There were ten of them, men, women, children and babies, marching down the street. They looked like they were on their way to a wedding. And as if they had landed on the wrong planet. The men wore black trousers, white shirts and black waistcoats, and the leader of the pack had a jaunty black hat on his head. The women wore long brightly patterned skirts, and peasant blouses, and scarves on their heads. One woman breastfed her baby as she sauntered by.
They showed us a piece of paper on which was written Bridewell Garda Station. Without knowing it, they were nearly outside the door they sought. They were also outside the entrance to the courts. A small group of people approached. They were Irish travellers. Come on, you want a fight? shouted the travellers to the Romanians. A young man on his way into court stood before them and said, Fall off the back of a lorry, did yeh? Come here to take our dole, have yeh?
The Romanians smiled politely and went into the garda station. Inside the court, there was a sizeable smattering of foreigners, looking for bail, pleading guilty, pleading not guilty. Twenty Irish people for every foreigner were appearing before the judiciary but the rainbow effect was visible and affecting crime had become multi-cultural, as has prejudice against the people of least property and power. The cops were hauling in foreigners who looked, in legal eyes, shifty, just as they were hauling in natives who looked, in legal eyes, shifty. In other words, people who hang around the streets, dressed poorly, with no visible means of support.
Many of the cases involving foreigners were remanded yet again, because yet again no interpreters were available nobody who could translate Polish, Malaysian and a little known African dialect. The Irish criminal class made their antagonism towards the foreigners obvious they were clogging up our courts, stealing our money, taking up our emergency housing, and they couldn t even speak English.
As so often, cultural changes in this country are mirrored in the Bridewell. If you really want to know what s going on, a day in the Bridewell District Courts will enlighten you. There is them and there is us. The division is stark and clear.
Another place where you can find out is at the end of Charlemont Street, just over the canal on the road into Ranelagh. The former Combat Poverty Agency buildings have been converted into emergency flats for people seeking refugee status. To stand on the pavement outside the flats is to stand, metaphorically, in a street in New York. All colours and creeds pass up and down the steps and in and out the doors.
On practically every window sill, there is a ghetto blaster. Practically every blaster plays a different kind of music. Stand on the street and listen to the sounds of Africa, middle Europe, Araby, South America . . . every day is a Mardi Gras up around Charlemont Street. It is sensational and lovely, and the people hanging out the windows are cheerful. If this is what Ireland is going to be like, there is a good time coming. The injection of new blood would make the heart soar.
Another thing you will have noticed is the number of clearly foreign people doing check-out duty in the smaller supermarkets. In Ranelagh one evening, there was not one single white Irish person behind the counter. The staff were black, brown and from continental Europe. Their command of English was impressive, their demeanour proud, their manners impeccable. They were clearly educated, all of them, and all of them were starting a whole new life on the bottom rung of the ladder. Just as the Irish had to when they were forced by economic or political circumstances to leave their native land and start anew elsewhere.
When we look at foreigners standing behind the counter in our shops, we are looking at our past. A fairly recent past at that. Our present even, because loads of young Irish people are making their temporary way around far flung countries of the world, from here to Montezuma, ringing up the till, waiting tables, pouring drinks. And some of our people end up in court over there, charged with being drunk and disorderly, or being found in the wrong place at the wrong time when the blood was up. Small stuff, normal stuff, the stuff of life.
Some of the foreigners are here to stay. And welcome, say I, every time I hear their music on the road to Ranelagh. n