Racism in Europe - Ireland

Ireland

Ethnic hatred in Ireland has a long history. For almost eight centuries of Irish history the most evident segregation in Ireland was the suppression of the indigenous Irish people by a succession of English and Norman rulers, beginning with the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169. The English imposed laws forbidding land ownership, the Penal Laws, and later restrictions on freedom of religion (persecution of Roman Catholics following the Protestant Reformation in England), and denial of the right to vote or hold office. Casual racism was also evident in inaction during The Great Famine, leading to approximately 1 million deaths and the exodus of over 2 million people. The Plantations of Ireland, run by English colonists, were a direct precursor to the overseas British Empire. In cases of wars and rebellions, such as the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the Irish War of Independence of 1919–1921, many war crimes, massacres and atrocities were committed by British forces or (British-supported) Protestant paramilitaries. There were also retaliatory massacres of settlers and their descendants, such as in Co. Wexford following the 1798 rebellion. It is estimated that as much as a third of the entire population of Ireland perished during the civil wars and subsequent Cromwellian conquest in the mid-17th century. Since the Irish Rebellion of 1641, Ireland had been mainly under the control of the Irish Confederate Catholics.

The Cromwellian reconquest of Ireland was extremely brutal. William Petty, who conducted the first scientific land and demographic survey of Ireland in the 1650s (the Down Survey), concluded that between 400,000 and 620,000 people had died in Ireland between 1641 and 1653, many as a result of famine and plague.

While the dominant narrative of Irish history was discrimination against the native Irish population in favour of English and Scottish settlers, this evolved into dividing the population by religion, such that adhering to the state religion was equated to ethnic group. Over time, this created two broad-brush groups, Catholic and Protestant. Violence between the local communities became the dominant expression of racism and ultimately led to creation of two States on the island. While Northern Ireland's systems favoured the Protestant majority, the Irish Free State, nominally a republic, also became more polarized after its formation. Following establishment of the Irish Free State, attacks on Protestant families in border areas, as well as the Roman Catholic Church's Ne Temere policy that all children of religiously mixed marriages were to be raised as Catholics, effectively decimated the non-Catholic population in what is now the Republic of Ireland, falling from over 10% in 1900 to under 4%.

The Shelta or Irish Travellers, a nomadic social group once speaking their own language have also experienced persecution in past and modern times, in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Following independence in 1921 there was traditionally very little immigration by non-whites to the Republic of Ireland due to historic poverty, though in recent decades growing prosperity in the country (see: Celtic Tiger) attracted increasing numbers of immigrants, mainly from Central and Eastern Europe, China and Africa. Also the absence of colonialist baggage has meant that foreign people are not drawn to Ireland by "mother country" factors that have affected other European countries. Descendants of Irish people who emigrated in the past also started moving to the country. Most immigrants have settled in Dublin and the other cities. Though these developments have been somewhat tolerated by most, there has been a steady rise in racist attitudes among some sections of society. A 2001 survey found that 51% of Irish people surveyed considered the country inherently racist and 60% of those in the 25 to 34 age-group considered "racism" to be an Irish trait. In 2005, Minister of State for Overseas Development, Conor Lenihan famously advised Socialist politician Joe Higgins to "stick with the kebabs" – referring to his campaigning on behalf of Turkish contract workers who had been paid less than the statutory minimum wage. The Minister later retracted his remarks and apologized. A 2008 EU-MIDIS survey of attitudes to minorities in the 27 EU States found that Ireland had the most racist attitudes to Afro-Europeans in the entire EU.

While most racist abuse in Ireland is verbal, violent hate crimes regularly occur. In 2000, a white English man was stabbed and seriously injured when defending his Jamaican-born wife from racist abuse by a group of adult men. In 2002, a Chinese man Zhao Liu Tao (29) was murdered in Dublin in what was described as the Republic of Ireland's first racially motivated murder. Later that year Leong Ly Min, a Vietnamese man who had lived in Dublin since 1979, was mortally wounded by two assailants who had been racially abusing him. In February 2008, two Polish mechanics, Pawel Kalite (29) and Marius Szwajkos (27) were attacked by a group of Dublin youths and died outside their home after each being stabbed in the head with a screwdriver. In 2010, 15-year old schoolboy Toyosi Shitta-bey, born in Nigeria but brought up in Dublin, was killed. The only man to stand trial for the murder was acquitted on the direction of the trial Judge

Several issues relating to immigration gained publicity in the early years of the century. After 1997 and prior to 2005 any baby born in the Republic was entitled to Irish citizenship due to stipulations in the Good Friday agreement. This led to claims that many pregnant women from Africa (overwhelmingly from Nigeria), having discarded their identification documentation, were travelling to Ireland expressly to give birth and thus allow their child to gain Irish citizenship. This became known as citizenship tourism. Following these alleged abuses of the loophole in the Irish Constitution a referendum on the issue was held. The referendum was duly carried and the loophole was closed.

The large majority of Irish people support their country's membership of the European Union, but growth in unemployment was paralleled by a rise in more visible resentment of migrants from either inside or outside the Union. There are several "anti-racism" groups active in the Republic, as well as those seeking tighter immigration laws such as the Immigration Control Platform.

Fine Gael Mayor of Naas Darren Scully resigned on 22 November 2011 over comments on live radio about the "aggressive attitude" of "black Africans" (Afro-Europeans). Former Labour TD Moosajee Bhamjee, Ireland's first Muslim TD, said Scully's remarks represented the "beginning of official racism" in Ireland and described them as "enlightenment" for the "small neo-Nazi following in this country".