My younger sister graduated from primary school today and having a lot of locals in the parish hall celebrating really made me think about community. From my experience with spending 80% of my life in a small rural village, community is the main factor that makes our tiny town thrive and keeps our constituents more positive and more socially active, it just felt great to be part of a group shared by people in the same diminutive geographical area where everybody knows who you are, what you do etc. To the shopkeeper you are not just seen as a customer, but as a friend, they know you by name and they’ll even ask what you have been up to recently.
With community, it also brings in the question of homogeneity. I don’t know the Poles, Lithuanians or Africans in my village and they don’t know me. To the local Irish shopkeeper I may be seen as a friend instead of a customer but to the Polish shopkeeper it is quite the contrary. Community is not just built from residing within the same area but also national and more specifically regional heritage. The immigrant communities tend to stay away from the native Irish population, even going as far as to completely ignore them and not participate in any social activities with the nationals. I don’t necessarily blame the immigrants for lacking in social connections with nationals as during the Celtic Tiger and even in modern times Ireland has seen massive influxes of foreigners arriving into the country, and in their minds it would be much easier for them to keep speaking in their native tongue than learning English/Irish and assimilating into Irish culture
These homogeneous communities are something that you don’t get in urban areas where there’s a mixture of so many nationalities, religions and cultures that nobody can relate to each other, and the government loves it. The majority of left-wing governments support the urbanisation of nations because not only does it centralise the voters, making it easier for election campaigning and grabbing cheap votes, it takes power away from the community at large and directs it to the government
This is one of the main reasons I am a member and supporter of the National Party. As the current establishment parties like Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin etc. all want to see the urbanisation technique being put into place, the National Party is standing up for the rural communities, and keeping them homogeneous so they are able to function correctly.
If we want to return to the more favourable days of strong familial and communal relations, we must look towards the National Party. Nobody else is going to do it for us. The National Party is our only choice.
This article was submitted by a National Party member. If you would like to submit an article for publication on the National Party website, follow this link.