Rossport: A Tripod, A Lock-On And A Compound Infiltration

Sun­day June 28th saw the most intense burst of direct action against Shell in Erris so far in this phase of the cam­paign to thwart the Great Gas Rob­bery and the destruc­tion of Erris along with its com­mu­ni­ty. A tri­pod on a road bridge near McGrath’s Bar held up vital repair gear for the pipeline winch­ing oper­a­tion for over four hours. This was fol­lowed up by a five-per­son lock-on on the same road a bit near­er the Shell com­pound. Togeth­er, they delayed winch­ing oper­a­tions for twelve hours, and there were nine arrests in all. Mean­while, three Sol­i­dar­i­ty Campers man­aged to sneak into the Shell com­pound at Glen­gad and get out with­out being arrest­ed.

At about two o’clock Sun­day lunchtime a Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp action team erect­ed a tri­pod on the road to Shel­l’s Glen­gad com­pound, upon a bridge near McGrath’s Bar in Pul­lath­omas. This action was exe­cut­ed on foot of infor­ma­tion received that the winch gear in Shel­l’s com­pound had bro­ken down and need­ed replace­ment parts and extra gear, all of which was to arrive on a truck con­voy trav­el­ling the Pul­lath­omas road to Glen­gad. The first Gar­da car on the scene revved up attempt­ed to ram the tri­pod, and this reck­less endan­ger­ment of the tri­pod occu­pi­er was pre­vent­ed only by a brave camper stand­ing before the appa­ra­tus and com­pelling the Gar­da car to stop. The car touched against the shins of the camper as it stopped, once again illus­trat­ing the mad­ness of a mur­der-mind­ed police force drunk on impuni­ty.

Hav­ing cau­tioned the tri­pod occu­pi­er under the pub­lic order act, the Gar­dai then went on to declare an ‘exclu­sion zone’ and then rough­ly pushed out his com­pan­ions off the road under threat of arrest. They found refuge from Gar­da harass­ment in an adja­cent field, and from there kept vig­il over their col­league, who was being con­tin­u­al­ly endan­gered by igno­rant med­dling by the Gar­dai on the scene with the tri­pod appa­ra­tus. Local peo­ple and campers began to arrive to sup­port the tri­pod occu­pi­er, get­ting as close to him as they could in the fields at either side of the road.

One Gar­da com­mit­ted an unpro­voked assault on a Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camper on the road about 100m away from the tri­pod, trip­ping him, gash­ing his hand bad­ly and also leav­ing him with a bad chest injury. Gar­dai began attempt­ing to arrest any­one who entered the road any­where near the tri­pod, arrest­ing three peo­ple with­out giv­ing them any chance to leave vol­un­tar­i­ly. One of the arrestees was act­ing as a recorder of inci­dents; his log book was seized by the cops in anoth­er act of cyn­i­cal impuni­ty. The arrests were con­duct­ed with no lit­tle vio­lence on the part of the Gar­dai.

In a bizarre inter­lude dur­ing this action, a table and desk was pro­duced from a horse­box-type trail­er the Gar­dai brought to the scene, and four cops in blue hard-hats pro­ceed­ed to fill in forms on the table. Screens were then erect­ed around the tri­pod area in a futile attempt to pre­vent pho­tograph­ing or film­ing of Gar­da activ­i­ty. The Gar­dai present attempt­ed to ques­tion the tri­pod occu­pi­er as if he were already arrest­ed and in cus­tody in a Gar­da sta­tion, which struck many wit­ness­es as an abuse of pro­ce­dure.

An hour-and-a-half after the tri­pod was erect­ed, a truck from AGS Scaf­fold­ing Ltd. from Cross­moli­na arrived at the McGrath’s Bar side of the tri­pod. Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the AGS stands for Antho­ny Gill Scaf­fold­ing, and Antho­ny Gill is the broth­er of Gar­da Sgt James Gill, an ever-present men­ace to the cit­i­zens of Erris. Fur­ther­more, from the nature of the equip­ment the scaf­fold­ers brought with them and the man­ner in which the scaf­fold­ers worked with the cops, it can be rea­son­ably sus­pect­ed that this com­pa­ny’s per­son­nel have trained along­side Gar­dai for this kind of ‘work’.

After two hours or so of plat­form build­ing by the scaf­fold­ers two Gar­da detec­tives climbed up and began to remove the tri­pod occu­pi­er. The man­ner in which they effect­ed the arrest was cal­cu­lat­ed to inflict injury and dis­played a lev­el of petu­lant spite­ful­ness that the peo­ple of Kil­com­mon and sur­round­ing parish­es have endured for far too long. The tri­pod suc­cess­ful­ly blocked the road for near­ly four hours and the dis­man­tling of the scaf­fold­ing plat­form must have added anoth­er 90 min­utes of road block­age to this.

With­in an hour of the tri­pod being dis­man­tled and before the truck con­voy could get any far­ther, a lock-on team from the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp got into posi­tion on the road only 300m or so from the gates of the Shell com­pound. Even though it was rain­ing steadi­ly in the evening gloom, the Gar­dai sup­plied only an insuf­fi­cient quan­ti­ty of cov­er for the pro­tes­tors, who were soaked to the skin with­in min­utes of lock­ing-on. Sup­port­ers from the camp and the local area began to gath­er at the site, and then about an hour into the action, the num­ber of Gar­dai began increas­ing. The Gar­dai used their num­bers to begin pro­gres­sive­ly push­ing peo­ple back using threats of arrest under the pub­lic order act, and once again erect­ed screens and tents to block the view of peo­ple sup­port­ing the lock-on team, and to frus­trate film­ing and pho­tograph­ing of their actions.

The Gar­dai assent­ed to allow­ing an observ­er to remain with the lock-on team, but then cyn­i­cal­ly removed her under the pre­tence of arrest­ing her for the ‘crime’ of hav­ing a mobile phone passed to her from an out­side sup­port­er. She was searched (no doubt ille­gal­ly), dragged out and put into a Gar­da van for almost a quar­ter of an hour, and was then released from Gar­da cap­tiv­i­ty. The cops then pro­ceed­ed to begin cut­ting out the lock-on team.

The lock-on was dis­as­sem­bled final­ly only at around a quar­ter to two on Mon­day morn­ing. By this time, the two actions on the road had delayed Shell by a full twelve hours. It had also spoiled the plans and pricked the arro­gance of Shel­l’s cops, who were seri­al­ly out­wit­ted by brave and com­mit­ted Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers. The tri­pod action arrestees and two of the five lock-on arrestees were brought to Bal­li­na Gar­da sta­tion, and the oth­er three lock-on arrestees were brought to Castle­bar Gar­da sta­tion. At the time of writ­ing the four tri­pod arrestees have been remand­ed in Gar­da cus­tody and will be up in West­port dis­trict court lat­er today. It is not yet known whether the oth­er five have been remand­ed or released.

Mean­while on Sun­day evening as the lock-on action was hap­pen­ing, three Sol­i­dar­i­ty Campers drove into the Shell com­pound when the met­al front gates were opened for oth­er traf­fic, util­is­ing the tech­nique of ‘social cam­ou­flage’ to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed. The campers got to the sec­ond inter­nal set of gates and were about to have them opened for them when they were recog­nised. Gar­dai threat­ened to tow the car out, but even­tu­al­ly the campers were allowed to dri­ve out and were not arrest­ed. With the kayak team mak­ing the Soli­taire run away on Thurs­day evening and now this pen­e­tra­tion of the Glen­gad Shell com­pound, not only are the mer­ce­nary ‘secu­ri­ty firm’ IRMS fas­cist scum, they are crap fas­cist scum too!