Seamus Dooley, Irish organiser of the National Union of Journalists, declared at a recent meeting in Westport, Co Mayo, that local newspapers needed to be more careful when reporting on the issues of "Travellers and asylum-seekers". Asylum-seekers, eh? Well, if the national organiser of that august body, the National Union of Journalists, is incapable of standing up for proper terminology when dealing with the complex and difficult issue of immigration, what hope is there? For if we don't get the language right at the start of this debate, the chances are we going to get a lot more wrong as the years go on. The inch out of true sitting on the launch-pad turns out to be million miles by the times the vessel reaches Jupiter. Small inaccuracies at the beginning of anything have a habit of growing into catastrophic discrepancies. So let us try to get the language of tolerance right, nice and early on, so that we are not caught out discussing myths instead of realities.
Economic migrants
Let us deal with the first major myth - that the majority of the outsiders seeking homes and work in Ireland are asylum-seekers. They are not. Inasmuch as Irish natives who attack foreigners have any thoughts at all - and they are probably few and far between - they are probably aware that their victims are almost certainly not asylum-seekers at all, but are economic migrants. Calling them asylum-seekers doesn't alter the reality of what they are, but it does distort any real examination of the problem; it means our rocket misses Jupiter completely - and look, there it is, heading past Pluto, bound for the Great Beyond.
We should know by now that the Ireland that was, is gone. Forever. We are going to be a multiracial society, and anyone who has visited truly multiracial cities anywhere will know that enormous cultural and culinary benefits lie ahead. It is deeply pleasurable to wander down the Arab-dominated quarters of London or Paris, and see the little late-night shops, with men smoking hookahs, and drinking tiny cups of tea and coffee and feasting on sweetmeats and playing backgammon.
But multi-racialism necessarily involves multiculturalism. Just as the Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Africans and West Indians who moved to England did not instantly become English, but retained much of their culture along with their racial characteristics, so too will the newcomers to Ireland retain many if not most of their ways. We should get used to this. This is what the Irish did, unrepentantly clinging to their religion in Protestant England and Scotland, and by so doing, turning the Catholic Church into the largest practising Christian denomination in Britain.
Nor is this a uniquely Irish phenomenon. Immigrants from the Indian sub-continent have had a comparable effect on Britain's religious habits: more people worship in mosques than attend Church of England services each week, and there are now more Muslims than Methodists in Wales. What other countries have experienced, we will experience too; and not the least of those experiences is racial tension.
Working class
The most vigilantly anti-racist ginger groups in Western European societies have tended to be on the left; and this location on the political spectrum obliges them, with much huffing and puffing, to insists that that racism is the invention of capitalism or of some malign political establishment. Yet common sense and common experience tell us that that the most virulently violent racists are members of the working class - the very heroes of the political left. Immigrants do not live in fear of bank mangers, general practitioners or clerks; they live in fear of proletarian thugs. Given this addiction to righteous error, is it surprising that the political left labels all our incomers "asylum-seekers"?
They are - for the most part - not asylum-seekers. They are immigrants. Nobody dealing with the reality of immigration is fooled by false terminology. Presenting these people as refugees from political repression by calling them "asylum-seekers" merely deepens misunderstandings between native and incomer. They are economic migrants. It is hardly coincidental that most of the reported racist attacks are not on people representing themselves as "asylum-seekers" but on European immigrants such as Christian Richardson and his father David last winter. Christian wasn't attacked by racist thugs because he was an asylum-seeker, but simply because he was black and English. Indeed, the majority of our "coloured" (for want of a better word) immigrants are likely to be English.
Soccer matches
How tolerant will we be of English people, loyal to England and with English ways, settling in Ireland? They might not be Anglo-Saxon, but they will still be English. Watching an England soccer match against Ireland in workingclass pubs in Dublin, will these English immigrants be allowed to cheer loudly for England as Irish people cheer for Ireland in working-class pubs in England? How tolerant will Irish people be in a pub this evening if a group of immigrants vociferously support an opponent of Sonia O'Sullivan in the 10,000 metres heat?
Tolerance is a complex thing. It is not a matter of dealing with stereotypes, but accepting people with different complexions, different ways and, most of all, different loyalties. We have absolutely no history of tolerating people with vociferously expressed loyalties different from our own; yet that we are going to have to do in the future. It will not be easy; and it will be absolutely impossible if we allow discussion on the issue to be contaminated from the start by politically correct falsehoods about "asylum-seekers".
Oh yes, and finally: Come on, Sonia.