Dirty Old Town – The Myth of Dublin
Domhnall O’Gaothne
Despite what many may assume, the song Dirty Old Town was not about Dublin but instead Manchester, though if it were to be written today, would there be a place more fitting?
Dublin is rotting to its core right in front of our eyes, but the myths and narratives being spun would have you think otherwise. On the one hand, you have the uniparty line of a modern and prosperous European city, full of commerce, technological advancement and hope for the future (a brief look at the cracks in the pavement show otherwise). On the other hand, you have an increasingly loud minority screaming about how the quaint village of Dublin is being invaded by those of a darker complexion, losing its entire identity at the hands of those more able to get a tan than us pasty folk. This again is a myth, indeed from the same source, though one that is gaining traction in a land that has lost its identity.
Our entire history is being rewritten in front of our eyes. A nation who travelled the globe and always welcomed travellers along their way (except those who dared “travel” within our own shores). Our very identity was based on shared culture, myths and legends, art, creativity, music and poetry. It sang loudly, spoke in riddles, and proclaimed itself unbroken despite hundreds of years of oppression. Our identity came from struggle against (actual) foreign influence to hold close to what is dear to us, to hold on to, not our easily reddened and freckled complexion, but the shared values that could withstand the leathering of skin under a tanning bed.
So what brought us to a place where friendly exchanges on the street and public transport have made way to a persistent tension and shifty eyes as people wait for the next explosion of anger? In short, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. In length, let us proceed.
Unfortunately, Ireland has been at the mercy of our civil war parties since our creation as 0.8125 of an island state. There is an argument to be made that a short answer could also stop there, but we have more issues to unpack in this analysis. To some extent, historically these parties did help the Irish people (whilst helping themselves to some of the pie along the way). They launched a massive social housing campaign in the 1930s and built us up as a (partial) nation to be able to win some standing on the world stage. Victories were hard fought by the people so that they might see some of the winnings, These were from a time long ago when the uniparty pretended to listen. But now it is time to jump forward to the main source of our current woes, to a time when the uniparty and anyone who ever even considered coalition with them got notions, to the abandonment of our people, and the stripping of everything that made us what we once were. Nothing left of us but a paddy cap and our pale bones. The perfect blank canvas to sell our futures off as slaves. While on the other side, a blank canvas to fill with colourful paints and ideas, to cover up our checkered and beautiful past, a canvas to spin any myth and legend as the shadows move about in Plato’s cave. But our real past and potential future dance outside if we are brave enough to join them.
Our city is dirty, our pavements cracking, our buildings empty and dilapidated, our people’s spirit so broken they look across the channel for answers. “But look at our GDP”. Where is it hiding? It’s not on Talbot Street nor our historic O’Connell St. It’s not in Ballymun, Finglas or Darndale. It’s not in Clondalkin, Tallaght or Drimnagh. It must be hiding somewhere. Perhaps in that place a little up the quays where businesses also hide in empty, monstrous glass houses. How many stones were thrown to make way for companies with more office floors than employees located here? We accepted this as normal during the Celtic Tiger and post-crash as if these things were not all linked. After the crash, the myth became not to change course, but to go for more of the same. More grovelling to the makers of our destruction, more gutting of resources to appease our corporate masters in the US, EU, UK and further afield, from China to Dubai. Whatever keeps us rubbing shoulders with the big wigs, whatever makes us feel like part of the club. Though this us, was never us. It was the backpatting gombeens who think donning suits gives them the right to sell off our country. Who think that paving over Temple Bar will make us more affable to tourists, who think that turning the GPO into a shopping centre will boost that GDP another couple points. It appears they actually believe their own myths.
So where did this faux “resistance” counter narrative come from? It came from a lost people. It came from those left behind by the lord and saviour G(o)DP, who haven’t seen an improvement in living conditions for decades despite the lies of a prosperous nation our leaders sell us. People who scream out for housing at a government that says “impossible” while we see cranes surrounding every high rise office block. The social contract is well and truly broken, but so is the mind of many an Irishman who has lost touch with our past and has bought into the myth that only a couple years ago, we were on par with our neighbours. We weren’t. We’d built glass houses of our own, more akin to the Cayman islands than Stockholm.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are to blame, not only for their own myths, but for the creation of a faux counter that buys into their every myth, up to and including their conscious mismanagement of immigration. They, and every single individual and party who considered support for them, have made Ireland a hostile place. They have made it an unaffordable place where approximately 66% of medical graduates leave for Australia, where child homelessness is through the roof. Why? Because they can always import workers from abroad who will cover the gap, to take advantage of and then finger point if ever they get heat. But it is them who decide the amount of medical and tech workers they import. It is them who decide who to give visas to and it is them who decide “we can’t make it look like we can house everyone so let us pretend there are none and throw asylum seekers on the street”. They do not care about us because they do not have to. They are there to appease their masters and stopped listening to us long ago. Maybe they are taking bribes, but a more pathetic and more likely scenario is that they are in it more for a pat on the back because they were never hugged as children or perhaps bullied a little too much. For the front benches of both parties, that certainly seems the case. Their only impressive feat among endless failures is to replicate the divisive narratives that have seen success in the US and elsewhere to prevent the proles being able to agree enough to inhibit their day.
We need to reclaim our future, and shatter these myths. No more should the left or right play into them. The right have taken their lead from well-known Irish patriot Tommy Fackin’ Robinson but the comfortable classes on the left have fallen victim to the very same thing in thinking their job is to say “No, don’t be angry at this guy, he could be a doctor”. It is the wrong fight, it is the wrong cause. It is distraction created by the same powers who sell a different myth abroad across boardroom tables. It is a myth to sell to the proles so they fight among themselves so they never see the man behind the curtain who has been there since the state’s foundation, and before that, despite a different hat upon his crown.
Both myths have the same source, and that source is the near complete erasure of our history to be coloured in with paint-by-numbers. One side screams investment opportunity for only the greatest of tax dodgers while they cover up this nation’s beauty with glass and concrete, while the others hark back to an ancient pasty Ireland where white folk were wearing Factor 50 while clambering to their neighbour’s cave.
Our history is a unique tapestry of myths, legends and stories, of welcoming neighbours from near and far whilst having the strength of conviction to hold true to our own beliefs no matter what we came across, to sing a beautiful song that is well and truly ours without need for approval from abroad. Our future is not an ethno-nationalist state. Our future is not a concrete jungle where we have not a stone to throw at State Street, Apple or whatever the latest high earner among US tax dodgers is. Our future is not electricity cuts while they cool down AI surveillance data centres. Our future is ours, and we need to take it back via our own myths, legends and narratives that have real ties to this land, that have real ties to our people, without outside influence of phony culture wars or an overemphasis on “internationalism”. An eye abroad is what allowed them to stab you in the other, to blind you as they sold off the soil beneath your feet. Solidarity is one thing, but until we can rid ourselves of the virus at home, it will only serve to spread disease among our people and to everyone our pathetic “leaders” do business with. That virus remains Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil along with anyone who would ever consider a coalition with them. Or those parties we can all blatantly see replicating their policies. That rules out near everyone in the Dáil, but, it is also a major myth, that our own only recourse of action lies within those walls.