Paul Breen: We are failing to see the bigger picture

It’s an issue that’s challenging progressive parties as they struggle to redefine themselves in battles against populists such as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and others on the right.

Across Europe, there’s been a surge of opposition to the idea of open borders.

Britain’s vote for Brexit was partly a reaction to this, although there was anti-European feeling in England long before the present boats started coming.

There’s been an ironic sort of hostility to outsiders invading England’s shores throughout history. That was even apparent in attitudes to those who were part of The Windrush Generation coming to Britain from the late 1940s onwards.

Although the precise wording is disputed, there are legends of 'No blacks, No dogs, No Irish’ placards appearing around London in the 1950s.

The legendary actor Richard Harris has claimed that he saw such a sign when he came across to England in 1954 and a Mayo-born cousin of my mother’s saw similar.

It’s ironic then that some Irish people could show such hostility towards today’s immigrants coming to their shores in search of a better life.

On social media, I’ve seen posts and pictures talking about 'Paddystan', showing Irish politicians in photoshopped or AI-generated scenes of wearing Muslim costumes.

We often hear talk too of Ireland being “full” and houses being given to the immigrants but not the natives. There’s definitely a lot of anger out there and electorally this is a minefield for the mainstream political parties.

Surprisingly, Sinn Féin often bear the brunt of this criticism in much the same manner as Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour got blamed for immigration, because of a perceived refusal to jump on the bandwagon and say it’s a bad thing.

It makes no sense and in Britain the whole situation reached ridiculous levels.

Somehow, the likes of Teresa May and Boris Johnson could stand up in Parliament with a straight face and express opposition to immigration, even if happening on their watch and nobody else’s.

In Ireland too, it feels like the main parties of government are enjoying a calmer ride on the soapbox of public opinion than Sinn Féin.

And maybe as a result of that, they’re going to get back into power again. You almost couldn’t make it up.

Sinn Féin though shouldn’t be written off as yet. When it comes to debates and on-the-spot interactions with the voting public, Mary Lou McDonald can hold her own.

Although facing criticism over costings, Sinn Féin’s manifesto is making a lot of promises that are going to resonate with the electorate.

Housing is obviously a major issue and something that feeds into the contemporary anti-immigration sentiment and rhetoric.

The problem isn’t that Ireland is full. You only need to look at the weather map to see how wide the island is compared to England’s narrow sliver from the Midlands up to the North East.

There are literally millions of people living there around the conurbations of Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and so on, right up to Newcastle. And even outside sprawling urban areas, you’ve got towns like Huddersfield, places that aren’t even cities, where a quarter of a million people live.

By comparison, apart from Dublin, Ireland’s pretty empty. A town like Huddersfield would be in the top five cities in Ireland, population wise.

But in England, it’s somewhere off the beaten track, well down the list. So it’s not geographical and physical space that Ireland lacks. It’s housing for people.

There aren’t enough houses to look after the population, whether that’s social housing, affordable housing or whatever way we want to look at it. This is why housing the new migrants has also become such a problem and why, because of their gravitating towards Dublin, the country looks like it is being over-run.

But if there was enough housing many of these people would just blend into society, relatively unnoticed except by those who want to go looking for them.

Also, tied into housing, there’s a need for better support services - which Ireland has never been particularly good at with the poor.

And that’s what many of these migrants are - poor. Possibly poorly-educated too in some cases, because of lacking opportunities.

Again critics will say that there aren’t the opportunities. There aren’t the resources within Ireland to sustain such a large population. But if it’s a population that’s gainfully employed, then it will sustain itself.

That’s because the money will go around in the same way as it goes around Enniskillen, for example.

The way a good small economy works could be like a small town. The local garage owners and even the garage workers support their local pub, local butcher, local baker, local carpet shop, for example, and then those places support the garages in turn, when it comes to buying their cars or fuel.

Enacting that is just a small-scale version of what Japan and later South Korea did in Asia after their respective wars. They supported goods and companies from their own countries as much as possible in a world also shaped by international trade.

This small island then, despite its limited resources, can sustain an economy based on people working collectively.

That’s not what Sinn Féin of the present day might be advocating as far as I know but it shows that one part of their election strategy is grounded in a positive vision of this island in the future.

In a surprise twist of the immigration narrative, Sinn Féin have launched a drive to bring the emigrants back home. It’s an appeal to parents of children overseas in places that are getting increasingly farther away with rise in air fares and the struggles people now face to make ends meet in a costly, post-Covid world.

I think it’s a good strategy though probably not a huge vote winner unless other circumstances change.

I mean, who wants their sons and daughters to come back from successful lives in Sydney, California or even Singapore these days, to face employment struggles in a land where the sun doesn’t shine quite so much?

But it’s a good aspiration. And it contradicts the daft narrative that Ireland’s full. Anyone who doesn’t believe me, send me a camera and a train ticket up to places like Huddersfield, and I’ll send the evidence back on Instagram or Facebook.

This is a genuine first step by Sinn Féin on the road to building an Ireland, for all, that’s a great place to come back to, north, south, east or west.