I’m surprised at the scale of the Garda operation against water charges protesters. It’s clear that the sequence of the arrests is shaped by explicitly political concerns. Why else arrest a TD, two councillors and one party activist before arresting anyone else?
Then there are other details that give serious cause for speculation.
Here’s one. Conducting high-profile arrests on a Monday morning sets the news agenda for the rest of the week. What other things are likely to appear in the news this week? Well, there is the matter of solidarity with Greece for one, and the fact that the Irish government has taken the side of the German government and the ECB against the Greek populace.
If ever there were a week to clamp down on political protest, is this not it? After being lauded as ‘heroes’ by Christine Lagarde and her €7000 handbag, this is the week that the government will be called upon, by its European colleagues to demonstrate –as the Sunday Business Post headline put it- ‘no mercy’ to Greece.
Frédéric Lordon, writing on Le Monde Diplomatique’s website, characterised the stance of the Irish government towards Greece thus:
They’re bastards. All of them, everywhere. Reuters revealed the gist of a German report drafted in the run-up to the 5 February finance ministers’ meeting: ‘No’ to everything. No and nothing: the two great watchwords of European-democracy-in-compliance-with-the-treaties. Should we deduce that Germany is alone responsible for this tough line? Come off it: all of them are. Neither Spain nor Ireland nor — most shameful of all — ‘socialist’ France came to Syriza’s aid. For a very simple reason: none of them have the slightest interest in this alternative lasting — why, it might even succeed! And then what would these gentlemen look like, having imposed destruction on their populations all for nothing? Well, they’d look like what they are. Imbeciles, as well as bastards.
There were undercover Gardaí at Edenmore on Saturday morning. They were monitoring the event at a GAA club where SYRIZA delegates spoke to anti-water charges protesters about solidarity networks, the election victory, and prospects for the future.
Does it not make sense that the government should try to dampen any impression that it is at odds with the Irish populace on this matter? Not only in terms of the message sent to the rest of Europe, but also in terms of its own authority at home.
Government officials will tell you that An Garda Síochána operates independently of the government. That one arm of the State does not know what the other is doing.
There is an element of truth to this. And yet, Tánaiste Joan Burton and Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan spoke in near unison last week on the concern about the “tone”, the “tenor” and the “sentiment” of water charges protests.
Since when was it in the remit of police chiefs to worry about how something sounds? Only a couple of weeks have passed since prominent figures in Ireland’s liberal establishment paraded their commitment to freedom of expression.
But O’Sullivan’s indication that she takes an interest, quite literally, in tone policing, garnered no public expressions of concern from the guardians of our liberal freedoms.
Just to emphasise. The head of the police force holds forth on the aesthetic propriety of public affairs. And liberal Ireland is cool with that. What next, you might ask: a clampdown on menacing eyebrows? Bad teeth? Use of Comic Sans in raffle tickets?
Deep down -actually not that deep down- we know very well why liberal Ireland said nothing. It’s because O’Sullivan wasn’t talking about policing the tone of the great and the good. She wasn’t talking, for example, about RTÉ presenters who read out texts calling for children to be assaulted in public, as one did this morning: that would be outrageous interference in civil matters.
She was talking instead about people who appear in the eyes of liberal Ireland as not our sort. Or, as they might say in an unguarded moment, knackers. And since she was saying it next to Joan Burton, who, with impeccable tone, tenor and sentiment, once said she would get Gardaí posted outside housing estates to clamp down on welfare fraud (thus criminalising working class communities whilst her department was itself issuing fraudulent claims about welfare fraud), all of this was fine.
Ask an Irish liberal about political policing and they will bray that it is absurd to think government ministers instruct the police to go after political opponents. They will try hypnotising you with explanations for dubious occurrences by swinging the pendulum of cock-ups vs. conspiracies.
But the drip-drip arrests this week, following the round of tone policing last week, illustrate that the government and An Garda Síochána are perfectly capable of singing from the same sheet without prior rehearsal, especially when it entails moving against mutual enemies, with the media providing solid accompaniment.
