Shell compound occupied for 9 hours – third action in two days

10th June 2011
Wednes­day and Thurs­day saw a seri­ous of occu­pa­tions and actions against the drilling com­pound at Aghoos in Mayo as part of the ongo­ing cam­paign against Shell. The events cul­mi­nat­ed in an eight-hour lock-on and a nine hour occu­pa­tion of machin­ery which stopped all work for the day. Over thir­ty peo­ple were involved in the events. UK and oth­er inter­na­tion­al cam­paign­ers joined Irish activist as part of the days of action.

Shell com­pound occu­pied for 9 hours – third action in two days

Yes­ter­day, thir­ty activists, includ­ing an inter­na­tion­al pres­ence, took the Shell com­pound at Augh­oose where they are doing prepa­ra­tion work for the con­tro­ver­sial pipeline that will run high pres­sure gas through com­mu­ni­ties in North West­ern Ire­land. Three indi­vid­u­als man­aged to make it onto machin­ery while oth­ers closed the main gain with a lock-on. The result was no work done for the entire day. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed, all of whom are now released though some have been charged.

The action was done from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp which cur­rent­ly occu­pies a field on the oth­er side of the road from where Shell are work­ing. Plan­ning start­ed the night before, peo­ple want­i­ng to build on the reg­u­lar actions that have been tak­ing place over the last few months since the camp has been in place.

On Wednes­day, there had been anoth­er, short­er occu­pa­tion of the site dur­ing the day. How­ev­er, in the won­der­ful way these things hap­pen, a sec­ond vis­it to the site to do recon­nais­sance for Thurs­day’s protest turned into an action in its own right…

So, Thurs­day, 7.30am – a large group of peo­ple move across the field to the road and begin breach­ing the com­pound at numer­ous places. They found a large, frankly scary look­ing lock-on dropped off in front of the main gates, despite the pres­ence of fif­teen secu­ri­ty guards from IRMS try­ing to secure the access. Two peo­ple, “Bread” & “Jam” prompt­ly made use of this gift to attach them­selves to it.

Peo­ple swarmed every­where, mak­ing good use of their access as secu­ri­ty locked them­selves down in their cen­tral com­pound behind lines of har­ris fenc­ing, though that was no obsta­cle. Indeed, the only work that Shell did today was build­ing a sor­ry pile of man­gled fences.

Numer­ous peo­ple made it through the lines of guards to occu­py var­i­ous machin­ery and struc­tures, includ­ing the roof of the por­tak­abins. Three clam­bered onto the drilling and dig­ging machin­ery that the days’ work would have depend­ed on. Of these, one was lied to about not being arrest­ed on com­ing down so oth­er two, who were on the sam­pling drill and the large dig­ger, remained there for the next nine hours. By that time vic­to­ry was clear­ly in the hand of the pro­test­ers and they came down of their own accord.

In all this exu­ber­ance, all bar one of the win­dows of the house Shell own down the road decid­ed to shat­ter in sol­i­dar­i­ty.

Mean­while, back at the main road, the campers pro­vid­ed sup­port to those locked-on. Police blocked off the road. The cut­ting team turned up at 10.15am and after a lot of head-scratch­ing start­ed cut­ting at 11am. The god of lock-on’s had pro­vid­ed them a fair headache and it took anoth­er four hours before they man­aged to extract Jam. By the time that Bread was cut-out the lock-on had been in place for eight hours.

All five peo­ple arrest­ed were tak­en to Bel­mul­let Gar­dai sta­tion. The two who were locked on were charged with not fol­low­ing police instruc­tions and for obstruc­tion. The oth­er three who were on the machin­ery were let go with­out charge for that, though one was sub­se­quent­ly re-arrest­ed for a pre­vi­ous action. Sup­port will con­tin­ue.

In all, a fan­tas­tic day out, espe­cial­ly with the rain hold­ing off until the action was over.

For more infor­ma­tion on the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and the cam­paign against Shell see
www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org