There was a large turnout of gardaí, including members of the public order unit, to police an anti-immigration march in Dublin on Monday afternoon that filed past a counter-protest on O’Connell Street before gathering at the Custom House for speeches.
Eleven arrests, mostly for alleged public order offences, were made over the course of the afternoon.
When a group of the anti-immigration protesters tried to disrupt traffic after their rally, gardaí “proactively engaged with and disrupted this group’s activity”, the Garda said in a statement.
Hundreds of men and women, many carrying tricolours, assembled at the Garden of Remembrance at 2pm, before marching behind an “East Wall Says No” banner down the east side of O’Connell Street to the bridge and turning along the quays to the Custom House.
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Meanwhile, a substantially smaller number of people, many of whom waved Palestinian and other flags, stood on the central meridian on O’Connell Street, opposite the General Post Office.
Gardaí parked a number of white vans alongside the central meridian as the anti-immigration march approached, to create a barrier between the two groups. This had the effect of keeping the two sides away from one another but also slowed the passage of the march as it passed the counter protest.
Those in the march chanted “Whose streets? Our streets” and “Leo, Leo, Leo, Out, Out, Out”, while those on the meridian chanted “Refugees are welcome here!” and “Nazi scum, off our streets”.
A large number of gardaí stood between the two groups or kept watch from nearby, alongside a number of garda on horseback.
The march, which entered the top of O’Connell Street at about 2.30pm, had filed past the Spire by 2.50pm.
At the top of North Earl Street, an older Irish woman told two young men from Bangladesh, who had stopped to watch the protest, that she felt ashamed, but they told her not to worry, that there were people like that in every country.
Meanwhile, under the portico of the GPO, a number of people from Pakistan protested against the recent jailing of the former prime minister of that country, Imran Khan.
The anti-immigration march proceeded to the Custom House, where a rally was addressed by a number of speakers including Malachy Steenson, the former Workers’ Party activist turned anti-immigration campaigner, and Herman Kelly, leader of the Irish Freedom Party.
Mr Kelly said it was good to have rallies to get the message out but what was really needed was to get people elected to the Dáil. Mr Steenson called on those at the rally to vote no in the March 8th referendum.
At one stage those gathered at the Custom House chanted that Sinn Féin were “traitors”.
The Garda Press Office, in a statement, said 300 members of the force had been deployed in “a proportionate operation to police a number of public gatherings”.
“Gardaí had to police a challenging environment with a number of public gatherings organised and attended by persons with divergent and opposing views while also managing the rights of citizens to enjoy the amenity that is Dublin city Centre,” Chief Supt Patrick McMenamin said.
“Despite the challenging environment and the intensity of opposing interactions, particularly on O’Connell street, the events passed off primarily peacefully.”
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