Dear Fingal Battalion: if you spent your time working, not stalking families, you’d have a lot less to whine over

WHAT a brave bunch of heroes they were, the crowd who harassed a young family with a newborn baby on Sunday afternoon. What great courage it must have taken to pull their beanie hats down to their ears, put up their hoods, don their shades – that’s right, they wore sunglasses, in Ireland, in February – and gather outside an ordinary family home to harangue the defenceless occupants.

The fact that the man of the house was the Minister for Health, at home for a few hours respite from the buffeting of several storms, is irrelevant. What matters is that this faceless and cowardly shower, who speak for nobody, represent nobody and respect the interests of nobody but themselves, have decided they have a right to harass a politician’s family on our behalf. They are unelected and unauthorised, they have no mandate nor any public support, and yet they’ve decided they are entitled to persecute our elected representatives in pursuit of their one true goal: to get as much as possible for nothing on the backs of the Irish taxpayer.

Sinister

They’ll dress it up as social activism, they’ll claim to be protesting on behalf of hard-working, hard-pressed citizens, but I’m prepared to bet that few of those beauties, pictured outside Simon Harris’s house on Sunday, truly appreciate how ‘the State’ – ie, the taxpayer – coughs up for all the things they demand. They may claim to be left wing but, in reality, on the extremes where legitimate politics bleeds into anarchy and lawlessness, they are indistinguishable from the hard right, currently spreading unrest and civil chaos across Europe and beyond. They are dangerous, irresponsible, reckless and utterly self-serving. And it is time the ordinary citizens, for whom they laughably claim to speak, called them out for their lies.

The crowd of whingeing malcontents gathered outside Simon Harris’s private dwelling last Sunday, just three weeks after the birth of his first child. The photographs show a dozen or so, some of whom seemed very keen not to be identified. One pair carried a banner proclaiming that they were ‘Fingal Battalion Against Austerity: Working Together for Our Communities.’ Really? Tell us more. Working together with whom, exactly? On what authority, with what support? And for all of Fingal’s 300,000 residents, in a sprawling area stretching from Howth and Malahide to Blanchardstown and Castleknock, yes? You consulted them all before you went to badger a young family on a Sunday afternoon?

Another banner vaguely proclaimed, ‘Wicklow Says No’. That’s all of Wicklow, right? And, ‘No’ to what? No to imported chicken being labelled ‘Made in Wicklow’? No to whether what we perceive is merely a construction of our subconscious minds? No to Sharon Ní Bheoláin having to read the news standing up?

Another poster had the sinister threat, ‘Bringing It To Their Doors’. Having rambled on about several unconnected episodes – ‘the cervical cancer scandal, medical cannabis, the outrageous cost of the children’s hospital and the nurses’ strike’ – one female protester declared: ‘Today we launch a campaign to bring it to their doors. It could be your local TD, councillors, judges or anyone who plays a part in bringing austerity, corruption or evictions to the people of Ireland.’

Their victims, apparently, will be accused, tried and punished by secret kangaroo courts to be run by the kind of people who wouldn’t run to warm themselves. And yet the politicians of the Pay4Nothing parties have cheer-led for those layabouts who truly believe that the country owes them a living, and a comfortable one at that, at the expense of all the poor, derided mugs who get up early and go to work for what they need.

Support

Just look at the support they got, from certain elected representatives, when an element of this cohort staged a menacing protest in Jobstown in Tallaght, at the height of the water protests, that kept two women trapped in their car for two and a half hours. Again, it really didn’t matter that one of the women was the tánaiste of the day, Joan Burton. She was primarily a citizen, her human rights were being infringed but, instead of giving the protesters all the free water they wanted from a couple of cannons, the gardaí indulged them until they – not the police force – decided to let the women go.

Witness the countless incidents of harassment that this cohort of whingers and rabble-rousers have visited on fellow citizens for the unforgiveable crime of simply doing their jobs. Water-meter installers, gardaí helping to keep the peace as property owners sought to reclaim their premises from grandstanding squatters, security guards doing their lawful work: they’ve all been targeted, trolled online and, on occasions, put in fear for their safety. And yet these people, who represent a minuscule percentage of the population, are pandered to by politicians alarmed by their reckless cynicism, their contrived indignation, their loud voices but, most of all, by the huge amount of time they have on their hands, with nothing better to do than stir up trouble.

More than 60% of the population had paid their water charges by the time they were scrapped at the behest of the Pay4Nothing parties and the tiny bunch of loudmouthed malcontents they represent. In their sunlit upland of wilful delusion only fools and horses work for the things they desire. Free homes, free water, free bin collections, free healthcare, foreign holidays funded by the dole: these people seem to believe that somebody else has to stump up for all those perks that ought only to come as rewards for honest labour: Remember the outrage, a few years back, when Joan Burton dared question how so many struggling, jobless water protesters could afford iPads and smartphones to film their rampages?

They’re ramping up their protests now, and harking back to the golden days of ‘austerity’ – that’s so 2009, folks – because their worst-case scenario is looming.

Cowardice

We’re approaching full employment and so, according to one economist on radio last week, there is now a job for everyone who wants to work. Astonishingly, however, years of political cowardice have made what was once an obligation of responsible citizenship into a lifestyle option. There should be no tolerance for those who don’t want to work: instead, the work-shy are lavished with extra benefits, more welfare, increased allowances, all at the expense of the poor fools who believe in the dignity and duty of labour.

In last year’s budget, Leo Varadkar welshed on his promise to look after the people who get up early by rewarding some lowly paid workers with an extra €4 a month while handing jobseekers, in an economy where employers are crying out for staff, €5 extra a week. It was a further example of politicians’ inexplicable haste to kowtow to the noisily indolent.

Since our politicians lack the backbone to stand up to them, it falls to the rest of us to lay down the law. We need to make it clear we are sick and tired of watching government policy being dictated to by a vanishingly small mob of rowdies. We are fed up listening to the Pay4Nothing parties defending the right of some people to ask for everything while the rest of the country support them. We’ve had it with watching politicians cave in to the yobs, all because they’re the ones with endless time to troll and whine on Twitter.

Since it’s all about ‘bringing it to their doors’, with threatened protests at the homes of politicians and judges, maybe we should bring something equally unwelcome to their doors in return: a message that in a society of full employment, the answer to their needs lies in their own hands. Because if they’d spent their Sunday afternoon doing productive work instead, they’d have the things they claim to need – and they wouldn’t have to be out blaming someone else’s family for the fact that they don’t.