Calls grow to cancel Nationalist festival in Leitrim amid hate speech concerns

A Nationalist festival planned for Drumshanbo this August has sparked warnings from trade unions and anti-fascist groups that it could serve as a platform for hate speech.

The Mise Éire festival, which is billed as a music and folk festival for “those who cherish Irish culture, heritage, and are united in celebrating our shared values,” will take place in the Mayflower Community Centre in Drumshanbo at the end of August.

Though concerns have been raised that the event, which was granted a bar licence last week, could be used as a platform for right-wing writers and anti-immigration activists to potentially spread discriminatory views or hate speech in Leitrim.

Local Concerns

“We are a very proud county, and we show everyone dignity and respect, and this is not aligned with our values in Leitrim,” said Derek Kelleher, Leitrim native and Fórsa Assistant General Secretary for Local Government Division West/Northwest.

Fórsa, the largest trade union for public service members in the country, has expressed its concern that the event will be held in Leitrim.

The union says its members have experienced abuse in the past during actions carried out at libraries around the country by individuals aligned with the movement they feel the festival represents.

“We have concerns about the whole event. The whole event includes the people that are coming, the false presentation of what it is, and the possible negative impact that has been seen from this type of behaviour, and in other local communities,” said Kelleher.

“I don't want to see people coming in, to actually stoke up fear in people,” he says, adding his belief that the public has genuine concerns around issues of housing and immigration, but that this type of behaviour isn’t the way to deal with those fears.

“There are ways and means of dealing with it through your trade union movement, through your community movement, through the political system, as hard as people may think it is to make change, but not with hate speech, isolating people, and intimidation, with cameras in your face, and being pushed to say something.”

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Scheduled to speak at the event is a growing list of right-wing activists and thinkers, notably John Waters, former Irish Times journalist and anti-immigration advocate.

Waters has publicly taken an anti-immigration stance and has advocated the great replacement theory, stating on his Substack that Africans and Middle Easterners can never be Irish, and “are aliens who have no place or business here. At their hands, Ireland would soon unbecome itself, and lapse into rapid regression.”

Organisers determined

The event is organised by Stephan Kerr, an anti-immigration activist, former candidate for Mayo County Council in 2024, and operator of the right-wing website The Irish Inquiry. Kerr was approached for an interview but was unavailable at this time; however, he has stressed that he is “committed to ensuring the festival is a positive and inclusive event for all.”

Calls have come from the online group Leitrim and Roscommon against Fascism (LARAF) for the committee of the Mayflower Community Centre to cancel the event, which they say will act as a national gathering of the far right with public endorsements for the festival coming from prominent far-right figures, like Ferg Power, who was named in the Dáil as a key figure in the Dublin city riots of 2023.

“The whole thing, it will confer upon them a level of respectability that they have not enjoyed to date,” says a spokesperson for LARAF. “If you look at the public record, there is literally no similar event that has been held in this country on the part of the far right in a real nice hall, in a nice organised way with a big audience and so on. It's just never happened.”

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There have been calls for the event to be cancelled; however, Seán Wynne, chairman of the Mayflower committee, has said that the board will hold to its decision on the festival, and that it will go ahead.

“This is just a question of making life difficult and a process to see would we collapse. And I make no mistake about it. In the next, whatever, it's a month from now, every effort will be made and every hand grenade in a verbal sense and in a media sense will be used,” says Wynne, who has previously managed the European Parliament campaign for John Waters, who is scheduled to speak at the event.

Though he is not familiar with all the speakers that are coming, he is determined that the event should go ahead on the grounds of free speech. And is critical of the online discourse around the event and those organising it.

“If people can't discuss something in a civilised manner, then God help us all, if they should ever get control, then I'm afraid there'll be a lot of gulags; it just won't be for Russia.”

"A fast one"

LARAF have said Wynne “pulled a fast one” on committee members when booking the event - a claim he vehemently denies.

He says that the Mayflower committee members were “Absolutely” made aware of the nature of the festival, “as a folk festival with speakers,” before it was booked, and the claims to the contrary are “a technique to divide and conquer.”

However, Brendan Barry, Leitrim county councillor, who also serves as a director on the board of the Mayflower Community Centre, has said that the board was not made aware that there would be political speakers at the event, and that there was only a passing mention of the music festival prior to its booking.

“There was no way that it was made known to us what it was,” says Cllr Barry. “No one on the committee was aware of the full details or who was involved with organising the music festival until it was advertised - only Sean Wynne.”

A board meeting was held last week to discuss the event and to find out more details about it, and decided that they could not cancel it as a deposit had been taken, he says.

“There was no vote, but the general consensus was that it had gone too bloody far and we couldn’t call it off.”

“I would have concerns about the type of people who would be going to this and what they may be inciting in the different talks and discussions that go on there,” he says. “I have no issue with promoting Irish culture or heritage or music, but I don’t feel that this festival is about that; it has a hidden agenda to spread fear and hate and misinformation,” Cllr Barry said.