodes. I mean, the most disaffected individuals in Irish education are not customers of schools in which ASTI members teach. So, it would be a mistake to blame (er) real soccer fans for the trouble!

So, bourgeois rowdies or angry and frustrated customers? Or mayhap provocateurs here and there? Not that anybody alleged it. But to be honest, I’m surprised that nobody suggested that some Socialist Worker agitators or others were involved somewhere. I mean, I remember a bloke being interviewed on RTE Radio 1 during the taxi strike rioting in Kildare Street. He said he ‘was not a taxi driver’, but he ‘shared their frustration’!!!!

If so, he was the only one in Ireland! Or was it someone using the cover of an industrial/ economic dispute to create disorder on the streets? Ah, the old ways are the best!!!

But there is a serious side to this, and it comes in the shape of the far right proposal from Dublin Corporation for a bye-law to ban marches and gatherings in O’Connell Street. Okay – it was rejected by the councillors. But what an appalling scenario.

And why was it proposed? So that shopkeepers can keep their shops open. Incredible. The same shopkeepers they prosecute for litter violations!!

Now let’s be clear – I have no beef with shopkeepers. We buy, they sell. That’s the deal. But their need for neat streets can’t be satisfied at the expense of the right to protest and to free assembly.

Sure, O’Connell Street is a bit tatty – too many fast-food joints and bus stops. But, as Gillian Ni Cheallaigh pointed out in the Irish Times last week, ‘it has epitomised the free and vocal nature of protest in the State, a right enshrined in the Constitution’.

It’s true. Hundreds of different groups have taken to its (relatively) wide open spaces over the generations to protest and, from time to time as well, to celebrate. It’s a safety valve for Irish society, a place where pressure can be released. And as such it is the kind of space that is fundamental to a democratic tradition that originates in the great republican tradition spawned in America and especially France.

Think of the great citizen upheavals of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. And then wonder why Dublin has so few spaces where people can gather. It’s a deliberate policy, to limit the citizens’ opportunities to gather, in case of revolution and civil disorder.

Ironies abound. Take the recent to-do about teenage drunkenness in Ireland. Okay, we have a problematic drink culture. (Mind you, it seems a bit perverse to promote an area like Temple Bar, which is just a vast drunk-hole, an Ibiza-in-the-rain, and then complain that people drink too much. Or that some streets are too noisy and full of drunks. But I digress).

In Mediterranean countries, young people (and older ones too!) parade with each other in a joyous passagiata. They promenade, on a nightly basis, instead of getting biliously and cruddingly drunk. And, yes you’re right, drink is really cheap in these countries as well!! So why don’t they share the teenage huu-eeee culture of the UK and Ireland? Because those societies are comfortable with young people mixing in large groups, in public places!

You know what I mean. Just hundreds of young people, with ice creams or cokes or whatevers. Hanging out, flirting, showing off. Why can’t it be like that here? Is it really a coincidence that the societies with a tradition of public protest and democratic assembly are also the ones where people mix comfortably in public and young people don’t find it necessary to get shit-faced in order to flirt?

Well, there ya go. If the Corpo staff had had their way, those students whose protests were so important in bounding the teacher’s industrial action could find themselves facing fines. As would hundreds of others.

And, on a wider and equally topical note, the kind of public movement that (for example) brought down Slobodon Milosevic in Serbia, now facing a war crimes trial, would have been impossible in Dublin. O’Connell Street apart, there is no natural and time-honoured gathering place of protest.

Does all this expose a fascist and anti-democratic streak in the city administration? Or just a disregard for process? Possibly. This is always a risk with technocrats.

Fortunately, a combination of publicity and the political sensibilities of the city councillors saved the day .. this time. But be warned. All kinds of changes are introduced with a bye but without your leave!

Fringe political parties, holy Joes, protesting teachers, secondary school students please note!

Another civics lesson.

The Hog