Herman Kelly, the President and founder of the Irish Freedom Party, visited Trinity today to help student efforts to set up a Trinity branch of the party.
Kelly, who founded the Irish Freedom Party after organising an Irexit conference that was attended by Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, spent time in the College with Con Óg O’Laoghaire, one of the students attempting to gain official society status for the party from the Central Societies Committee (CSC).
Speaking to The University Times today, Kelly said that he hoped the Trinity branch of the party would “be focused on advocating the policies of the party and having free debate on political ideas at Trinity College” and that members would discuss freedom of speech, personal responsibility, personal freedom and “a greener Ireland but opposed to the carbon tax scam”.
He added: “As universities are traditionally the seedbed of the ideas for the future, I think it’s very important to be at the university.”
When asked about what his party stands for Kelly said that it believes “in national, democratic self-determination” and described the party as “economically liberal, socially more conservative, patriotic, nationalist”.
“We were under the British Empire before – didn’t work out well. That was a political union with Britain formed under threat and bribery”, he said.
“But now we’re in a political union with Brussels and it means that people we didn’t elect that we can’t get rid of have the power to impose laws upon us, and there’s nothing that we can do.”
Kelly ran for a seat in the European elections this year, but was knocked out in the fourth count.
O’Laoghaire, one of the Trinity students heading up the new branch, told The University Times that he was currently trying to gather the 200 signatures needed to become a recognised party in Trinity.
When asked about the reception he has received when gathering signatures in freshers’ fair, O’Laoghaire said: “Most students don’t really know what this pertains to. I do go over the core tenets of the party and then most of the time they’re happy to just sign it.”
O’Laoghaire said that he had emailed the CSC about the new party branch on Monday morning but had not received a response.
“It’s been a whole working week now”, he said, “so hopefully we’ll get a response next week”.
O’Laoghaire represented the Irish Freedom Party at a debate between political parties organised by the Trinity Politics Society on Tuesday.
In an adversarial speech at the event, O’Laoghaire launched an attack on many forms of modern life: from social media’s perils to internet news, which he described as “psychological warfare”.
