{"id":396899,"date":"2025-09-04T09:35:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T09:35:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/396899\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T09:35:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T09:35:12","slug":"englands-raise-the-colours-inspires-flag-protests-in-dublin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/396899\/","title":{"rendered":"England\u2019s \u2018Raise the Colours\u2019 inspires flag protests in Dublin"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a beast slouching towards central Dublin, and the authorities aren\u2019t quite sure how to deal with it. In recent weeks, hundreds of Irish tricolours have been affixed<\/a> to lampposts across the Irish capital, mirroring the vigilante patriotism<\/a> of England\u2019s \u201cOperation Raise the Colours\u201d.<\/p>\n

What began in the tattered suburbs of Ballyfermot, Coolock and Finglas is now pressing into the more bohemian quarters of the inner city. \u201cWe object to the unauthorised erection of these decorations,\u201d read one letter<\/a> from residents. \u201cThey dishonour the Flag by flouting official protocol [and] are in breach of Dublin City Council\u2019s rules on the decoration of lighting poles.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Irish state, like its British counterpart, is allergic to such tub-thumping displays, yet is struggling to find a way to counter them that doesn\u2019t invite more of the same. The optics of taking the flags down or leaving them hanging are both, for nationalists, a \u201cwin-win\u201d, noted one Dublin councillor.<\/p>\n

To complicate matters further, there is no law in Ireland against flying the national flag, and council workers have so far been reluctant to remove them. According to Dublin City Council, the issue requires \u201ca considered response from all stakeholders\u2026 informed by a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation\u201d. That will include meetings in the coming weeks with senior Garda\u00ed to plan their next steps.<\/p>\n

The parallel campaigns in England and Ireland suggest their respective nationalist movements may be observing each other closely. At any rate, that was the verdict of Darragh Moriarty, a councillor for Dublin South. \u201cI think it\u2019s rich to hear of Irish patriots borrowing from their English cousins on this issue,\u201d he said<\/a>. \u201cWe absolutely have to stamp this out.\u201d That barb drew a laugh from Malachy Steenson, a veteran republican and councillor for Dublin City. \u201cThe English are copying us!\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

Both may be right. There has in recent years been extensive \u2014 often unwitting \u2014 cross-pollination between English and Irish nationalist movements. While Ireland\u2019s flag-raising operation began<\/a> last year, predating England\u2019s, its arrival in Dublin\u2019s inner city just as St George\u2019s flags proliferated across the Irish Sea is surely no coincidence.<\/p>\n

The rank-and-file of both movements distrust conventional news outlets, sensing they downplay harsh truths about immigration, and rely instead on social media for unfiltered information. It is on these online channels that citizen journalists catalogue \u2014 and sometimes embellish \u2014 the twin evils of government incompetence and migrant misbehaviour, and this communal space creates a shared consciousness between like-minded protesters in England and Ireland.<\/p>\n

Michael McCarthy, an Irish nationalist-leaning vlogger<\/a> who\u2019s gained nearly a million followers across different platforms in the past year, says he sees no mystery in this convergence, \u201cbecause there\u2019s that shared anger at the establishment\u201d. His monologues about the negative consequences of mass immigration in Europe now reach an audience of 35 million accounts each month, most of them in Britain, Ireland and the US. \u201cEven your Raise Colours movement has a knock-on effect and comes over to Ireland,\u201d he said. \u201cWe like the look of it in the UK and we\u2019re like, \u2018let\u2019s do that too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In contrast to the football-lad aesthetic of groups such as the English Defence League, protests against immigration in Ireland were early adopters of the \u201cmammies at the front\u201d technique, making them harder for the establishment to dismiss as far-Right louts. That has since travelled back across the water, where England\u2019s \u201cPink Ladies\u201d<\/a> now frame porous borders as less of a nativist concern than a women\u2019s safety issue.<\/p>\n

Other tactics may have been piloted in Ireland, too. In contrast to the rudderless marches that paraded through central London, Irish demonstrations were locally coordinated and frequently targeted migrant housing facilities directly. This pressured the government into backing off plans to house migrants in places like Coolock and Leitrim, where they met with concerted resistance. The results are hard to dispute: over the past seven months, 12 international protection accommodation (IPAS) centres have been closed down \u2014 triple the number during the same period last year.<\/p>\n

English protestors have attempted something similar, with less luck. Epping saw rolling protests which forced the council to apply for an injunction against housing migrants there, though it was overturned<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

Clearly, though, the Overton window is shifting. The loosening<\/a> of online content moderation that followed Donald Trump\u2019s election victory last year has expanded the scope of what is acceptable to say publicly faster than at any time in living memory. As a result, a series of official fictions about the unalloyed benefits of mass immigration have, one after another, been punctured.<\/p>\n

The problems this has caused in both England and Ireland are often so similar that each new controversy in one country can compound the outrage \u2014 and resolve \u2014 of activists in the other. That feedback loop is beginning to show itself in the flags now flying overhead.<\/p>\n