During the later stages of the English soccer premiership last season a crucial match was taking place involving Manchester United. If you lived near the junction of Aungier Street and Digges Street at the time you could not have been unaware of the event as chanting from the nearby Aungier House pub could be heard throughout the day.
It was clear that punters in "The Aungier" overwhelmingly supported the "Reds" as continual chants of "Uni-ted, Uni-ted, Uni-ted", "Come on you Reeds, come on you Re-eds" reverberated through the concrete canyon that is Aungier Street. Although my late father was an avid United supporter, I am not a fan, but I thoroughly enjoyed the communal, carnival atmosphere on the street. Occasionally, passing by the fevered cauldron of the "The Aungier" that Saturday, I picked my way past the locals who had spilled onto the street - indigenous inner-city Dubliners, some of whose families had lived in the area for generations.
Patch of tarmac
Just behind "The Aungier" lies a patch of tarmac which is a hallowed football arena for local youths. The current feeding frenzy for inner-city land is such that it is one of the few remaining plots of land left for local kids to play on. The "pitch" itself is surrounded on three sides by high walls, and football is played right up until the time the floodlights are turned off shortly after 10 p.m. Writ large on the walls of this "pitch" in huge letters are the names of great international football teams: Holland, Germany, Italy and . . . Yorker (named after nearby York Street), which is, perhaps, the star local team that plays against the giants of the football world in the imagination and dreams of local children.
There is little other local entertainment. Whereas in Belfast, even in the most deprived areas, you can find huge leisure centres for public use, here there is nothing. It is as if nobody in public life believes that funds should be allocated for the like of leisure centres in the inner-city unemployment blackspots of Dublin. And this despite the overwhelming evidence of the deadly seduction of drugs in the absence of jobs and amenities.
Indeed, even the few public facilities that were provided in past years have been grievously depleted. Markiewicz pool in Townsend Street has gone, as did some years ago the Iveagh baths, which is now an upmarket gymnasium and pool. The Bricklayer's Hall in Cuffe Street had its bricks individually numbered before being demolished with the promise that it would be rebuilt. That was many years ago but we are still waiting for the return of the numbered bricks.
And the area has now lost, or is in the process of losing, its local hospitals - the Meath, Harcourt Street Children's hospital and the Adelaide - which are being moved out to Tallaght, way beyond the canals. The closure plan was devised well before thousands were induced to move to the city centre through "designated areas" tax incentives.
Mixed community
But back to the match. Throughout the day of the big game I occasionally tuned in to the sound of the celebrations coming from "The Aungier". I was glad then that I had moved back to the area I had myself grown up in. I was in a living, breathing, bustling mixed community. I felt home.
As for the result of the match, United won. The championship was theirs again and the noise level outside registered that fact. The day had been a truly joyous occasion for the locals from York Street, Mercer House, Cuffe Street, Bishop Street, Kevin Street and other adjacent blocks of flats.
But as closing time came I heard something that moved me greatly. It did not concern the great star teams in the constellation of football but was this simple refrain which wafted in my window from below: "You'll ne-ver beat the Aungier. You'll ne-ver beat the Aungier. You'll ne-ver beat the Aungier."
Despite all the enthusiasm for Manchester United, at evening's end the punters' hearts turned to the area's own team, Aungier Celtic. But the chant had poignant echoes too. In a way it seemed to me that they were circling their wagons and shouting defiance as their beleaguered community fought to preserve itself against the financial feeding frenzy that was buying up and changing all around them, making strange the familiar. But, alas, all was in vain.
Last month "they" eventually beat The Aungier. The very last orders were called and the doors are now forever closed. The place is to be knocked down so new apartments can be built. Soon, word has it, the football pitch too will go. What then for the locals? Could we not legislate for a minimum of space to be set aside for social and recreational purposes, so much per thousand of the population, perhaps?
Warning voice
One voice was heard recently sounding the alarm on the working-class flight from the city centre. Cllr Eric Byrne of Democratic Left referred to the "ethnic cleansing" of the inner city. He is wrong in one sense and right in another. Yes, the indigenous population is under pressure, but the term "ethnic cleansing" applies when competing nations or races are involved: in this case there is only one ethnic/national group.
Yet in another sense Eric Byrne may be absolutely right. Perhaps the polarisation in our society between rich and poor is such that the term "ethnic cleansing" is in a reasonable metaphor for the plantation of the inner city by young, affluent apartment-dwellers and the replacement of an old urban way of life and culture by a newer, wealthier one.
Is it not time to inject a social dimension into "urban regeneration"? Or are the "Townies" to be squeezed and squeezed so the only option left is to move to the poor townships of West Dublin? From Left Bank to West Bank.
Are we to allow the diminution of the indigenous inner-city population through the cruel imperatives of the free market? Prices go up and the poor are pushed out. Progress? At any price? Like their hospitals, are the people of Dublin's inner city consigned to go to Hell or to Tallaght?