Running on race

national | politics / elections | news report Tuesday May 18, 2004 18:15 by Badman

Immigration Control Platform reveal their local election candidates

Mad, Mad Aine Ni Chonaill's Immigration Control Platform have revealed their line up for the local elections. They will be standing in 3 areas, 1 in Cork, 1 in Dundalk and one in Dublin.

In Dundalk, they are running Aidan McMahon, a newcomer to the electoral arena. His poster picture has more than a hint of the gay biker look about it, but I assume this is coincidental. His blurb is a fairly standard racist rant - the sort of thing you occasionaly hear from a bitter taxi-driver - misleading, unsourced statistics and a big play on the fear of "refugees" taking over from "you and your kin". The language used (eg kin) is close to that of the far-right racial geneticists and his is the most obviously racist blubs of the three candidates.

Hilariously he complains that our "Schools are slowed by non-English speaking students." Yep, Aidan, those schools were travelling pretty slowly when you fell off. He also finishes by telling us that "The Irish point of view must be heard in Dundalk; not just the refugees." - managing to bring the total of serious grammatical errors to 3 - not bad in 94 words.

Pat Talbot, another electoral newcomer is contesting the Cabra/Glasnevin area in Dublin. His blurb is more subtle than Aidan's rant and includes an attempt to paint the ICP as a working class party - by highlighting the 'fact' that "those in the leafy suburbs remain unaffected". This is actually the only tiny appeal to anything other than anti-refugee sentiment in all of their blurbs. They obviously feel that in working class areas of Dublin, the ICP's attempts to blame refugess for the problems that people face, rather than the rich, will not wash with an angry electorate. Nevertheless the attemt to tie their politics of fear and hatred into a class-based arguement are very feeble indeed and unlikely to convince anybody.

On another note, the candidate will be handicapped by his appearance. His poster picture places him somewhere between "gimp" and "creepy" and we can be sure that parents of young children will not be inviting him in for a cup of tea on the campaign trail.

Ted Neville, a veteran of the general election campaign is again standing in Cork. His blurb is the only one to include any details about the candidate himself, leading one to assume that the others must have something to hide. Apart from the anodyne details of what has obviously been a bitter and dreary life, the text stresses the strain on social services 'caused' by refugees. He uses McDowell's old trick of quoting the number of 'non-nationals' in receipt of a service (this time it is 1000 who get rent-allowance in Cork). McDowell was already caught out on this when it was revealed that the vast majority of non-nationals are other EU citizens, not the asylum seekers that the ICP are so terrified of.

His picture, although not quite as scary as the other two, is brought to us by the word 'gray' and the occupation 'insurance salesman'. Not exactly inspiring stuff.

All the candidates include mobile phone numbers on their page and I'm sure that they'd appreciate getting messages from voters about their policies.