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Jeff O’ Connell: It was a big success. We loved it and we didn't have any opposition from anti-Irish groups. Loads of cities all over the world have huge council-led St Patrick’s Day celebrations and, while that wasn’t possible today, it was important for us to be back on the streets in our own community. We hope we can have a bigger, city centre parade in the future, but today was a great success for restoring the confidence of an Irish community that's been badly shaken after a year of growing anti-Irish racism and attacks on public celebrations of Irish culture.

We’ve had parades and events celebrating a variety of Irish cultural, historical and political issues since 1996 and, until last year, those years were reasonably opposition free. But last February we had a commemoration parade for Sean Phelan that was attacked by fascists and loyalists. They basically blocked off the city centre and the parade couldn’t get through. Then, after that incident, we had a lot of other events come under attack from a combination of fascist and loyalist groups.
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People were subjected to racial and sectarian abuse, objects were thrown at us and there were threats of violence and death threats. We had to really take stock of the situation. We’ve had to do a lot of work for today in terms of working with the police and the council and in terms of bringing the Irish community back from the shock of the attacks to build up some community confidence.

The main force is the local loyalist community; they can get the largest numbers out to protest and can pose a big physical threat. But the spark that’s motivated them to go out on the streets and protest has mainly come from fascist groups. They're relatively small around Liverpool, but for big events they bring members in from across the North West. We’ve been targeted by a huge range of far-right groups – the North West Infidels, English Defence League, National Front, British National Party, Combined Ex-Forces, football casuals, UKIP members – the whole spectrum of the far-right, really.Why are they targeting the Irish community?
Because the Muslim community here doesn’t have such a high profile as it does in other cities in the north of England. Since the far-right has been on the rise, they've been singling out scapegoats, so they targeted the Irish in Liverpool because there's not a big Asian population. They try to caricature our events as supporting terrorist groups when they know that they’re not. It’s just a knee-jerk reaction that’s sparked this rise in anti-Irish racism.
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I think it’s partly because for many, many years, the Orange Order and the loyalists were very clear that they would react violently to broad expressions of Irishness. Last year kind of reinforced that, so the city council are probably a bit wary of endorsing St Patrick’s Day celebrations. Telling the Irish community to keep their celebrations to themselves so they don't anger the loyalists is very short-sighted. Often oppression breeds reaction, so we’re hoping that what’s happened over the past year will motivate people to stand against the anti-Irish factions. The city is a shared space and we have every right to use it as everyone else.

That’s it. I mean, if you go into the centre today, there’s tricolours everywhere and people are out in green and drinking and so forth. We wish all those people would come to the parade first, but that’s the nature of it. It’s sad because historically all our events have always been greeted very well by the people of Liverpool. It’s only in the last year that the far-right has ignited the loyalists to rally against us, and that’s what’s caused all the trouble.

We need to reclaim the streets as a shared space. The important thing for us is to not accept the claims that it’s two sides of the same coin – two rival Irish factions engaged in a sectarian conflict. We don’t subscribe to that. We don’t attack loyalist parades or events. We respect their right to have their own views, even though we don’t agree with them. Unfortunately they don’t give us the same respect, but we’re determined not to be put off the streets. We support the campaign for the peaceful reunification of Ireland and we’re determined to defend the rights of Irish people in Merseyside.
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