Spacecraft’s previous production to ‘Bleeding the System’ - ‘The Hypothetical Death of an Activist’ - was a localised to Dublin re-write of Italian Playwright Dario Fo’s celebrated farce ‘The Accidental Death of an Anarchist’. It was set in a City Centre Garda Station in the immediate aftermath of the events of 6th May 2002 when a Reclaim the Streets protest had been greeted by a spectacular police riot on Dame Street. The police riot was filmed and subsequently widely broadcast on TV to a stunned Nation. The play was at the time, and still remains, the sole theatrical representation and affirmation of the existence of a growing political culture in Ireland which identifies with the radically internationalist counter-globalisation movement.

The Fo re-write by Les Shine and Felix Ford set a high bar for Spacecraft for future productions as it was that rare beast in the theatre – a knockabout farce with satirical teeth which had the audience in no uncertain terms rolling in the aisles. It was obvious to anyone who saw it that the Spacecraft gang had hit on a novel and productive update of a surreal and satirical mode in Irish Comedy rooted in the glory days of ‘Halls Pictorial Weekly’ when broad and topical mockery of the institutions of Irish Life was not only tolerated but expected. The only question at the time was how Spacecraft would manage to live up to the expectations generated by such a successful and timely re-write of an iconic piece of theatre.

Well they have managed it in spades in the form of an original farce by Fergal Leddy set this time around May 2004 as the country gears up for a referendum on citizenship and awaits its tabloid guaranteed (seconded by McDowell) destruction at the combined hands of the WOMBLES and ‘hordes’ of pregnant immigrant mothers. I had the pleasure of catching ‘Bleeding the System’ at the final night of it’s trial run at the Convergence Festival.

It opens with the recounting of an incident witnessed by the dramatist on Dame Street in Dublin in April 2003 in the course of which a Uniformed Guard without further comment snatched a bunch of roses from an immigrant street trader and drove off. Fergal wrote an account of his attemts to lodge a complaint with the Gardai about the incident for Indymedia Ireland at the time. The play, with this symptomatic incident as a starting point, takes the form of a rapid-fire fictional recounting of the onward progress of the bunch of flowers, the Flowerseller and the Garda and is set against the backdrop of the Celtic Tiger reaching towards some kind of grim societal climax of empty, property obsessed, misanthropic and insular grandiosity.

These elements orbit and eventually spectacularly collide around Bean - the unlikely anti-hero of Bleeding the System. He is a failed impotent Irish Businessman of dubious repute with Nietzschean delusions of an imminent rebirth into grandeur, omnipotence and riches. . . .

(photo by redjade - 'Tomso is an Irish Citizen in Hiding' - the irish state has recently deported his mother to nigeria - read his story here)

The recent referendum on citizenship may have changed the constitution but in many ways this is only the start of a debate on immigration in Ireland as legislation on the issue is still in the pipeline. Currently under Irish law any child born on the island is still an Irish citizen, the status of migrants on work visas is starting to be an issue for the trade union movement and the promise by Michael McDowell to 'deal with those currently here' has yet to be fulfilled. A number of campaigning groups have now started to look at the reality for migrants currently in Ireland.

Residents against Racism, a group which has been in existence for 5 years, launched its campaign last week to seek residency and work rights for the non-national parents of Irish children. These were the people affected by the February 2003 Supreme Court judgement which removed their residency rights. These are the people that were much discussed during the recent referendum campaign. Given that the CSO fgures showed 85,000 people immigrating to ireland last year alone, the 11,000 or so people affected by this change are a small number. Mark Grehan from Residents against Racism questions even this number making the point that deportations and outward migration have already reduced the number. Included in those deportations were at least 19 Irish citizens who were deported along with their parents.

The RAR campaign is a coalition of groups including immigrant and refugee support groups and has begun seeking support from Irish political parties and trade unions. To this end a letter will be sent to all TD's in the next week and a protest is planned for the 29th of September - the day the Dail returns from the summer recess. According to Mr Grehan the change can be made by ministerial order and will result in these people being granted residency and work rights.

Next Saturday will see another group - variously billed as the African Social Forum or Amnesty for All - holding their launch in Liberty Hall. According to Joe Carolan from the group, they want Minister McDowell to live up to his commitment given on June 14th to deal with all the people currently resident in Ireland. Mr Carolan points to the example of Portugal which granted an amnesty in 1992 to non-EU citizens who were resident for 6 months or more in the country. He also stresses the importance of the right to study mentioning the case of Celine Codorean who achieved 450 points in the Irish Leaving Certificate and who was accepted into Trinity College but who now has a deportation order against her.

What both campaigns agree on is the fallacy of the notion that immigrants will have a negative impact on existing Irish workers. In this they are backed up by international research such as that conducted across Europe by the European Commission and published in July 2001 with the title 'Labour Demand, Education and the Dynamics of Social Exclusion'. In one of its conclusions this study (which covered Ireland as well as the rest of the EU) found “.. that there were no negative labour market effects of immigration on natives and hence confirm the results obtained in other countries such as the US or Canada.”