As thousands of protesters thundered through central Dublin over Easter weekend, waving a sea of tricolour flags, Ireland’s anti-immigration movement staked a bold claim. The legacy of the Easter Rising martyrs – who underwrote with their lives the founding of the Irish state – was theirs. ‘We will be a true following on from our forefathers in 1916 who had a workers’ revolution,’ declared Malachy Steenson, a Dublin councillor and nationalist leader.
This fusion of grassroots nationalism and potent revolutionary symbols powered the largest demonstration yet. A genie was out of the bottle, and the establishment took notice. It provoked a bitter historical tug-of-war as the government, mindful of the symbolic power of Ireland’s formative heroes, scrambled to reclaim them.
The taoiseach, Micheal Martin, suggested the protestors had misunderstood the message of the 1916 proclamation.
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