Tales Of The Gurrier

Indymedia have been doing sterling work reporting on the riot and its aftermath. This report examines in detail some of the issues I wrote about in my previous post.

The people who took part in the rioting were largely drawn from the urban poor, mostly disenfranchised young men from impoverished estates around Dublin, people who normally have no political voice whatsoever, people who rarely vote, who are disorganised, who live in communities that have been ravaged by poverty and drug and alcohol abuse, people who many of those who live lives of privilege and relative comfort write off as ’scumbags’ or whom the Marxists describe as ‘lumpen’. Although these people are generally seen as apolitical and disinterested in politics, this is not entirely true. Many of them have a deep and abiding sense of identity which is derived from their nationalism or patriotism. As my friend said to me, he is constantly amazed at the number of young men from impoverished communities who sport tricolour or pro-IRA tattoos, despite the fact that they have no political involvement in any of the Republican or Nationalist organizations.

And another astute observation

I talked to several people from different areas of the city who reported groups of youth from impoverished areas of the city travelling into town on buses talking loudly about their plans to pelt the loyalists. It was probably the one political issue in Dublin which was certain to lead to such a decentralised mobilisation. Anybody who is familiar with the patterns of sectarian rioting in the North knows that although the rioting is normally controlled, to a greater or lesser extent, by paramilitary groups, the vast majority of the participants are local youths who are not members of any political organisation - exactly the same section of society as those who rioted in Dublin and indeed the same section of society who are almost always the ones to riot - from Paris to Argentina it is the impoverished youth on the margins of society who riot, having nothing to lose and little fear of authority.

It appears that the links to the earlier video footage have been taken down. Indymedia to the rescue again. This is a large file, 100mb but contains astounding footage. It’s well worth taking a look at.

Article: http://www.indymedia.ie/article/74528

Video:
http://video.indymedia.org/download/%5BIndymedia%5D_(2006-02-27)_OrangeRiot_Xvid.avi

This footage may need the Xvid codec to view it. Download it here.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2006 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Bloggery, Dublin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.