From Socialist Voice, January 2010

“Recession” and an Irish town

We have all heard plenty from journalists and commentators proclaiming that we have “turned the corner.” Clearly they don’t live in the same world, or at least the same country, as you or I. What these right-wing gombeen men really mean is that they wish to crucify the working people of Ireland into rolling back time to the height of the “boom,” when things were best for them. It’s ironic that these are the very people who describe the left as backward-thinking; but I for one don’t want any return to “Bertie’s Ireland.”
     Droichead Nua, Co. Kildare (also known as Newbridge), is one of the Dublin commuter-belt towns that experienced rapid population growth, retail expansion and a property bonanza during the so-called Celtic Tiger era. Places like these for the most part were cheerleaders of the “boom” and the ruling parties that presided over it. Surely nothing could stand in their way?
     Back in July 2007 the Irish Independent published an article all about how “D4 is so passé, dahling,” and “these days, everyone who’s anyone has a place in Co. Kildare. Or K4, as it’s become known.” Towns such as Newbridge were an integral part of this façade.
     It’s frightening now to see the effect and speed with which the country’s economic implosion has had on Newbridge, with more than nine thousand people registered as unemployed in the town’s social welfare office in July and with apartments once valued at €322,000 now going for €110,000—just over two years after the inception of “K4” by the Independent.
     While the situation is pretty tough in such places at present, there is much we can learn from their dramatic decline. The cracks were there for all to see during the boom, even if some refused to acknowledge it, with no proper infrastructure or amenities being sought. The last census found that 41 per cent of the population of the town were under twenty-four, well above the national average of 35 per cent. Yet apart from sport there is little for young people to do, and for the first time in the town’s history there are waiting lists for school places.
     There are numerous reasons for the dramatic decline in the town’s fortunes; but the buck must stop with the politicians and county council administration, which in tandem have allowed a system of undemocratic gross negligence to exist. The result was a hugely unsustainable town driven by massive retail and housing development, with little or no high-end employment or amenities, to the detriment of the town.
     The debacle of Whitewater Shopping Centre, where a development was granted planning permission on the proviso that it would include a cinema, serves as an example of how things were run. When it was built there was no cinema, because of the owners’ greed to enhance their profits by renting retail units instead. The centre opened and continued to trade while community activists stepped up the pressure, and the cinema has finally arrived—mainly because consumer spending has plummeted.
     The response of the council and elected representatives was telling. They refused to hold the developers to account by doing little or nothing when the law was on their side. They were in a position to close it down until it complied with planning law, but they didn’t. Finally, the non-interventionist policy of “small government” had arrived in the grass roots of mainstream Irish politics.
     This is by no means the only example of Ireland’s developers feeding their greed and lust for more profits at everyone else’s expense. It demonstrates clearly that a system existed that facilitated such actions and one that failed to impose regulations, which on a bigger scale played no small part in creating capitalism’s greatest crisis for almost eighty years.
     It’s not all negative, even if the K4 brigade refuse to cover this, with sections of the community taking active responses to the needs that were ignored most during the boom. The young population is the key to the town’s future, and they have responded by forming “Culture Factory,” a campaign for a self-sustaining creative and social space that has gone from strength to strength. Similarly with the establishment of the Liffey Studio, a small and intimate venue run by Crooked House and Kildare Youth Theatre, renovated by its young members. The studio has become an important part of the town’s fabric, with small gigs, drama and alternative political meetings.
     It is refreshing to see the young people taking collective action in differing ways to tackle these issues and rejecting the neo-liberal individualistic attitude, even if many are unaware of it. Perhaps it is for reasons such as this that the Government seems intent on hammering the young through unemployment and slashing welfare in an attempt to drive another generation to the four corners of the world.
     The battle may only be beginning in a small way in Newbridge, but it is the responsibility of the left to help, guide and encourage such progressive collective action when others see fit to stifle their progress.
[BH]

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