Category: Rest of Europe

23rd Feb 2010
Round up of events in Dublin and a per­son­al view of the progress of the cam­paign

The week before last Erris fish­er­man Pat O’Don­nell was jailed for sev­en months for his part in the com­mu­ni­ties ongo­ing resis­tance to Shel­l’s attempt to impose an exper­i­men­tal gas pipeline on them. Across the coun­try local Shell to Sea groups have been hold­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty protests and oth­er events for Pat. In Dublin this has includ­ed two protests and a pub­lic meet­ing in UCD. Mean­while Shell have been forced to admit a tem­po­rary defeat in the face of local oppo­si­tion and call off the con­struc­tion they have planned for Glen­gad this year.

The first of the Dublin protests was Tues­day last week when cam­paign­ers gath­ered out­side Shell HQ to high­light the role of Shell in Pat’s jail­ing. Because Pat has the fish­ing rights along the pipeline route he has been repeat­ed­ly tar­get­ed for deten­tion when­ev­er Shell has need­ed to car­ry out con­struc­tion work. And back in June, just before the arrival of Shel­l’s pipeline ship the Soli­taire, Pat’s boat was board­ed at night by four armed and masked men and sunk, an event rem­i­nis­cent of how oil cor­po­ra­tions have dealt with local protests around the world.

On Wednes­day a well attend­ed pub­lic meet­ing was held in UCD, speak­ers include Andy Storey chair­per­son of Afri (http://www.afri.ie/), Caoimhe Kerins from Dublin Shell to Sea and Mau­ra Har­ring­ton, who like Pat has been impris­oned for resist­ing Shel­l’s exper­i­men­tal gas pipeline. A report and pic­tures from that meet­ing can be found at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/95771 Below I’ve attached audio record­ings of the meet­ing includ­ing the ques­tion and answer ses­sions after the speak­ers pre­sen­ta­tions.

On Sat­ur­day Dublin Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers joined friends of Pat’s who had trav­eled from Mayo for a protest at the GPO. Ban­ners high­light­ed not only the injus­tice of Pat’s impris­on­ment but also the fact that the Irish state is giv­ing bil­lions of gas & oil to the ener­gy cor­po­ra­tions with­out them pay­ing any roy­al­ties. This at a time when health, edu­ca­tion and pay is being slashed to save a tiny per­cent­age of the sums that are to be giv­en away. Thou­sands of the ‘Some­day Inde­pen­dent’, the leaflet that explains the issues around the cam­paign in detail were dis­trib­uted to the pub­lic dur­ing the protest. This is a 30 sec­ond video of this protest at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE-irZ-0CFA

Before the protest anoth­er 1,000 copies had been dis­trib­uted door to door in the Lib­er­ties. You can read the text of the leaflet at http://www.dublins2s.com/content/120000-all-facts-leafl…buted

Three years ago Shell thought it was all over. The mil­lions spent on the media cam­paign along with the fact that most of the media is either state owned or owned by those who are also in oil & gas explo­ration meant that all crit­i­cal voic­es in the press had been silenced. The Gar­dai use of vio­lence against protests had been used to smash and demor­al­ize the oppo­si­tion in the area allow­ing refin­ery con­struc­tion to pro­ceed with only the occa­sion­al inter­rup­tion. It appears at that point it was decid­ed the gloves could come off to smash those who were still hold­ing out and hun­dreds of pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards were deployed who intim­i­dat­ed, abused and videoed local res­i­dents. Pat O’Don­nel­l’s boat was sunk at sea and Willie Cor­duff was beat­en in the Shell com­pound at Glen­gad. These tac­tics back­fired in the Spring when it was dis­cov­ered that not only were some of these secu­ri­ty from east Euro­pean fas­cist organ­i­sa­tions but that sev­er­al had been involved in an attempt to spark a civ­il war in Bolivia, see http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92865

Resis­tance is fer­tile

Despite the ongo­ing attempt to sup­press and silence the cam­paign spir­its are high. The pres­sure cre­at­ed by the cam­paign meant that An Bord Pleanala felt unable to rub­ber stamp Shel­l’s plan’s for run­ning the exper­i­men­tal gas pipeline through the vil­lage of Ross­port and instead point­ed out the obvi­ous safe­ty issues that cam­paign­ers had been high­light­ing for years (e.g. peo­ple liv­ing in the blast zone) and gave Shell two months to address these. Of course when Shell proved unable to do so that dead­line was extend­ed for a fur­ther four months but this has forced Shell to call off con­struc­tion at Glen­gad this sum­mer.

This is a sig­nif­i­cant if tem­po­rary vic­to­ry over Shell but Dublin Shell to Sea spokesper­son Caoimhe Kerins warned that “Although this announce­ment is a sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ry for the local com­mu­ni­ty, oth­er major works will still be going ahead, while fish­er­man Pat O’Donnell is out of Shell’s way in prison. This means that 2010 is set to be anoth­er year of dis­rup­tion for the com­mu­ni­ty, con­tin­ued harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion by Gar­dai and Shell secu­ri­ty, as well as the unlaw­ful arrest and the tar­get­ed jail­ing of key cam­paign­ers. There are no options left for Shell, except to process the gas at sea, which is stan­dard prac­tice around the world. This is what local peo­ple have been demand­ing for almost a decade. It’s still not to late to do the right thing.”

The An Bord Pleanala deci­sion has also start­ed to break apart Shel­l’s well fund­ed media cam­paign with some of the more coura­geous jour­nal­ists dar­ing to stand up to Shell and pub­lish arti­cles ques­tion­ing the project. As might be expect­ed these jour­nal­ists are now being tar­get­ed in the media for doing so. Shell them­selves seem scared of debat­ing the issues with Shell to Sea, at least two TV debates have been can­celed due to Shell or pro-Shell jour­nal­ists pulling out at the last minute in recent weeks.

As the scale of the Great Oil & Gas give­away has been revealed more and more peo­ple are tak­ing a stand against Shell. In the last cou­ple of months new Shell to Sea groups have sprung up around the coun­try, the recent­ly formed Kil­dare group has been leaflet­ting in Kil­dare town. You can help in a wide range of ways from sim­ple things like send­ing a sol­i­dar­i­ty let­ter to Pat in prison to let him know he is not alone to get­ting copies of the ‘Some­day Inde­pen­dent’ off Dublin Shell to Sea (con­tact details on their web site) to join­ing or form­ing a local Shell to Sea group to do this and more.

Please write to Pat in prison. His address is: Pat O’Don­nell, Castlerea Prison, Har­ris­town, Castlerea,Co.Roscommon. Alter­na­tive­ly you can email mayoshelltosea@gmail.com and they will pass on your email to Pat. The Dublin Shell to Sea page can be found at http://www.dublins2s.com/

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/cat/rossport