Violence, race and the end of the 'Irish welcome'

The police had reclaimed O’Connell Bridge and were preparing a baton charge on the south side of the River Liffey, but the rioters and bystanders on Westmoreland Street did not want to lose their view of the fires.

- Rory Carroll and Lisa O'Carroll 

A masked youth had just ignited a bin, which had erupted with a great whoosh. On the far side of the bridge, a doubledecker bus and car blazed at the foot of the statue of Daniel O’Connell.

The police hammered their batons on their shields, a prelude to another charge, and still the crowd lingered, almost hypnotised by the spectacle of flames in the heart of Ireland’s capital.

“It’s sad it’s come to this,” said one spectator in his 20s, not a rioter. “But the situation has got out of control.”

He was referring not to the riot consuming central Dublin last Thursday night but to immigration, and a perception that foreigners – and especially asylum seekers – were driving a crime wave and worsening a housing crisis.

“Their religion has no respect for women’s rights,” he added.

The police charged and the spectator fled, unable to elaborate about any affinity with Dutch voters who last week backed Geert Wilders’s antiIslamic Freedom party, or with other election results across Europe.

Amid the fumes and shouts and sirens blazed an uncomfortable truth. The Ireland that for so long had seemed to buck Europe’s anti-immigrant trend and offer a “thousand welcomes” to the foreigners who reshaped its economy, society and demography – the Ireland that seemed immune to xenophobia and demagoguery and backlash – was not so different after all.