Can we trust Fine Gael?

truebluedub

Can we trust Fine Gael?

There are two issues at the core of this issue: a history of racism and a history of corruption, I will deal with the former first and return to the latter in a later post. If anyone wants to complain about other parties please set up another thread.

Racism

How do we demonstrate racism? A scientific paper by Dr. Amanda Hanyes, Dr. Eoin Devereux and Dr. Michael Breen has shown that several frames of racist discourse generally exist. This [FONT=&quot]is available at [/FONT][FONT=&quot]http://www.ul.ie/sociology/docstore/workingpapers/wp2004-03.pdf. While the frames mentioned are used to refer to asylum seekers and refugees they can for the most part be generalised to other groups.[/FONT]
The frames:
Illegitimacy
Threat to National or Local Integrity
Social Deviancy
Criminal Element
Economic Threat

FG
Leaving aside Enda Kenny's racist joke which shows nothing more than that he is oblivious to the connotations of what he said there are several verifiable examples of racism coming from FG. This racism is aimed at two groups travelers and immigrants.

I am a bit wary of using the example of travellers in discussion having seen what happens to my students when I mention travellers - even the most liberal of them turns into a racist.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Invasion
by Mary Frances Ryan

FORMER CHAIRMAN of Enniscorthy Town Council, Fine Gael Cllr. Paddy Kavanagh shocked Enniscorthy Town Council on Monday night when he launched into an outburst of invectives against Travellers.

“They will rape and pillage the area around them for the weekend and leave their dirt and filth for the Council to clean up,” he said.

His outburst followed the weekend encampment of up to 30 caravans, vans and horseboxes at the Promenade in Enniscorthy.

Describing the Travellers as “visitors from afar”, Cllr. Kavanagh said that, if he had his way, he would put them out “in the middle of the sea, most of those fellows”.

Maintaining that it was not just a local issue but a national one, he said: “These Travellers, these mobile business people coming into a town have to be legislated for nationally.”

Enniscorthy had been given a huge display of wealth in the form of vans and caravans in the encampment at the weekend such that he thought he was at a motor exhibition, Cllr. Kavanagh continued.

“People will say we have to be politically correct but they are leeches on society. They pay no tax.”

Pointing out that this was not just happening in Enniscorthy, he referred to the fact that a similar encampment had set up recently in Courtown, believed to have involved the same people.

“We as tax payers have rights in this country. Our right is to be able to go about our business without being interrupted by these cowboys.”

http://www.enniscorthyecho.ie/news/story/?trs=cwqleymhsn

That one spoke for itself

WHILE politicians are notably slow to defend travellers, they often seem equally reluctant to speak out against anti-social behaviour from members of the travelling community. A few weeks ago, Fine Gael's Olivia Mitchell sought legislation to end travellers' invasions of private property, and called on travellers to live up to the 'Citizen Traveller' slogan by accepting their responsibilities as well as claiming their rights. "The recent unpublicised encampment by five traveller families from Wexford on yet another school grounds in my own constituency is just one further example of a countrywide series of invasions by members of the travelling community onto private or state property this summer, " said Deputy Mitchell. "All of these invasions have one thing in common ? either the travelling community leave after an expensive court injunction is got, forcing their departure, or they leave 'voluntarily' once the property owner or the local residents pay them 'goodbye money'. The practice was a form of extortion, " she said.

The Citizen Traveller message would fall on deaf ears, Deputy Mitchell warned, so long as the travellers "insist on putting themselves above other citizens when it comes to the rights of the settled community to the integrity of their lands and property". Collins' response to Deputy Mitchell's comments was to make a personal attack on Deputy Mitchell regarding an internal Fine Gael investigation of payments to politicians earlier this year: "Olivia Mitchell would be far better off worrying about politicians taking hello money than travellers looking for goodbye money, " he remarked. Another Pavee Point spokesperson replied by attacking the "conspicuous silence" of politicians like Mitchell when it came to calling on their constituents to support the provision of proper accommodation for travellers in their areas.

http://www.tribune.ie/archive/article/2000/sep/17/a-bad-way-of-life-or-a-life-denied-a-way/
Now here we have two clear statements one rhetorically proposing genocide the second as we shall see leading to proposal of what is legally deemed genocide. McVeigh writing in 2008 has shown that much of this kind of rhetoric is informed by a genocidal logic using the genocide convention from the UN (convention available here http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/text.htm) in a nutshell the attempt to erode the travellers separate ethnicity amounts to genocide from a legal perspective. This can be seen when we take opposition to traveller halting sites into account:

FG publishes travellers Bill

[URL="javascript:showPlayer('traveller_av.html')"] [/URL]Monday, 5 November 2001 22:38
Fine Gael has published a Private Members Bill to give local authorities greater powers to deal with unauthorised traveller camps. The Bill would also make it easier for land owners to get court orders against caravans being placed on their property without permission.
The party's Housing and Local Government spokeswoman, Olivia Mitchell, said that nothing in the proposed Bill reduces the entitlement of travellers to accommodation, or the obligation on local authorities to provide it.
However, she said that without measures to deal with large illegal encampments, local authorities would find it more and more difficult to persuade communities to accept official halting sites.
Deputy Mitchell said that the Bill was primarily aimed at controlling mass movements of travellers who leave permanent accommodation to carry out business activities on public amenity land.
She said that the current legislation, which requires local authorities to provide transient sites for all comers as well as permanent sites for indigenous travellers, is too open ended.
Her proposals would allow local authorities to serve notice on anyone to remove a temporary dwelling from any public place which is not designated for such dwellings, and obliges them to serve notice if the number involved is such as to obstruct or interfere with an amenity or facility.
The occupier of the dwelling would not have to be named in the order, and the local authority would be required to remove the dwellings if the order is not complied with.
The other aspect of the Bill would allow private land-owners to apply to the District Court, rather than the High Court, for an exclusion order against anyone putting caravans on their land without permission.
Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil has questioned Deputy Mitchell's credentials. Dublin South West deputy Chris Flood claimed that Fine Gael's Olivia Mitchell had voted against the adoption of a four year plan to house travellers in Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown Council.
Mr Flood said that Deputy Mitchell's stance raised questions about her credentials which party leader Michael Noonan would have to address.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2001/1105/traveller.html

In this context FG's campaign in the aftermath of the Nally case comes as no surprise:

Nally-case: racist fallout remains a concern Pavee Point remains "concerned at the issues arising in the fallout from the Padraig Nally case and their adverse effect on Travellers in Irish society." "There is no getting away from the fact that the case has contributed in a significant way to the continued demonisation of Travellers in Ireland in general and in rural Ireland in particular."
Referring to the racist discourse whereby politicians "equated Travellers with crime", Pavee Point said this (combined with other anti-Traveller reaction to the deadly attack and subsequent trial) "exposed and exacerbated the fault-line that exists in relations between the Traveller and settled communities."
Martin Collins, assistant director of Pavee Point, said: "Traveller organisations acknowledge and have consistently challenged anti-social and criminal behaviour by Travellers and will continue to do so."
Pavee Point, a Specialist Support Agency to the Community Development Programme, drew up a position paper on the matter and identified the following as issues:

1. Law lecturer, Conor Hanly of NUI Galway, said the accused was fortunate to avoid a murder sentence.
2. Unanswered questions about the court proceedings Pavee found there were a number of worrying aspects in terms of the court proceedings. For example, why was the case the first trial of its kind to be held in Mayo in a hundred years, particularly when there was strong local support for Padraig Nally?
3. The disturbing initial response to Padraig Nally's conviction
   The response to the conviction for manslaughter from Padraig Nally's supporters, some sections of the media and from some politicians was disturbing. It is notable to recall that, at the time of the court verdict, in November, a call was made for a public anti-Traveller rally.
   "It is to the credit of the GAA and the Irish Farmers Association that they did not provide official support for the proposed rally," remarked Pavee. The rally was eventually called off.
   The agency criticised politicians, in particular, Senator Jim Higgins of Fine Gael who made what it describes as "inflammatory statements about Travellers and their responsibility for rural crime." It said the lack of overall political leadership in challenging the anti-Traveller discourse is both worrying and disappointing.
   Pavee abhorred the work of one paper in particular, the Daily Mirror, saying it had “a long track record of printing stories that label minority ethnic groups as criminals.” Other newspapers provided a balanced picture of the case, including said a surprised Pavee Point, the Sunday Independent.
4. The demonisation of Travellers
   The scapegoating of Travellers for all rural crime will no doubt remain in the minds of many as a consequence of this case. Other cases where Travellers come before the law will likely be seized upon as further proof of this hypothesis.
   Yet, as Criminologist Dr. Paul O'Mahony has pointed out, the statistics show that there has been no massive increase in crime in the Irish Republic in the last twenty years. Experience from Ireland and elsewhere shows that the incessant labelling and demonisation of a vulnerable minority contributes to the conditions where attacks and discrimination of that community becomes more accepted and more possible.

In conclusion, Pavee Point highlighted the need to build greater relations between the Traveller and settled communities and said it is "interested in creating a just society for all citizens of Ireland but we cannot do this alone." This article is condensed - for the full length position paper, contact Pavee Point directly. - Spring '06, Issue 17

http://www.changingireland.ie/Nallycase.html

In terms of immigrants these comments need no introduction [EDIT: Slippy Wicket has pointed to credibility issues re spin from Thomas Byrne, reader beware]:

Friday, September 5, 2008TD suggests lump sum for jobless foreigners

MARK HENNESSYFOREIGN UNEMPLOYED workers in Ireland could be given a lump sum payment of up to six months' worth of unemployment benefit if they agree to return home, Fine Gael TD Leo Varadkar has suggested.
"Is there an opportunity to give them three to six months of benefit?" he suggested at the Oireachtas Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
The number of foreign unemployed workers in Ireland now stands at 16 per cent of the total on the Live Register - exactly proportional to the numbers in the workforce.
The proposal is based on a Spanish model announced recently where unemployed foreign nationals from 20 countries have been offered €18,000 to go home on condition they do not come back for three years.
The Dublin West TD insisted that a lump-sum benefit payment should not be used "to force them" to return to their home countries, "but as an option".
Describing Mr Varadkar's intervention as "very, very dangerous", Fianna Fáil Meath TD Thomas Byrne said "voluntary repatriation is a new low by Fine Gael".
Later Mr Byrne said: "This comes in the dishonourable tradition of the British National Party. They are the only other party supporting voluntary repatriation."
Fás director general Rody Molloy said EU nationals in Ireland were entitled to "exactly the same rights" as locals.
Irish people working in other EU countries could not be discriminated against either.
He would be "very nervous" about doing anything that "should in any way suggest" that foreign nationals were not welcome in Ireland, even if that was not the intention of the proposal.
He said there was a danger that even a voluntary programme could be misinterpreted and "then you would run into issues about how voluntary it is".
Brid O'Brien, the head of policy and media of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, said she would be "very concerned" if "different categories" of unemployed were created.
It emerged last month that the Department of Social and Family Affairs had scrapped paying dole payments directly into claimants' bank accounts in an attempt to curb fraud by foreign and Irish workers who have quit Ireland after losing jobs here.
Since then claimants have had to sign on at post offices weekly - rather than have the payments made automatically into their bank accounts - rather than signing on once a month as happened before.
Irish Times

Also in this context we should consider FG's support for the citizenship referendum which as the authors (Haynes et al.) of the academic paper referred to earlier have shown played into the xenophobic discourse of "abuse of Irish citizenship." (2006 it's a seperate paper to the one above)

So a question to FG supporters why should we trust you with this record of playing the race card, even when the people themselves are not racists there use of this sort of language to play on people's fears is despicable. Does this not make FG itself a racist party, with racist policies as reflected by the discourse it generates as an institution?

Joey the lips

I honestly think this thread will do more for Fine Gael support rather than against it! Sorry!

I am not a fine gael man either!

meglome

I agree with you that Fine Gael are not perfect but I'd be here for the day if I listed all the Fianna Fail faux pas. So while I give you credit for coming up with a different angle for not supporting Fine Gael other than 'sure ya wouldn't want that Enda Kenny fella' ultimately you're just going to make Fianna Fail look bad if people start listing things off.

truebluedub

meglome wrote: »

I agree with you that Fine Gael are not perfect but I'd be here for the day if I listed all the Fianna Fail faux pas. So while I give you credit for coming up with a different angle for not supporting Fine Gael other than 'sure ya wouldn't what that Enda Kenny fella' ultimately you're just going to make Fianna Fail look bad if people start listing things off.

Good, I don't like FF either.

meglome

truebluedub wrote: »

Good, I don't like FF either.

Not to mention there's plenty of things that Labour and other 'socialists' have put their feet into. All a question of degrees really, Fianna Fail being a bastion of probity

thebigcheese22

Fairplay to Truedub for the OP...

I am very wary of the Blueshirts, especially Leo Varadkar, I could see him being Justice Minister, and it scares me! :mad:

old boy

well f.f. and the greens have DEFINITLY proved that they cannot be trusted.

dlofnep

FG are a bunch of slimey twats. No, I wouldn't trust them.

meglome

thebigcheese22 wrote: »

Fairplay to Truedub for the OP...

I am very wary of the Blueshirts, especially Leo Varadkar, I could see him being Justice Minister, and it scares me! :mad:

You must be terrified outta your mind with our current government.

thebigcheese22

meglome wrote: »

You must be terrified outta your mind with our current government.

You have no idea!

slippy wicket

OP most of the articles mentioned are either totally taken out of context or are written in an unbalanced fashion.

It seems that from your point of view it is unacceptabe to be critical of travellers. I know of Paddy Kavanagh and he is no racist. There is a long back history there, of problems with different travellers going back over 10-15 years.
From the next article, are we to assume that Olivia Mitchell is a racist because she dares to say the travellers should live up to their responsabilaties as well as have their rights.
Also traveller ethnicity is a vile pc myth!!!
I think you have guessed what colour shirt i am wearing.

truebluedub

slippy wicket wrote: »

OP most of the articles mentioned are either totally taken out of context or are written in an unbalanced fashion.

It seems that from your point of view it is unacceptabe to be critical of travellers. I know of Paddy Kavanagh and he is no racist. There is a long back history there, of problems with different travellers going back over 10-15 years.
From the next article, are we to assume that Olivia Mitchell is a racist because she dares to say the travellers should live up to their responsabilaties as well as have their rights.
Also traveller ethnicity is a vile pc myth!!!
I think you have guessed what colour shirt i am wearing.

So a question to FG supporters why should we trust you with this record of playing the race card, even when the people themselves are not racists there use of this sort of language to play on people's fears is despicable. Does this not make FG itself a racist party, with racist policies as reflected by the discourse it generates as an institution?

As you can see I specifically exonerate the individuals of racism laying the blame at a party that is institutionally racist and plays the race card with reckless abandon. The policies of FG voiced by Olivia Mitchell correspond to a legal definition of genocide, which does not require any killing merely the enforced erosion of an ethnic culture.

Do you have any respected authorities to back your view that traveller's do not count as an ethnicity because I've got McVeigh, I can throw in Bryan Fanning's 'Racism and social change in the Republic of Ireland' 2002 which pointed me to Olivia Mitchell's campaigns.

In my view you can be critical of individual traveller's who have been found guilty after facing due process, not of the entire ethnic group.

slippy wicket

Its just my opinion. I have absolutely no problem with travellers as a group, just that i believe they are a social group rather than an ethnic group.
I have done quite a lot of business with travellers, buying and selling, and i would have to say, that like the rest of society, there are only a few bad apples.
It is unfortunate that those bad apples cause so much trouble for the rest of the community.

Just for the record, the article to do with Leo Varadkar seems to be more about the spinning and twisting of his idea by T. Byrne ff.

Personally i have always had the view that it does not matter where you are from, as long as you make every attempt to contribute to your society.

dlofnep

slippy wicket wrote: »

I have absolutely no problem with travellers as a group, just that i believe they are a social group rather than an ethnic group.

"An ethnic group is a group of human beings whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage"

Travellers have a shared heritage, customs and language.

Of course they are an ethnic group.

dresden8

Can we trust Fine Gael?

We'd want to get away from this crap of trust.

Keep an eye on the b@st@rds every step of the way.

the butcher

Anyone but FF at this stage. If thats all you have to complain about FG....id be looking at more important things, jobs, economy, corruption, builders+banks, public sector reform, without them we cant do a thing and be paying off a debt for decades due to FF

is_that_so

So a FG councillor expresses a not uncommon view of Travellers. A FG TD also expresses opposition to trespassing and proposes legislation to control it, also a sentiment many people could relate to. All of a sudden racism is the key to the next election. Now if this was about running the country the question might have some validity but some random linked column inches do not a racist party make. Nor does it make it true.

truebluedub

is_that_so wrote: »

some random linked column inches do not a racist party make. Nor does it a make it true.

Actually a sample found using several keywords.

is_that_so

Either way not much of a basis to pose a question on the suitability of a party to govern. If they were shown to be completely corrupt and incompetent then there would be cause for concern. TBH some councillors have only their "cute hoor" ability and little in the way of intelligence.

dsmythy

So are they big evil racists or a party more in touch with what ordinary people actually think and say in private? They were on the right side of the citizenship referendum and are right to point out the responsibility that lies on the traveller community themselves to change from within. Sounds to me that they have the finger on the pulse of the country.

truebluedub

is that so - I'll post on corruption sometime tomorrow, I'm fact checking a rough work version.

dsmythy - Racism is racism whether it is popular or unpopular.

Sticky Wicket - I edited the original post to reflect your point about Thomas Byrne spinning LV's remarks and left the quote intact to let people make up their own minds.

kowloon

dresden8 wrote: »

We'd want to get away from this crap of trust.

Keep an eye on the b@st@rds every step of the way.

Agreement: eagerness to take political office is the first indication that they can't be trusted.

Liam Byrne

I have no problem with individual people, but the fact of the matter is that in many regards Traveller Representative Groups are responsible for some of the issues that they claim to defend against.

A traveller is drunk and disorderly in a pub and gets thrown out.
Pavee Point claims he was singled out because he was a traveller.

A bunch of travellers leave a seaside resort in a stinking pile of rubbish.
Pavee Point claims that they had no choice because travellers deserve their holidays too and there were no facilities there.

A traveller is shot while trespassing on someone's property, and rather than looking into why the guy was there.
Pavee Point claim that he was shot "because he was a traveller".

Result : the public hear that unacceptable, antisocial behaviour is acceptable to Pavee Point, ergo the entire population of travellers.

In effect, they suffer the same problem that FF have, in that by not disowning and dealing with the proportion of scum that every walk of life have, they are seen to condone it, and therefore give the whole lot a bad name.

So FG have basically voiced an opinion that is held by lots of people (their voters) and are castigated for it ?

Still WAY better than FF, who don't seem to give a boll*x what the public think, feel or want.

FACTS
Some Irish are scumbags
Some immigrants are scumbags
Some politicians are scumbags
Some travellers are scumbags
Some religious order people are scumbags
Some Dublin people are scumbags
Some Limerick people are scumbags

All facts - and BTW, I'm from Limerick. So I'm not pointing fingers here; the fact is that many people would automatically slur my city and its 99% decent population.....but THAT'S not racism, for some reason ? If it were a country it would be, but because it's a city it's not.

So I know what it's like to have a tiny minority affect your reputation, and for people to be "racist" and prejuducial. But my reaction to anyone like that is to say "F**k off, I'm not one of them"......why don't the traveller organisations do likewise ?

And in all cases we - as a society - should dump the politically-correct rubbish and deal with scumbags, regardless of their colour, location, religion, background, age, profession - so that they are viewed as their own group, rather than dragging down the groups that they happen to belong to.

If FG said "all travellers are scumbags", I'd challenge them, but this just seems like a American-election style crappy point-scoring attempt by FF to cast a slur on FG.

Pathetic.

truebluedub

Liam Byrne - And what about the proposal of cultural genocide? And I've already indicated I'm not FF.

dsmythy

truebluedub wrote: »

dsmythy - Racism is racism whether it is popular or unpopular.

People have different views on what is and is not racist. The citizenship referendum wasn't racist and travellers need to not just look for rights but deal with responsibility too like every other person in Ireland.

meglome

truebluedub wrote: »

is that so - I'll post on corruption sometime tomorrow, I'm fact checking a rough work version.

dsmythy - Racism is racism whether it is popular or unpopular.

Sticky Wicket - I edited the original post to reflect your point about Thomas Byrne spinning LV's remarks and left the quote intact to let people make up their own minds.

It's not racist to point out that something like 20% of the prison population are travellers and they only make up a few percent of the population. I have no problem with travellers but the facts are as they are. There's a big difference between someone not being politically correct enough for the bleeding hearts and being a racist. There seems to be some confusion of the two here. Personally I'm against racism and overbearing political correctness.

IIMII

truebluedub wrote: »

Can we trust Fine Gael?

I didn't read on beyond this question, but the answer is no.

meglome

truebluedub wrote: »

Liam Byrne - And what about the proposal of cultural genocide? And I've already indicated I'm not FF.

There are many people in this country that are very worried about the numbers of non nationals in the country. I have no idea if racism plays a part in individuals thinking on this but they are entitled to their opinion no matter.

meglome

IIMII wrote: »

I didn't read on beyond this question, but the answer is no.

And you'd trust whom instead?

turgon

So Olivia Mitchell says travellers must endorse their rights as well as responsibilities and thats racism.

Please.

rant_and_rave

Utter rubbish. I hereby invite all Travelers to camp out in truebluedub’s back yard.

Liam Byrne

truebluedub wrote: »

Liam Byrne - And what about the proposal of cultural genocide? And I've already indicated I'm not FF.

Where's this "cultural genocide" ? I did a search for that dramatic phrase in the articles and got no result.

If you're talking about the erosion of culture (doesn't sound as dramatic as using the word "genocide", but it's probably more appropriate) then once again you have to look at the broader picture rather than single out any one group as being victimised.

The original Enniscorthy article complained about the state that the prom was in after they left; if "they" had been a stag party or a student rag week or whatever, the report would have been almost identical.

Fact is that you or I would be expected to leave a place as we found it, and so should they.

Once upon a time, you could walk farmland or camp places; now you can't.

Nowadays, people have to pay a small fortune if they want to park at a seaside, or go to town shopping - either for their car or their campsite. Housing estates are built without play areas for children; people are expected to pay membership to sports clubs or sports grounds in order to do what they used to do for free in a field out the back or in a public area.

Small markets are squeezed out by developments, lack of green-field sites and stall and parking charges. Farmers' (and communities) cultures are being eroded.

Why should these elements of "culture" be ignored ?

I'm not saying that ANY of this is right, but it's happening to EVERYONE.

And providing facilities for EVERYONE is right; but objecting if one group is given more leeway than others is not racism. Why give free facilities to one group and charge others ?

I've to pay for my house and its site. If I want to take a caravan anywhere, I've to pay for that, too. Why should anyone be any different ?

And objecting if those people - regardless of WHO they are - abuse the facilities and disrespect others is also not racism.

As for foreigners - if I wanted to go to work in Spain, I'd have to pay for my own language teachers for me and my kids (if they existed). The Spanish people won't pay extra taxes so that I can choose to work there.

That's not racism either - it's a fact.

Treat like with like - across the board, good and bad - and you have true equality.

truebluedub

meglome wrote: »

It's not racist to point out that something like 20% of the prison population are travellers and they only make up a few percent of the population. I have no problem with travellers but the facts are as they are. There's a big difference between someone not being politically correct enough for the bleeding hearts and being a racist. There seems to be some confusion of the two here. Personally I'm against racism and overbearing political correctness.

truebluedub wrote: »

How do we demonstrate racism? A scientific paper by Dr. Amanda Hanyes, Dr. Eoin Devereux and Dr. Michael Breen has shown that several frames of racist discourse generally exist. This [font=&quot]is available at [/font][font=&quot]http://www.ul.ie/sociology/docstore/workingpapers/wp2004-03.pdf. While the frames mentioned are used to refer to asylum seekers and refugees they can for the most part be generalised to other groups.[/font]
The frames:
Illegitimacy
Threat to National or Local Integrity
Social Deviancy
Criminal Element
Economic Threat

One or more of these frames are clearly in each of the articles I quoted in the original post and with the plausible exception of the Varadkar one they are not being filtered by a FF spin.

truebluedub

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Where's this "cultural genocide" ? I did a search for that dramatic phrase in the articles and got no result.

If you're talking about the erosion of culture (doesn't sound as dramatic as using the word "genocide", but it's probably more appropriate) then once again you have to look at the broader picture rather than single out any one group as being victimised.

The original Enniscorthy article complained about the state that the prom was in after they left; if "they" had been a stag party or a student rag week or whatever, the report would have been almost identical.

Fact is that you or I would be expected to leave a place as we found it, and so should they.

Once upon a time, you could walk farmland or camp places; now you can't.

Nowadays, people have to pay a small fortune if they want to park at a seaside, or go to town shopping - either for their car or their campsite. Housing estates are built without play areas for children; people are expected to pay membership to sports clubs or sports grounds in order to do what they used to do for free in a field out the back or in a public area.

Small markets are squeezed out by developments, lack of green-field sites and stall and parking charges. Farmers' (and communities) cultures are being eroded.

Why should these elements of "culture" be ignored ?

I'm not saying that ANY of this is right, but it's happening to EVERYONE.

And providing facilities for EVERYONE is right; but objecting if one group is given more leeway than others is not racism. Why give free facilities to one group and charge others ?

I've to pay for my house and its site. If I want to take a caravan anywhere, I've to pay for that, too. Why should anyone be any different ?

And objecting if those people - regardless of WHO they are - abuse the facilities and disrespect others is also not racism.

As for foreigners - if I wanted to go to work in Spain, I'd have to pay for my own language teachers for me and my kids (if they existed). The Spanish people won't pay extra taxes so that I can choose to work there.

That's not racism either - it's a fact.

Treat like with like - across the board, good and bad - and you have true equality.

Following the citation of two articles I had this:

truebluedub wrote: »

Now here we have two clear statements one rhetorically proposing genocide the second as we shall see leading to proposal of what is legally deemed genocide. McVeigh writing in 2008 has shown that much of this kind of rhetoric is informed by a genocidal logic using the genocide convention from the UN (convention available here http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/text.htm) in a nutshell the attempt to erode the travellers separate ethnicity amounts to genocide from a legal perspective. This can be seen when we take opposition to traveller halting sites into account:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2001/1105/traveller.html

Liam Byrne

truebluedub wrote: »

Following the citation two articles I had this:

That was only one part of my reply. Any comment on the rest, considering that I expanded to say that lots of aspects of lots of culture are being eroded ?

BTW, "genocide" is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group"

Whatever about the destruction of their - and our - cultures, where's the proof that it's "deliberate and systematic", and where's the proof that it's more deliberate and systematic than any erosion of any other way-of-life, culture or traditions on this island ?

My mum used to have a "culture" of leaving the back door open and anyone was welcome. That's long-gone nowadays, and it's a shame.

But was it "deliberate and systematic" by the powers-that-be who had an objection to that "cead mile failte" culture ?

truebluedub

Liam Byrne wrote: »

That was only one part of my reply. Any comment on the rest, considering that I expanded to say that lots of aspects of lots of culture are being eroded ?

BTW, "genocide" is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group"

Alright, firstly as a few posters challenge this contention let's look at the construction of travellers as a distinct ethnic group.

[FONT=&quot]Yet one writer, debating the Famine origins and [/FONT][FONT=&quot]ethnic distinctiveness [/FONT][FONT=&quot]of Irish Travellers, has gone so far as to argue that Irish Travellers did not figure as a distinctive group among the wretched and subsistence-based in nineteenth century Ireland. They were, she argues, simply one among several subsistence-based groups forced into vagrancy and begging in order to survive (McLoughlin 1994:72). To argue thus is to ignore the fact that Irish Travellers have long [/FONT][FONT=&quot]been regarded [/FONT][FONT=&quot]and, more importantly still, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]regarded themselves [/FONT][FONT=&quot]as a distinctive minority group. As Gammon-speakers, and as a group with well established genealogical linkages and a whole range of distinctive cultural practices, they perceived themselves as a people set apart from other sectors of Irish society. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]...[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Rao has defined as ‘peripatetics’, a group not dissimilar from ‘commercial nomads’, ‘endogamous nomads who are largely non-primary producers or extractors, and whose principal resources are constituted by other human populations’ (Rao 1987). Applied to Irish Travellers, this definition helps circumvent some remaining difficulties involved in categorising Travellers in a society with such large subaltern groups as nineteenth-century Ireland clearly had. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]...[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Nationalism here was fused with Social Darwinism in such a way as to suggest that there was literally no room for Travellers within the Irish nation-state. ‘Tinkers’ were considered a ‘dirty’ [/FONT][FONT=&quot]and ‘rightless’ people[/FONT][FONT=&quot], and as such were not entitled to a position within the material and moral structures of the nationstate. Irish Travellers, like Gypsies in continental Europe, were also prone to the lowering of the thresholds of tolerance that separated them out from settled communities in the newly emerging Irish nation. As the sensibilities of the latter became more refined and bourgeois, their tolerance of ‘tinkers’, like their tolerance of the stench and filth which they associated with the poor, especially with ‘tinkers’, was similarly lowered (Corbin 1986; Elias 1992). The very presence of ‘tinkers’ in this modernising Ireland was sometimes a source of ‘astonishment’ to these sectors of Irish society. It intimidated their sensibilities, not least because so much in Traveller behaviour, especially their ‘ribald manners’, their vagrancy, their lack of respect for Church, for state and literally for [/FONT][FONT=&quot]the law of the land[/FONT][FONT=&quot], seemed to resemble more the habits of those living in Europe’s far-flung colonial peripheries in India and colonial Africa, than those of an emergent nation-state at the back door to ‘civilised’ Europe. In Ireland’s case also, as indeed in mainland Europe, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a period when history was seen as something ‘fixed’ or ‘settled’. Viewed thus history comprised concrete, albeit discrete, dramas enacted between ‘settled society’, on the one hand, and the forces of ‘nature’ and physical landscape, on the other (Richards 1994:114). In this scenario ‘tinkers’ were considered much closer to the forces of nature and anarchy, than to culture and social progress. Although they clearly lived [/FONT][FONT=&quot]within[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Irish society, they were progressively perceived as apart from it, as social ‘pariahs’ and ‘parasites’ who ‘marauded’ on settled society and committed a whole range of petty crimes [/FONT][FONT=&quot]against it[/FONT][FONT=&quot]. Having constructed ‘tinkers’ as near ‘savage’, or uncivilised [/FONT][FONT=&quot]subjects[/FONT][FONT=&quot], it was only a matter of time before ‘settled’ Ireland would depict them as ‘expendable’. Like the nomadic Highlanders in Walter Scott’s Romantic narratives of Scottish history, ‘tinkers’ in Ireland at this time were regarded as historical subjects from a different place, and from a ‘barbaric’ epoch in the evolution of modern Ireland. Like Scottish Highlanders they too were perceived as a people who had to be hidden, or ‘used up’ if the narrative of modern Irish history was ever to proceed (Richards 1994:134). It was as if it was the [/FONT][FONT=&quot]destiny [/FONT][FONT=&quot]of ‘tinkers’ to be so ‘expended’, sacrificed or dispensed with, so that Irish history could progress.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]All of this clearly implied a geography of savagery and ‘uncivility’ which suggested those inhabiting the fringes of Irish society were the most ‘uncivilised’ of all. They were [/FONT][FONT=&quot]furthest out [/FONT][FONT=&quot]from the centres of civilization. The ‘tinkers’ from the west of Ireland, especially those who ‘invaded’ Dublin and other Irish cities from the late nineteenth century onwards, were considered the most savage of all, as ‘savage’ as the wild landscapes that once [/FONT][FONT=&quot]harboured [/FONT][FONT=&quot]them (Gwynn 1899; Synge 1974; Mac Laughlin 1997). Like the Roma in Europe’s other peripheral regions, they were considered the most ‘exotic’, and the most ‘backward’, because it was believed that they lived in places where nobody went ‘unless they literally lost their way’ (Guy 1975: 202). This suggests a marked overlapping between anti-Traveller racism, on the one hand, and Irish nationalism and rural fundamentalism, on the other, which goes back to the circumstances in which the Irish nation was conceived as a cradle for bourgeois and petty bourgeois respectability (Lloyd 1993:147). Irish nationalism, simply considered as a struggle for the control of territory, has always striven to control population and to produce an Irish ‘people’ as a political community. The Irish nation was a historical system of exclusions and dominations, a place where the patriarchal values of the rural bourgeoisie occupied pride of place, a place where Travellers were scarcely considered as citizens of the state.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Mac Laughlin 1999 136-8 SOCIOLOGY Vol. 33 No. 1 February 1999 [/FONT]

Now to genocide, the proposal that was made was to remove the facilitation of the core element of their ethnic identity, the core element which separates traveller and settled, the nomadic lifestyle. If a party is proposing the removal of the facilitation of this lifestyle as a policy, then this is deliberate and if enacted systematic. As FG are not in a position of power they have not enacted these policies but have signaled intent of following what McVeigh calls the logic of genocide.

As for the other examples you pointed to they are not part of ethnic identity. On the point of language teaching: many Polish people send their childen to TEFL qualified teachers to learn English paying out of their own wage, I can't vouch for other groups because I don't know anybody from many other groupings (well Americans but they speak English anyway).

Liam Byrne

truebluedub wrote: »

Alright, firstly as a few posters challenge this contention let's look at the construction of travellers as a distinct ethnic group.

Why did you quote my post when talking about "challenging this contention" ?

I never said they weren't a distinct ethnic group.

What I said was that there is (a) no proof that their culture has been eroded more than anyone else's (b) no reason why they shouldn't respect the laws of the land - INCLUDING TRESPASS & LITTERING, which even the law-abiding, non anti-social travellers seem to ignore regularly.

Aside from that, I do 100% take your point about the Polish sending their children to TEFL teachers - and fair play to them; it's an indication on their part that they know an effort is required and they're prepared to make it.

But the fact is that our schools do have to have additional resources allocated to help foreign children, which doesn't happen abroad.

Inequalties like that - especially those that taxpayers need to fork out even more for - are one of the root causes of potential racism in the country.

InFront

truebluedub wrote: »

How do we demonstrate racism? A scientific paper by Dr. Amanda Hanyes, Dr. Eoin Devereux and Dr. Michael Breen has shown that several frames of racist discourse generally exist.

Then why don't you link to a paper where they actually state this, as opposed to what you did link to?
In that paper, the authors were using those frames to account for negative discourse pertaining to the coverage of asylum seekers, not racist discourse.
If you cannot understand that there is a difference here I have little hope for your contributions to this thread or any discussion of racism without bandying the term about too loosely and resorting to accusations of racism too easily.
Nevertheless, you did not expand upon that rather bizarre opening in your subsequent contribution so perhaps we will leave it there.

FG
Leaving aside Enda Kenny's racist joke which shows nothing more than that he is oblivious to the connotations of what he said

I take it you are completely unfamiliar with the story or are otherwise choosing to manipulate it badly.
Kenny was recounting a holiday in the company of two other Irish men when a Moroccan gentleman referred to the late Mr Patrice Lamumba by the "n word". He was remarking upon the irony of a black man using this term to describe a fellow black man. You or I could very easily have recounted the same thing as EK did, in private and familiar company.
I only describe that for the benefit of other readers why might now understand the absolute hopelessness of your contribution by starting your argument with such a ridiculously unremarkable reference to a non-issue. I am quite amused that you remember it.

Now here we have two clear statements one rhetorically proposing genocide

While I am not condoning the councillor's words, I think it was hyperbole when he said they should be taken out to sea and dumped there (or whatever words to that effect). Do you seriously think he was advocating genocide Very well, Fair enough, dumb thing of him to say, hardly genocidal though...next:

the second as we shall see leading to proposal of what is legally deemed genocide. McVeigh writing in 2008 has shown that much of this kind of rhetoric is informed by a genocidal logic using the genocide convention from the UN (convention available here http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/text.htm) in a nutshell the attempt to erode the travellers separate ethnicity amounts to genocide from a legal perspective.

This I just cannot accept as anything less than utter rubbish that borders on creative writing. Firstly, I take great issue with the words "legally deemed genocide". You have failed to substantiate this with any relevant link or back up any evidence of an example where Ms. Mitchell set about eradicating an entire culture. Do you seriously expect anybody to buy into this? Why don't you take it further in legal terms if you actually believe what you put forward on an anonymous internet forum to damage someone's good name?

Olivia Mitchell has been well known for her involvement with travellers issues, especially during her time in Dublin County and DL-Rathdown County Councils. I have never known any other TD to engage with travellers on so personal and comprehensive a level, and to involve and consult travellers so deeply in matters of policy relating to them. She is no stranger to travellers, having visited them when no other representative (including within FG) ever did and I can guarantee you understands better than any other Dail representative or candidate in the area the minutiae of issues like traveller family feuds in Dublin South and past records of various families within the constitueny.

This can be seen when we take opposition to traveller halting sites into account:

OM'S policy has always n relation to travellers can be summed up by maintaining demand for the following

• Housing travellers where there has been adequate consultation with residents in Dublin South prior to voting on the location for a halting site
• Where she believes the county manager, or another authority, or the county council has not taken fully into account the compatibility of traveller families being housed together (she is intimately aware of such intricacies), she has voted against such measures
• She maintains that instead of lumping all travellers into one area, there should be a more even distribution throughout the constituency so as best to integrate travellers with the community in South Dublin. In the past certain councillors used to propose certain sites which benefited their own careers in that the sites were away from their own bases -OM has opposed such strategical voting in the council chambers where she felt it was taking place
• In one instance where travellers were camping in Rathfarnham and had dumped cars in the Dodder, and where the mes they had created had resulted in national media attention, OM paid them a visit as a councillor. She told them there was a vote coming up in the council chambers, and could they give her a guarantee that if she voted in favour of a halting site programme, could they guarantee her they would not repeat the stated behaviour. They would not, and she could not therefore agree to vote in their favour without such a promise. I think that was entirely fair.

So you see, in fact OM's approach to travellers has been very considered, educated and involved. It is easy for politicians to pontificate on matters of principle, but i OM's case, she is involved in it, she knows the people and the families, and her judgement on these matters is second to none. You could not have picked a worse example to tag with racism or genocidal tendencies, and such accusations, I hope, can be seen for being complete nonsense and spin.

Also in this context we should consider FG's support for the citizenship referendum which as the authors (Haynes et al.) of the academic paper referred to earlier have shown played into the xenophobic discourse of "abuse of Irish citizenship."

I think you may be paraphrasing here, having just read that paper.
Given that Labour will either be supporting FG or FF in the next term, not being a party of sufficient support to stand alone, I don't think this can be an issue. Both parties supported the Citizenship Referendum and Labour will almost certainly be helping one or the other party into Government so I can't imagine this could be much of an issue.

So a question to FG supporters why should we trust you with this record of playing the race card,

I am worried that I have reached the end of your post and have come across no such evidence from you.

truebluedub

I was wondering when you'd show up.

InFront wrote: »

Then why don't you link to a paper where they actually state this, as opposed to what you did link to?
In that paper, the authors were using those frames to account for negative discourse pertaining to the coverage of asylum seekers, not racist discourse.
If you cannot understand that there is a difference here I have little hope for your contributions to this thread or any discussion of racism without bandying the term about too loosely and resorting to accusations of racism too easily.
Nevertheless, you did not expand upon that rather bizarre opening in your subsequent contribution so perhaps we will leave it there.

I removed the face image since I never like seeing them. Are you familiar with their outputs? You'll find that they are performing an analysis into xenophobic discourse the core part of this is the negative discourse which is confirmed in the paper I cited below, this being part of a larger project. I don't believe in imposing my own views on people so I gave people the frames so they could look at the articles and observe them from themselves. As for the veiled suggestion that what is relevant for Asylum seekers does not carry across to other groups it's called generalisation of a theoretical framework, you know the basic thing a first year undergraduate learns. A building block of any science, what people who don't fabricate case studies use. Credible academics and social scientists.

InFront wrote: »

I take it you are completely unfamiliar with the story or are otherwise choosing to manipulate it badly.
Kenny was recounting a holiday in the company of two other Irish men when a Moroccan gentleman referred to the late Mr Patrice Lamumba by the "n word". He was remarking upon the irony of a black man using this term to describe a fellow black man. You or I could very easily have recounted the same thing as EK did, in private and familiar company.
I only describe that for the benefit of other readers why might now understand the absolute hopelessness of your contribution by starting your argument with such a ridiculously unremarkable reference to a non-issue. I am quite amused that you remember it.

Which is why I qualified it and said that it didn't count and just showed that he was unable to recognise the connotations of that word.

InFront wrote: »

While I am not condoning the councillor's words, I think it was hyperbole when he said they should be taken out to sea and dumped there (or whatever words to that effect). Do you seriously think he was advocating genocide Very well, Fair enough, dumb thing of him to say, hardly genocidal though...next:

Even if hyperbole it is incitement to racial hatred.

InFront wrote: »

This I just cannot accept as anything less than utter rubbish that borders on creative writing. Firstly, I take great issue with the words "legally deemed genocide". You have failed to substantiate this with any relevant link or back up any evidence of an example where Ms. Mitchell set about eradicating an entire culture. Do you seriously expect anybody to buy into this? Why don't you take it further in legal terms if you actually believe what you put forward on an anonymous internet forum to damage someone's good name?

While not providing a link I provided a citation of an academic article (unless you're one of those people who can't even find a library this should be sufficient) as well as a UN declaration. Her statements speak for themselves demonstrating what is called the "logic of genocide".

InFront wrote: »

I think you may be paraphrasing here, having just read that paper.
Given that Labour will either be supporting FG or FF in the next term, not being a party of sufficient support to stand alone, I don't think this can be an issue. Both parties supported the Citizenship Referendum and Labour will almost certainly be helping one or the other party into Government so I can't imagine this could be much of an issue.
I am worried that I have reached the end of your post and have come across no such evidence from you.

First read it when I was an undergraduate in 1999 actually, it was on the reading list, yes I paraphrased but I provided a citation so anyone can look it up and verify it. Do you honestly believe my beliefs are dictated by Eamonn Gilmore, I don't just mindlessly follow the party line.
As for evidence - the articles? Qualitative evidence, they would be perfectly acceptable in a peer-reviewed publication and as indicated in one of my later posts OM was cited in them. I've cited academic literature also, I've presented evidence now you put up or shut up give me either media or peer reviewed articles that demonstrate that my argument is false. I gave a theory backed up by facts now you do likewise.

truebluedub

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Why did you quote my post when talking about "challenging this contention" ?

I never said they weren't a distinct ethnic group.

OK Mea Culpa on that, I lumped you in with several posters who had challenged it and tried to deal with them (and in error you) in one go, so sorry.

InFront

truebluedub wrote: »

Are you familiar with their outputs? You'll find that they are performing an analysis into xenophobic discourse the core part of this is the negative discourse which is confirmed in the paper I cited below, this being part of a larger project. I don't believe in imposing my own views on people so I gave people the frames so they could look at the articles and observe them from themselves.

Look to be honest, even if I thought that paper you cited was of any value, I'm not sure you got what I was telling you in my initial response to it. Those frames you referred to pertain to negative discourse in the media, not to racist discourse directly. Like I said there is a pretty obvious difference between racist discourse and negative discourse about asylum seekers... or at least the difference is obvious to most people.

If you are going to discuss FG engaging in negative discourse towards asylum seekers or any other particular ethnic group then maybe you should make that clear instead of basing your post on racism instead - racism being a separate issue.

As for the veiled suggestion that what is relevant for Asylum seekers does not carry across to other groups it's called generalisation of a theoretical framework, you know the basic thing a first year undergraduate learns.

What are you talking about.. what veiled suggestion.. read the post.

Which is why I qualified it and said that it didn't count and just showed that he was unable to recognise the connotations of that word.

This statement is completely daft, of course he can recognise the connotations of the word... where are you getting these half baked statements from?

Even if hyperbole it is incitement to racial hatred.

Racial hatred... genocide... when you bandy these terms about willy nilly they lose all meaning and fail to have any impact upon somebody reading that trash - save those terms for genuine emergencies.

While not providing a link I provided a citation of an academic article (unless you're one of those people who can't even find a library this should be sufficient) as well as a UN declaration. Her statements speak for themselves demonstrating what is called the "logic of genocide".

Seriously?
You are not bothering to read responses, I am convinced you are brushing over them and then constructing such dramatic responses of growing magnitude to form a hollow argument.

It's not anybody else's job to show you how to engage in debate, but look at how you are forming this argument for a second.
You link to a definition of genocide, then you link to an article referring to Olivia Mitchell and a private member's motion pertaining to trespass.
You fail completely in substantiating your claim by

• failing to make any connection between the PM bill and Genocidal Intent
• failing to make any connection between her voting history on halting sites and Genocidal Intent
• failing to objectively discuss any mitigating factors in her defense to afford you 'case' any credibility by demonstrating that you are not merely rattling off empty slurs as part of a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour party.
• failing to make yourself aware of OM's known reputation in the area of traveller's rights in South Dublin, involvement with community groups and her support for the construction of a halting site in her constituency - thus making your allegation of genocide all the more preposterous, if possible.

To most reasonable people, the very idea that you think Olivia Mitchell could be convicted of attempting to bring about a genocide smacks of crazy. I'm writing this response half out of frustration, half out of amusement.

I would advise that you make yourself aware of the recommendations of the 1963 Commission on Itinerancy and the recommendations of the 1983 Travelling People Reiew Body.

These recommendations form the core of OMs belief in permanent accommodation for travellers as opposed to holding them indefinitely in makeshift campsites without any permanent facilities such as waste management and electricity.
The whole point of the FG Private Members Bill to deal with makeshift camps was to support and finally implement the well established recommendations of the Commission on Itinerancy and the Travelling People Review Body! The fact that you call this genocidal when it is in fact considered best practice deomnstrates a severe lack of awareness on your behalf in relation to such matters.

Instead of inventing some allegations of genocide maybe you should read the recommendations for traveller housing.

As for evidence - the articles?

No. Please see above. The articles you provide do not establish any credible possibility of racism within Fine Gael. They are unfounded allegations and easy countered, largely on the basis of your lack of knowledge in relation to Olivia Mitchell, Dublin South, and the guidelines in relation to housing members of the travelling community. You fail to substantiate the link to racism or to genocide completely.

they would be perfectly acceptable in a peer-reviewed publication

Just to be clear, there is no issue with the articles - it's what you're attempting to prove that is problematic and would be totally unacceptable for academic publication. It is garbage.

I've presented evidence now you put up or shut up give me either media or peer reviewed articles that demonstrate that my argument is false. I gave a theory backed up by facts now you do likewise.

Are you for real? I am tempted to call BS on this. The thing is, I don't have an issue with the articles or the papers that you are referring to. It's the story you are trying to cobble together that makes no sense and is to be deconstructed and exposed for being untrue and uninformed.

As an aside, it is very easy to produce newspaper articles as you have done, and construct a theory out of pretty much nothing.

I could equally produce newspaper articles outlining Labours refusal to support a Fine Gael Bill providing for statutory rights for asylum seekers arriving in the state back in 1993, this was borne out of concern for the rights of asylum seekers and protecting them from racist abuse yet Labour rejected it. I could furthermore refer to Labour's Denis O'Callaghan and his opposition to traveller accomodation in Dublin South and call all of that 'genocidal'.
But for one thing, I don't believe it to be the case, and for another, I think I have the awareness to realise people just aren't so dumb as to actually buy any of it.

Nodin

Liam Byrne wrote: »

But the fact is that our schools do have to have additional resources allocated to help foreign children, which doesn't happen abroad.

Really?

In Israel, newcomers are given 6 months intensive teaching of Hebrew. Many American schools have actually dual-language programs where there are large numbers of spansish speaking students, whilst others have special bi-lingual assistance for same. The Brits likewise expend extra resources, as do the Germans. Even the French have 'reception' classes for non-French speakers starting in their public schools.

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Inequalties like that - especially those that taxpayers need to fork out even more for - are one of the root causes of potential racism in the country.

......actually people spreading ignorance about such things is far more substantive a cause.

the_syco

OP: I stopped reading your post when you called travellers a seperate race. True, some may be english, but they are still (sadly) the same race as us.

After reading your post, I'm actually considering FG, as travellers, if given a chance, wreck my town, dump rubbish everywhere, and have attempted to prevent stuff being built until they were given money to "move on".

Liam Byrne

Nodin wrote: »

......actually people spreading ignorance about such things is far more substantive a cause.

And yet you chose to completely ignore the questions about whether many things about other cultures were being eroded ?

Like I said, there are 3 issues:

1) Many cultural aspects are being eroded
2) Expecting people to not litter and to pay their way is not racism
3) Supporting and condoning the minority that are involved in crime is not a way to gain support and credibility

Also, as raised above, travellers expecting and demanding to be paid to move on from somewhere that you or I would be moved on from in an instant is also wrong and is discrimination.

Nodin

Liam Byrne wrote: »

And yet you chose to completely ignore the questions about whether many things about other cultures were being eroded ?

Like I said, there are 3 issues:

1) Many cultural aspects are being eroded
2) Expecting people to not litter and to pay their way is not racism
3) Supporting and condoning the minority that are involved in crime is not a way to gain support and credibility

Confining it to those three points, those are valid enough views. I only took issue where you were in error.

truebluedub

the_syco wrote: »

OP: I stopped reading your post when you called travellers a seperate race. True, some may be english, but they are still (sadly) the same race as us.

After reading your post, I'm actually considering FG, as travellers, if given a chance, wreck my town, dump rubbish everywhere, and have attempted to prevent stuff being built until they were given money to "move on".

They are not a separate race they are a separate ethnicity. Race refers to a socially constructed group who class themselves as seperate, while ethnicity refer a socially constructed group who identify and are identified with each other.
Genetics show that in modernity the latter is actually more relevant.

hobochris

IMO this thread = FF propaganda.

It reminds me of the Elections in the U.S. where the republicans tried to slander Barack Obama in the public eye instead of highlighting what they intend doing for the people.

truebluedub

InFront wrote: »

Look to be honest, even if I thought that paper you cited was of any value, I'm not sure you got what I was telling you in my initial response to it. Those frames you referred to pertain to negative discourse in the media, not to racist discourse directly. Like I said there is a pretty obvious difference between racist discourse and negative discourse about asylum seekers... or at least the difference is obvious to most people.

If you are going to discuss FG engaging in negative discourse towards asylum seekers or any other particular ethnic group then maybe you should make that clear instead of basing your post on racism instead - racism being a separate issue.

I started to read the paper again to find proof of my point of view and I didn't have to go far:

Abstract
Immigration is a key feature in late capitalist societies, with some 20,000,000 displaced persons worldwide. This paper reports on coverage of refugees and asylum seekers in English-language newspapers worldwide, drawing on media content between 2003 and 2004. It analyses media
discourse on refugees and asylum seekers across the world, with a particular focus on deconstructing negative coverage. Five dominant negative frames in international media discourses are identified. These themes are examined in the context of theories of racism and
xenophobia to highlight their negative potential for displaced persons and attitudes towards them in their host countries. Theory is also employed to explore the potential utility of such negative
narratives for the media and social elites. The work being presented here is part of a much larger research project being undertaken by the authors at the University of Limerick. (For preliminary findings see Devereux and Breen, 2003 and 2004).

Of course now that your interpretation is shown to flawed you will use the wiggle room you left in your previous post and say something like you have no respect for findings of these academics, or anyone who is of the opposing view to yourself.

InFront wrote: »

What are you talking about.. what veiled suggestion.. read the post.

If I misread you fine if not then you believe these findings cannot be generalised from one group to another and therefore show no understanding of how theory works.

InFront wrote: »

This statement is completely daft, of course he can recognise the connotations of the word... where are you getting these half baked statements from?

His use of it. The term has been a form of racist abuse for donkey's years, if he thought it was ok to use it even in casual conversation, in a context where either journalists would here it or it could be reported to them, then he clearly does not recognise the connotations.

InFront wrote: »

Racial hatred... genocide... when you bandy these terms about willy nilly they lose all meaning and fail to have any impact upon somebody reading that trash - save those terms for genuine emergencies.

If you don't see the second largest party in this country playing the race card consistently as a problem then you are condoning their racism.

InFront wrote: »

Seriously?
You are not bothering to read responses, I am convinced you are brushing over them and then constructing such dramatic responses of growing magnitude to form a hollow argument.

It's not anybody else's job to show you how to engage in debate, but look at how you are forming this argument for a second.
You link to a definition of genocide, then you link to an article referring to Olivia Mitchell and a private member's motion pertaining to trespass.
You fail completely in substantiating your claim by

• failing to make any connection between the PM bill and Genocidal Intent
• failing to make any connection between her voting history on halting sites and Genocidal Intent
• failing to objectively discuss any mitigating factors in her defense to afford you 'case' any credibility by demonstrating that you are not merely rattling off empty slurs as part of a party political broadcast on behalf of the Labour party.
• failing to make yourself aware of OM's known reputation in the area of traveller's rights in South Dublin, involvement with community groups and her support for the construction of a halting site in her constituency - thus making your allegation of genocide all the more preposterous, if possible.

To most reasonable people, the very idea that you think Olivia Mitchell could be convicted of attempting to bring about a genocide smacks of crazy. I'm writing this response half out of frustration, half out of amusement.

I would advise that you make yourself aware of the recommendations of the 1963 Commission on Itinerancy and the recommendations of the 1983 Travelling People Reiew Body.

These recommendations form the core of OMs belief in permanent accommodation for travellers as opposed to holding them indefinitely in makeshift campsites without any permanent facilities such as waste management and electricity.
The whole point of the FG Private Members Bill to deal with makeshift camps was to support and finally implement the well established recommendations of the Commission on Itinerancy and the Travelling People Review Body! The fact that you call this genocidal when it is in fact considered best practice deomnstrates a severe lack of awareness on your behalf in relation to such matters.

Instead of inventing some allegations of genocide maybe you should read the recommendations for traveller housing.


No. Please see above. The articles you provide do not establish any credible possibility of racism within Fine Gael. They are unfounded allegations and easy countered, largely on the basis of your lack of knowledge in relation to Olivia Mitchell, Dublin South, and the guidelines in relation to housing members of the travelling community. You fail to substantiate the link to racism or to genocide completely.
Just to be clear, there is no issue with the articles - it's what you're attempting to prove that is problematic and would be totally unacceptable for academic publication. It is garbage.

Thank you. You see you've made the argument for me. First look at post 36 I started demonstrating travellers being a separate group:

Yet one writer, debating the Famine origins and ethnic distinctiveness of Irish Travellers, has gone so far as to argue that Irish Travellers did not figure as a distinctive group among the wretched and subsistence-based in nineteenth century Ireland. They were, she argues, simply one among several subsistence-based groups forced into vagrancy and begging in order to survive (McLoughlin 1994:72). To argue thus is to ignore the fact that Irish Travellers have long been regarded and, more importantly still, regarded themselves as a distinctive minority group. As Gammon-speakers, and as a group with well established genealogical linkages and a whole range of distinctive cultural practices, they perceived themselves as a people set apart from other sectors of Irish society.
...
Rao has defined as ‘peripatetics’, a group not dissimilar from ‘commercial nomads’, ‘endogamous nomads who are largely non-primary producers or extractors, and whose principal resources are constituted by other human populations’ (Rao 1987). Applied to Irish Travellers, this definition helps circumvent some remaining difficulties involved in categorising Travellers in a society with such large subaltern groups as nineteenth-century Ireland clearly had.
...
Nationalism here was fused with Social Darwinism in such a way as to suggest that there was literally no room for Travellers within the Irish nation-state. ‘Tinkers’ were considered a ‘dirty’ and ‘rightless’ people, and as such were not entitled to a position within the material and moral structures of the nationstate. Irish Travellers, like Gypsies in continental Europe, were also prone to the lowering of the thresholds of tolerance that separated them out from settled communities in the newly emerging Irish nation. As the sensibilities of the latter became more refined and bourgeois, their tolerance of ‘tinkers’, like their tolerance of the stench and filth which they associated with the poor, especially with ‘tinkers’, was similarly lowered (Corbin 1986; Elias 1992). The very presence of ‘tinkers’ in this modernising Ireland was sometimes a source of ‘astonishment’ to these sectors of Irish society. It intimidated their sensibilities, not least because so much in Traveller behaviour, especially their ‘ribald manners’, their vagrancy, their lack of respect for Church, for state and literally for the law of the land, seemed to resemble more the habits of those living in Europe’s far-flung colonial peripheries in India and colonial Africa, than those of an emergent nation-state at the back door to ‘civilised’ Europe. In Ireland’s case also, as indeed in mainland Europe, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a period when history was seen as something ‘fixed’ or ‘settled’. Viewed thus history comprised concrete, albeit discrete, dramas enacted between ‘settled society’, on the one hand, and the forces of ‘nature’ and physical landscape, on the other (Richards 1994:114). In this scenario ‘tinkers’ were considered much closer to the forces of nature and anarchy, than to culture and social progress. Although they clearly lived within Irish society, they were progressively perceived as apart from it, as social ‘pariahs’ and ‘parasites’ who ‘marauded’ on settled society and committed a whole range of petty crimes against it. Having constructed ‘tinkers’ as near ‘savage’, or uncivilised subjects, it was only a matter of time before ‘settled’ Ireland would depict them as ‘expendable’. Like the nomadic Highlanders in Walter Scott’s Romantic narratives of Scottish history, ‘tinkers’ in Ireland at this time were regarded as historical subjects from a different place, and from a ‘barbaric’ epoch in the evolution of modern Ireland. Like Scottish Highlanders they too were perceived as a people who had to be hidden, or ‘used up’ if the narrative of modern Irish history was ever to proceed (Richards 1994:134). It was as if it was the destiny of ‘tinkers’ to be so ‘expended’, sacrificed or dispensed with, so that Irish history could progress.
All of this clearly implied a geography of savagery and ‘uncivility’ which suggested those inhabiting the fringes of Irish society were the most ‘uncivilised’ of all. They were furthest out from the centres of civilization. The ‘tinkers’ from the west of Ireland, especially those who ‘invaded’ Dublin and other Irish cities from the late nineteenth century onwards, were considered the most savage of all, as ‘savage’ as the wild landscapes that once harboured them (Gwynn 1899; Synge 1974; Mac Laughlin 1997). Like the Roma in Europe’s other peripheral regions, they were considered the most ‘exotic’, and the most ‘backward’, because it was believed that they lived in places where nobody went ‘unless they literally lost their way’ (Guy 1975: 202). This suggests a marked overlapping between anti-Traveller racism, on the one hand, and Irish nationalism and rural fundamentalism, on the other, which goes back to the circumstances in which the Irish nation was conceived as a cradle for bourgeois and petty bourgeois respectability (Lloyd 1993:147). Irish nationalism, simply considered as a struggle for the control of territory, has always striven to control population and to produce an Irish ‘people’ as a political community. The Irish nation was a historical system of exclusions and dominations, a place where the patriarchal values of the rural bourgeoisie occupied pride of place, a place where Travellers were scarcely considered as citizens of the state.
Mac Laughlin 1999 136-8 SOCIOLOGY Vol. 33 No. 1 February 1999

Next I answered much of your substantive point

Now to genocide, the proposal that was made was to remove the facilitation of the core element of their ethnic identity, the core element which separates traveller and settled, the nomadic lifestyle. If a party is proposing the removal of the facilitation of this lifestyle as a policy, then this is deliberate and if enacted systematic. As FG are not in a position of power they have not enacted these policies but have signaled intent of following what McVeigh calls the logic of genocide.

So Olivia Mitchell is proposing the removal of the central element of traveller ethnicity, traveller identity, an imposition of settled identity on them. You are demonstrating your own ignorance of the issue of ethnic identity and the necessity that this be fostered and permitted. What traveller's as an ethnic group want and need to maintain their identity is the continued access to halting sites with these being properly facilitated. I refer back to my original point, I know there is a typo here but so what.

truebluedub wrote: »

Now here we have two clear statements one rhetorically proposing genocide the second as we shall see leading to proposal of what is legally deemed genocide. McVeigh writing in 2008 has shown that much of this kind of rhetoric is informed by a genocidal logic using the genocide convention from the UN (convention available here http://www.preventgenocide.org/law/convention/text.htm) in a nutshell the attempt to erode the travellers separate ethnicity amounts to genocide from a legal perspective. This can be seen when we take opposition to traveller halting sites into account:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2001/1105/traveller.html

Now this does not mean that Olivia Mitchell is proposing the eradication of traveller's what she has proposed is the removal of their separate ethnic identity, which as MacVeigh points out is legally genocide. You yourself have indicated that she proposed permanent accomadation which would erode their separate ethnic identity.

InFront wrote: »

Are you for real? I am tempted to call BS on this. The thing is, I don't have an issue with the articles or the papers that you are referring to. It's the story you are trying to cobble together that makes no sense and is to be deconstructed and exposed for being untrue and uninformed.

As an aside, it is very easy to produce newspaper articles as you have done, and construct a theory out of pretty much nothing.

I could equally produce newspaper articles outlining Labours refusal to support a Fine Gael Bill providing for statutory rights for asylum seekers arriving in the state back in 1993, this was borne out of concern for the rights of asylum seekers and protecting them from racist abuse yet Labour rejected it. I could furthermore refer to Labour's Denis O'Callaghan and his opposition to traveller accomodation in Dublin South and call all of that 'genocidal'.
But for one thing, I don't believe it to be the case, and for another, I think I have the awareness to realise people just aren't so dumb as to actually buy any of it.

By all means go ahead but put them in a new thread as this one is about FG and otherwise you'd be off topic. However it is always a useful exercise to demonstrate parties indulging in racism, so I eagerly await your new thread. As I said before I do not mindlessly toe the party line, unlike some. I'll even give you a head start. The first thing you do is go into LEXISNEXIS's newspaper archive (they give a representative sample http://www.lexisnexis.com/uk/nexis/auth/bridge.do?rand=0.7347152226413399) and search for key terms. From your point of view Labour, immigration, Asylum seeker are a good starting point, you add the date range, you seem to have a fair idea of that yourself. Don't forget to indicate you're looking for Irish sources. You then filter this sample by reading them to remove irrelevant ones.
You now have your sample read through them again manually looking for keywords or phrases, taking careful note of what context they are used in and the ideology behind them.
Finally construct your argument like I did looking for free versions of the articles.
And if people don't accept a scientific methodology their problem not mine, I just present the argument.

hobochris

hobochris wrote: »

IMO this thread = FF propaganda.

It reminds me of the Elections in the U.S. where the republicans tried to slander Barack Obama in the public eye instead of highlighting what they intend doing for the people.

I doubt it to be honest.
The case made by the OP is rubbish.
Anyone could see that it is rubbish.
I'm pretty sure the OP knows it's rubbish he's talking.
I've thanked some of the coherent posts in this thread indicative of where my views are here on the matter.
I wouldn't be including the op's posts in a CV when applying for a spin master's job at FF HQ or anything.

Liam Byrne

At this stage I'm completely confused as to what is being quoted from stuff FG people actually said, and what is just third-party "research" being thrown in to muddy the water.

Can we go back to what the FG people actually said, and the context in which it was said, so that we can judge the facts for ourselves, rather than the spin ?

Taxipete29

Does the OP not realise that most opposition party agendas are put together by listening to what their constituants are looking for?? Now while I accept this is not always the case, might it not be better to point the finger at those outside the political arena who have lobbied for these kind of measures???

My point is simple, if it doesnt gain electoral support, political parties especially those in opposition wont touch it.