Reasonable People vs. The Sinister Fringe

ABSTRACT

Resistance to austerity in Ireland has until recently been largely muted. In 2013 domestic water charges were introduced and throughout 2014 a series of protests against the charges emerged, culminating in over 90 separate marches on November 1. In this paper we examine the discourses which are produced and circulated by politicians and the mainstream media about this protest movement, and offer a brief insight into the contemporary Irish context of austerity and crisis. We analyse the role of the phrase ‘sinister fringe’ as a discursive device, and unpick the ways in which it has been used to explain the water charges protests to the Irish public. Our conclusions speak to the currency of the protest paradigm as a means of understanding news media reporting of protest. Ultimately we raise concerns regarding the effects of this dominant frame on deliberative democracy.

KEYWORDS:

• Austerity
• dissent
• framing
• folk devils
• neoliberalism
• news media
• political discourse
• privatisation protest
• protest paradigm
• resistance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Martin J. Power (author to whom correspondence should be addressed) is a Lecturer in Sociology, at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Martin is a co-founder of the Power, Discourse and Society, and Popular Music and Popular Culture research clusters in University of Limerick. He has published widely on class inequality and media representations of Irish society. Martin has co-edited four books and amongst his publications is the co-authored ‘Scapegoating during a time of crisis: A critique of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland’ in Sociology, 48:5 (2014).

Amanda Haynes is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Limerick. Amanda's research interests centre on the analysis of discursive, classificatory and physical violences, particularly those which are motivated by prejudice. She is a co-director of both the Hate and Hostility Research Group and the Power, Discourse and Society Research Group in University of Limerick. Amanda's research has been funded by the European Union, the Irish Research Council and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.

Eoin Devereux is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Limerick, Ireland, and an Adjunct Professor in Contemporary Culture at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. He is the author of the best-selling academic book ‘Understanding The Media’ 3rd edition (2014, Sage, London). Eoin is the co-editor (with Dr Aileen Dillane and Dr Martin J. Power) of David Bowie: Critical Perspectives (2015, Routledge) and Morrissey: Fandom, Representations and Identities (2012, Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press). Professor Devereux is Assistant Dean for Research in the Faculty of AHSS, University of Limerick.

Notes

1. See the functions of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI), which was established under the The Broadcasting Act 2009, at http://www.bai.ie/index.php/about-us/.

2. GMC Sierra is a consortium comprising GMC Utilities Group and Sierra Support Services Group (a subsidiary of Denis O'Brien's company, Siteserv). This consortium was awarded the contract to install water meters for Irish Water.

3. More than 20 people have been charged by Gardaí because of their participation in the protest. Irish Parliamentarian Paul Murphy and several other protesters received summonses on 15 September 2015 to appear before the Criminal Court of Justice in relation to Burton's alleged false imprisonment during this protest.

4. Boykoff (2007) labels the four mechanisms of repression as: resource depletion, stigmatisation, divisive disruption and intimidation. She defines repression as ‘a process whereby groups or individuals attempt to diminish dissident action, collective organization, and the mobilization of dissenting opinion by inhibiting collective action through either raising the costs or minimizing the benefits of such action’ (p. 283).

5. Minister Leo Varadkar stated:

What strikes me is that there is a very sinister fringe to some of the water protests. They abuse the Gardai. They break the law. They engage in violence. And also they spread all sorts of information. And what I am worried about is that it is only a matter of time before someone gets hurt. While there are a lot of people protesting legitimately and reasonably, this fringe element is very sinister. It is a very nasty fringe to these water protests. (Varadkar, 2014)

6. The level of violence or ‘sinister’ behaviour at water protests in Ireland is, in fact, almost non-existent. By comparison, there have been fewer violent incidents in this context than in other protests elsewhere.

7. Éirígí is a revolutionary political party, established in 2006, to ‘fight for the rights of working people’ and to ‘rebuild opposition’ to British rule in the North of Ireland (see http://eirigi.org/).

8. The inversion of the term ‘Sinister Fringe’ is most pronounced in content emanating from the Irish Times. It is invisible in the Irish Independent, while it appears in a single instance in the Sunday Independent.

9. The author, Liz O’ Donnell, is a former Junior Irish Government Minister and Deputy Leader of the Progressive Democrat party. The PD's were formed in 1985 and disbanded in 2009. They were neoliberal in their outlook and, although they never won more than 10 seats in a general election, they were in government between 1989 and 2002. Since leaving politics, O’ Donnell has worked in the media and public affairs.

10. Prime Time (2014a) lists the following groups as taking part in the protests in North and West Dublin: The Land League, Eirigi, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement and Dissident Republicans. In the coverage of one particular march, a reference is made to the presence of ‘small but prominent pockets’ of more radical political groupings.

11. For example, Sinn Féin's Deputy Leader said on 29 November 2014 that

instead of listening to the people, government ministers have hid behind spin, scare and smear. [ … ] This is a government that has lost the support of the people. This is a government that is frightened of the will of the people. (Sinn Féin, 2014)

12. On 28 August 2015, Chief Superintendent Orla McPartlin refused an application by the AAA for a door-to-door collection in Dublin on the basis that she believed that ‘the proceeds of the collection or a portion thereof would be used to facilitate protests sponsored by the Anti Austerity Alliance’, which would ‘see further Public Order offences being committed’. This decision would appear to have little effect given the subsequent rise in online donations to the AAA (Journal.ie., 2015).