Created on Friday, 19 August 2011 20:48 Written by Séamus Loughlin
Joe goes on to explain himself in relation to young people also:
He said he would like to see a complete ban on the wearing of hoodies in light of the riots in England, where looters wore them to hide their identities.
He said: "I realise, however, that if it’s raining, hoodies are useful. But they are intimidating, especially to older people, and if youths have nothing to fear from the gardaí then they have no need to cover their faces." Irish Examiner
We suspect that it is highly unlikely that Joe has ever bothered to find out why veiled women choose to wear the Burqa. After all wearing the Burqa is not a universal Islamic practice. In the west it tends to be a decision taken by women themselves. There are alternatives such as the hijab. But some women find wearing the Burqa is in fact far from an affront, many find it liberating.
In fact not dissimilar garments have been worn for years by groups of Irish women who choose to live in single sex communities, praying for large portions of the day and living in cells. These “nuns” are also to be spotted in various parts of the country but despite the horror stories about the Magdalene Laundries and such like they are still allowed to practice their way of life without becoming the subject of motions at Cork City Council.
As for the Hoodies, we would argue that there is a far greater danger to the people of the state from people wearing sharp suits and ties, or even those wearing less than sharp suits with their ties, than there ever has been from teenagers wearing hoodies. While the late Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen, together with the Directors of AIB could easily have been mistaken for fellers in stripy tee shirts wearing masks and carrying bags marked swag, they were in fact wearing the suit and tie, a well known uniform worn by the so called and “great and the good” so named to differentiate them no doubt from... the small and the bad – which by a process of elimination would have to be... ourselves. Indeed were you to look around at the boardrooms of the big multinational companies then there wouldn’t be a hoodie in sight. But the place would be wall to wall with the suit and tie which have created untold misery in Ireland and around the whole of the world.
Indeed a famous character in Cork Father Theobald Mathew who was known as the "Apostle of Temperance" was a member of the Capuchin order, a group of monks famous for the wearing of a hooded cowl. As one blogger commented today: “The Capuchins are a splinter group from the Franciscans. When established in 1525, this new order adopted a hood or cappuccio as part of its habit to identify itself, hence the name. These hoodies have been at it for centuries – even feeding and providing food parcels for the poorest in Cork and Dublin to this very day. Off with their hoods!”
One thing is for sure and that is that hoodies weren’t responsible for the riots in England. Indeed if you look a bit further back to the riots in 1981 in Brixton and Toxteth there was probably not a single hoodie in sight. The mods and rockers in the 1960’s didn’t wear hoodies and imagine how difficult it would have been to wear a hoodie and keep your quiff in good order back in the 1950’s when the teddy boys were slicing up the cinema seats to the sound track of Rock around the Clock!
The riots in England reflect the underlying impasse in society. The trigger for the riots was the shooting of a young man and the brutal treatment meted out to one of his family and friends who were staging a protest. That has nothing to do with hoodies at all.
So with all this evidence how does Joe’s argument stack up? In truth it doesn’t. At best it represents a bit of low level demagogy and populism from a right wing politician looking for a bit of controversy and a few cheap votes. At worst its racist nonsense and an affront to the young people of Cork.
It brings out the short sighted reactionary nature of Fine Gael and its local councillors. But they only reflect their class base. Irish capitalism is in crisis and the Irish ruling class is pitifully weak and rotten.