A former Lord Mayor of Dublin has told how he and his son had to fight for their lives – after they were attacked by a racist mob in a London hotel.
Councillor Nial Ring and his son Emmet were attacked by a gang in the lobby of their hotel in the city on Tuesday night - as they returned from watching Chelsea beat Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League knockout stage.
Mr Ring was knocked to the ground when a thug hit him on the head with a bottle – but the local politician says he had to get straight back up and fight for his life.
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“I had to get up because your survival instinct takes over" he told Joe Duffy on RTÉ Radio One’s Liveline today.
“We literally had to fight our way out of that corner.
“I also have a good few bruises on my knuckles unfortunately - I didn’t think at my age I would ever have again.”
The horror attack began on Tuesday night when Mr Ring and Emmet returned to their hotel after attending the face-off in west London’s Stamford Bridge – and they were immediately subjected to anti-Irish abuse.
Mr Ring told Joe Duffy: “Myself and Emmett, we went over to the Chelsea match, Chelsea v Dortmund, I hadn’t been there in a good while - I’m a Shels fan first, then Chelsea.
“We went to the match, met a few of the Irish lads there, a bit of craic in the local pubs and that.
“We were on our way back to our hotel and we just popped into the lobby for a pint.
“The two of us were sitting down, Emmet went up to get a drink.”
And that, Mr Ring said, was when their ordeal started.
He said: “I noticed he was having an altercation with a chap.
“I immediately got up and said ‘look, come on, leave this.’
“It turned out yer man had been (saying) Eff off back to Ireland, you Irish pigs.
“I said ‘Emmet we are getting out of here, just let’s get out’ and then another guy in his mid 40s - I remember them form the eighties in London, the sort of National Front type guys – starts shouting stuff across at us.
“We had no way out except to go past them so I said, ‘Look just calm down and everything will be okay’.
“But this fella came over, started arguing again, mouthing.
“Then I sort of moved aside and started trying to say 'look leave it’.
“Next thing he hits Emmet full smack in the face.
“Emmet went backwards, I turned around and next thing from another groups one fella threw a bottle and hit me on the head.”
Mr Ring, who is based in north inner city Dublin as a long serving councillor, said he fell back - and another attacker joined in.
He said: “There was blood all over the place and next thing the other fella waded in and started throwing digs.
“We had to respond and suddenly there were four of them – we are trying to fight our way out.”
Mr Ring said the police then arrived – after what felt like an eternity.
He said they brought him to hospital for his head wound – and he and Emmett also had facial injuries.
He said the police asked if the wanted to press charges against two men who had been arrested at the scene - but he and Emmet just wanted to get home.
He said: “We were saying no we just want to get out of here - it was a horrible experience, a xenophobic attack, we just want to forget about it.
“I was in the hospital for about an hour or so and one of the police came in and said, ‘look we have actually looked at the CCTV – a totally unprovoked attack on you.’
“At one stage one of them had a chair raised over his head and was about to throw it down on my head but for whatever reason I had moved aside just in the melee and the chair hit the floor.”
The police then said they were charging the suspects – and wanted Mr Ring and Emmet to make statements.
Mr Ring said he was speaking about his ordeal because he has no doubt it was a racist attack – and is afraid of similar incidents happening in Ireland now.
He said: “The police over there said they are seeing more and more of that. All that anti-immigrant rhetoric going on in the UK has got these National Front guys riled up.
“We have to make sure that doesn’t happen here.
“I would hate to think of anybody in our country sitting in a pub having a quiet drink and just because they have a different accent they are attacked.
“That’s exactly what happened to us - it was just so clear.
“We were Irish, these guys didn’t like Irish or anybody else for that matter
We were called Irish everythings and it was ‘get back to your country’.”
Mr Ring said he heard similar chants in anti immigrant protests in Dublin.
He said: “You hear it here in some of the protests: out, out, out – that’s what it was.
“If it can happen in the UK because they are stirring it up against immigrants and they did it with Brexit and everything, it can happen here, the way this far right has infiltrated some legitimate concerns of people in areas with people coming in.”
And he added: “I thought the days of 'no Irish, no blacks, no dogs" were well gone in England.”
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