We’ll have to send a warning to the socially elite
And I repeat, if you keep a people down…
They’ll rise don’t you see
…You would wanna start listening to us, you would
Coz to you we aren’t going to be good forever
Yeh maybe even here, in the Dublin Town
Things could get turned upside down.”
– Damien Dempsey (‘Dublin Town)

Things were certainly turned upside down in Dublin Saturday February 25 when riots left the city centre looking like a war zone. So what caused the riots? Extreme republicanism? Catholic nationalism? A bunch of Little Irelanders? Wanton violence? Downright drunkenness? The frustrations of social inequality?
In early January, loyalists, Orangemen and victims of IRA violence from the Love Ulster Campaign, led by Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR) announced that they had reached agreement with authorities in Dublin to stage a rally in the city centre. February 25 (F25) was to be the date with the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, reportedly giving his support, and planning to greet FAIR at Leinster House on Kildare St.
Republican Sinn Fein (RSF) called for protests and began to leaflet schools and other events, encouraging people to attend. But others of no known affiliation – some with republican sympathies wanting to stop the loyalist rally, some self-styled football hooligans, others who would fit the identikit for proto-fascists – spotted an opportunity to ‘have a go’, and began to plan ‘protests’ through emails, websites and blogspots.
Dan, a ‘Dublin Youth Organiser’, posted on one website in late December:
“The Orange Order is coming to Dublin, they are not welcome. We, the youth of Dublin will show our solidarity for the Occupied Six Counties by bringing hundreds of young protesters onto the street and driving the basterds (sic) out of our city. Tiochfidh ár lá!!”
By February the comments had become increasingly hostile, but most favoured peaceful protest.
“To the disbelief of the majority on this island and especially the people of Dublin and the inner city, this march is going ahead. Now that it is happening we have to formulate how to counteract it. Violence would be playing into their hands…it must be confronted peacefully.”
Other comments were even more sanguine.
“These Ultra-Nationalists would have us believe that the people of Dublin are ‘up in arms’ and ‘outraged’ by this proposed march. Absolute rubbish! The only people getting worked up are a tiny unrepresentative minority of the usual headbangers. Unfortunately their myopia will feed into the hands of their opposite numbers on the unionist side. By protesting against people expressing a viewpoint at odds with your own, you are just reinforcing this myth that the south is full of wild-eyed green Catholics who want to take over the North and drive the Protestant population into the sea.”
As F25 approached, anonymous emails circulated warning people to keep out of the city centre. Sinn Fein took the extraordinary step of writing to all its members instructing them not to attend the protests. The website postings again indicated that at least a few hundred individuals beyond RSF would take part.
RSF has only a small number of active supporters: for example, only 40 or so people attended their 34th anniversary of the 1972 ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre at the GPO in January.
On Thursday February 23, two days before the march, Loyalist organisers expressed their hopes that the protests would pass peacefully. That same morning Joe Costello, Labour TD for the north inner city, expressed his concerns in the Dail.
“My constituency will be visited by some of the brethren from Northern Ireland who will march from Parnell Square to the Dáil. Why was that particular route chosen from the Garden of Remembrance to the GPO, considering it is a route with a lot of republican monuments? There is also the potential missiles on O'Connell St.”
He continued: “Would he (the Minister for Justice) not consider re-routing the march, considering the rather provocative route through my constituency that was chosen and the potential for confrontation? Would it be more appropriate for the march to come from the south side, from Merrion Square to the Dáil? I ask the Minister to reassess the situation.”
McDowell was not for turning. No re-assessment was made.
The night before F25 an anonymous poster wrote on Indymedia: “I know there’s a good few of us meeting at the GPO…I reckon the GPO will be the flashpoint and that’s where I intend ending up to stop these Jaffa Cakes (orange men).”
Another wrote: “I’m coming up from Tipp with a few guys. I am not a republican nor involved with RSF. I am meerly (sic) an average bloke with some cop-on who sees this march as wrong and provocative and as being counter productive for all involved.”

F25: Things Go Horribly Wrong

11am Parnell Monument: Just 50 RSF members gathered, 16 of whom went to Talbot Street to lay a wreath at the monument to those killed in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

11.30am RSF group of protesters at the Parnell Monument were joined by 200-300 others, many from streets and pubs close by. They gathered in four different groups: at Parnell Monument, outside the Ambassador building, outside the internet cafe at the top of O’Connell St and down from that cafe, about 100 yards, outside Fraiser’s Pub. Gardai surrounded the protestors with crowd control barriers. A ‘sing-song’ began with nationalist songs, pro-IRA chants, the National Anthem, the Fields of Athenry and ‘We Shall Overcome’.

12.10pm 350 members of FAIR arrived at Parnell Square.

12.15pm Things turned nasty. Counter demonstrators chanted abuse and fired bricks, golf balls, stones and eggs at Gardaí. Demonstrators claim the riot control Gardai, with helmets and perspex shields, moved in with batons to remove the crowd at the Parnell Monument before the riot started. Other observers disagree. Either way, a pitched battle between the Gardai and protestors ensued. Garda numbers were not enough to quell a mob that was now utterly out of control.
What followed was an afternoon of looting and random acts of vandalism and aggression on a scale not seen in Dublin since the 1970s.

So who were the non-RSF groups that took part in the riots? Eyewitness, and reporter for Indymedia, Checkov Feeney, says that many of the people who took part were disenfranchised youth from impoverished estates ravaged by drug and alcohol abuse around Dublin.
“When the crowd got to the GPO, it was mainly these working class youth left,” says Checkov . “The republicans weren’t happy with the rioting and had gone up to Parnell Sq East to jeer the Love Ulster Parade. The majority of the crowd stayed to fight the police. It turned into an anti-police riot. Nobody expected it. There were probably no more than 200 people who were involved in the initial onslaught, but hundreds more joined in, as the fighting made its way down O’Connell Street. Local youths could be seen coming out of side-streets phoning their mates.”
Another insider insisted that the complement of self-styled football hooligans was a key element. “These are the guys who would chant anti-Protestant filth at someone like Mick Neville, who was Protestant. They’d do the same at Paul Osam, who is black. They’d show up at Lansdowne Road and lead the booing at anyone who played for Glasgow Rangers. It’s a twisted, anti-Brit, Little Irelander thing – and fuelled by drink it becomes very aggressive and fundamentally racist. There were guys I knew among the so-called protestors and this is their thing. Anything that isn’t ‘us’ is a legitimate target. They’d burn out Protestants if they could. They are extremely nasty, and that’s the long and the short of it.”
There were reports and photographs of a racist attack on three Chinese shop assistants on Westland Row. While of little consolation to the victims, it seems that they were attacked by thugs who had stolen drink from the shop in which they worked. “I spoke to a woman who tried to help. She said the unfortunate assistants ran out of the shop to try to stop the thieves and a fight started,” Checkov Feeney adds.
The Labour Party spokesman on Justice, Joe Costello, meanwhile, believes that the riot could and should have been prevented – and that the government and the Minister for Justice have serious questions to answer. For example, no formal request was received by the government for the Love Ulster march. “How did this march take place without formal permission?” asks Joe. “Who approved the march?”
The question needs to be answered: was it the Gardai or the Minister – and where is the record of the decision?
“The buck stops at the Minister,” Joe Costello insists. “Michael McDowell and the government allowed the march to go ahead without looking at the potential for trouble. There was an incredible potential for violence from the actual route chosen. How could such a major, unprecedented march take place in the capital without the government giving it its seal of approval?”
Joe believes that claims that the march was driven by hostility towards the Gardai are overstated.
“There is an underlying antagonism towards the Gardai in working class youth in the inner city and suburbs – but we haven’t seen it in a situation where that type of antipathy has become part of a high profile political confrontation.”

Fr. Peter McVerry, who worked for years in the north inner city, isn’t so sure. He says that the anger felt towards Gardai may have been a factor. “I have frequently made complaints against Gardai assaulting young people in custody and young guys being stopped and searched by the Gardai simply because they are from the north inner city,” he says. “The law has given the Gardai the power and they are abusing it. If we want to prevent it happening again, calling them thugs and scum prevents any further explanation of what happened. It hides the possible real explanation – the alienation in deprived areas felt towards the Gardai.”
Niamh Carton, who works with the North Clondalkin Community Safety Forum, is inclined to agree. “There is very much a ‘them and us’ attitude amongst many, which may have been a factor in last Saturday’s riots. The Government and An Garda Siochana need to look at these issues and start pumping resources into Youth Diversion Programmes and the Community Garda Division.”
Will anything be learned from the unprecedented violence, thuggery, dead-end Nationalism and anti-Garda anger on F25?
McDowell promises: “It will be our priority to take whatever steps are practical to ensure that no drunken rabble ever again besmirch the good name of our capital city as they did in recent days.”
Dublin City Council Manager John Fitzgerald plans to take on the civil liberty groups and to use the riots to introduce tighter laws for protest marches down O’Connell Street.
Which sounds like the same old repressive establishment line: screw the people in general for the transgressions of the few. And anyhow, will it work? The commander in ‘chief’, McDowell, didn’t get it right for F25. Maybe only a Kaiser ‘Chief’ can predict a riot.
“A friend of a friend he got beaten, He looked the wrong way at a policeman - Ah-ah-ah, la la lalala la - I predict a riot, I predict a riot!”