Irish Racism

How would you feel if, when you're on your holiday this year, the natives spat at you in the street? How about if a mob of them attacked the place you were staying in, chanting terrifying slogans that informed you in no uncertain terms that they hated you and wanted to kill you and your children? Imagine that they were so violent and so persistant that you took refuge in a church, certain that there you would be safe; but the mob threw bricks and smashed the windows, covering you and your children in shards of broken glass.

This symbolises the real Britain. Racist thugs do not - unfortunately, racist thugs are what one hundred Romanians will forever associate our nation with.
Copyright-free image from Wikipedia.

It wouldn't take long before you forgot the photographs in the travel agent's glossy brochure and you became convinced that you were in an vicious, violent country inhabited by evil, blood-thirsty savages, would it? Would you recommend it to your friends when you got home, or would you tell them the people living there are nothing more than the very worst sort of barbarians? Would you hate them and their country for the rest of your life?

OK, let's flip things around a bit. The country is Britain - Northern Island, and it's not you, it's a group of people from Romania. They're not on holiday, but have become so entranced by the pictures and what they've read in the brochure that they've decided they would like to spend the rest of their lives in the country they thought they were going to; working, paying taxes, raising their children, becoming a part of the people and community they so admired.

If only enough of us could have told them: "Don't worry about the people who hate you, they're not representative of most of us. We are not violent people, we are not full of hate, we do not deliberately seek to injure or kill children, and we will protect you and your children from those that would. We will help you set up homes here, get jobs and contribute to our country, since you love it as much as we do. This is the real Ireland and the real Britain, not that. We are better than Nazi Germany."

If only we'd made our point of view known, before the racists won. If only the rest of the world could see that the vast majority of us are kind, generous, welcoming people. It's too late now.