Economical With The Actuality

Over on ‘CiF’, Fionola Meredith has this heartrending (and disingenuous) sob-column about the Belfast ‘Romanians’:

At a south Belfast primary school many desks are standing empty today. The Romanian children who attend this richly multicultural school have suddenly vanished.

Notice that a ‘richly multicultural school’ is taken as a desirable thing in and of itself…

The other children wonder where their friends, who arrived after Romania's accession to the EU in 2007, have gone.

Do they? Have you asked them, then, Fionola?

Or are you just indulging in a wee bit of hyperbole there?

The scenario demonstrates the two faces of Northern Ireland.

It does…?

It's the one where newcomer families from other cultures are made welcome, where the children play trombones 10 sizes too big for them in the school orchestra, where mums bring their own speciality dishes to the summer fair. It's the one where a friendly, community-minded local church took in those bewildered Romanians, numbering more than 100, fed them and tucked them in for the night.

Ah, yes, of course.

The typical progressive view of ‘multiculturalism’, where a rainbow of smiling cherubs play together, and a whole world’s cuisine is spread out for their choosing. Everyone gets on with each other, no-one’s views impinge on anyone else’s and the only fly in the ointment is the stuck-in-the-mud Brits who unaccountably whine about the loss of their culture.

As if that was worth preserving, or something…

But please, Fionola, continue:

This Northern Ireland exists episodically, and in patches. Then there's the old, familiar, insular Northern Ireland, rooted in tribalism; fiercely territorial, truculent, self-loathing and hostile to outsiders. The racist intimidation of the Romanians – the latest and most visible in a sustained campaign of attacks against migrants in the area since trouble broke out at a World Cup qualifying match between Northern Ireland and Poland in March – has been described as the new sectarianism.

Notice how it’s only the ‘natives’ that are viewed as ‘rooted in tribalism, fiercely territorial, truculent’.

Never the incomers, who are, presumably, made of sugar and spice and all things nice. Quite unlike the slugs, snails and puppydog tails that make up those damned Northern Irish!

I’m sensing a pattern here:

Such sentiments have been evident in the tortuous logic used by some to justify the attacks, from well-spoken callers on radio shows claiming that a Romanian once looked sideways at their granny, to comments such as this one from a political blog ers-continues-unabated-in-south-belfast/P50> :

The attacks were wrong and unacceptable but sometimes it's the only way that some people can express themselves when they are powerless and disadvantaged by the political system and political elites.

Ummm, isn’t that view not too unlike that expressed by the likes of Guardian stalwarts like Milne and his ilk, when they are ‘resisting the imperialist forces of the West’?

Or is it just applicable to Third Worlders, and never to anyone else?

But Fionola almost, but not quite, lets the cat out of the bag here:

Even where an embryonic form of integration is working, it's not all sunshine and clapping games. Despite Paisley's beguiling vision, the journey towards a truly culturally diverse Northern Ireland will inevitably be marked by suspicions and embarrassments. Yes, it is uncomfortable to see a Romanian mother at the school gate, then later begging outside the market, or on the street with her kids at 2.30am, trying to flog plastic roses to drunk students coming out of clubs. But that's the reality. It's difficult and complicated.

Aha!

Two things – firstly, here we see the first glimpse of the truth behind these attacks that Fionola doesn’t mention in her article (but which is mentioned by the commenters to it) – this isn’t targeted indiscriminately at immigrants in general, but at one section in particular. Roma gypsies.

Secondly, that the Northern Irish must simply accept that these people have a right to come to their country and beg, and not raise any kind of fuss about it. This leads, inevitably, to the kind of simmering tensions that cause the kind of acts we’ve seen.

And while we are on the subject, when did the Northern Irish people vote to make their country a ‘culturally diverse’ one? Were they ever asked?
Was it ever debated whether this was something worth pursuing?

I think we all know the answer, though…