The seige of Rossport

The government, led by a Prime Minister who has recently been mired in accusations of gifts from big business, sends in riot police to suppress peaceful community protests in order to facilitate a large multinational.

The national media give only the multinational and government’s side of the story. Those protesting – elderly people, women and children among them – are violently dragged off the roads. The community pleads that it is under occupation.
This story is not from Mexico, Nigeria or Thailand, but from Ireland – and it’s happening right now in the small community of Rossport in North Mayo.
For over two weeks, locals in the area have been under siege from hundreds of members of the so-called ‘guardians of the peace’, An Garda Síochána, including riot police and even the fully armed Emergency Response Unit. Their crime has been to peacefully protest against the consortium of Shell and Statoil’s plans to build a gas terminal refinery for gas from the Corrib Field at Ballinaboy, in Rossport itself. If the refinery is built, raw gas will be brought on shore at what many consider to be dangerous levels of pressure, within seventy metres of people’s houses.
Locals are extremely concerned about potential pipeline ruptures and explosions.
Given the horror stories of large numbers of injuries and even fatalities as a result of recent gas pipe explosions in Holland and Mexico, you could hardly blame them.
HOSPITAL TREATMENT
Last summer five local men, now known as the ‘Rossport 5’ were jailed for 94 days for opposing the pipeline. Thousands marched in their support: as a result, Shell, Statoil and the government backed down and they were released. Since then sections of the media have given the impression that the proposed pipeline is being re-routed and only a handful of local people remain in opposition to the project.
But the truth, so often hidden in the flam of mainstream media coverage, is that no change at all has been made to the proposed route and opposition is as strong as ever to the proposed on-shore terminal at Ballinaboy.
The determination of the local community was clearly evident in their peaceful picket at the Shell site at Ballinaboy, which has been maintained for the last sixteen months.
Things turned nasty however on October 3rd this year when hundreds of Gardai, accompanied by a riot squad and armed back-up, were sent to clear the protestors off the road, and facilitate Shell’s resumption of work at Ballinaboy.
Micheál O Seighin, one of the Rossport Five, takes a very graphic view of the potential role of the Gardai.
“This means that (the Gardai in charge of the operation) Commissioner Conroy and the Chief Superintendent were prepared to have us killed,” says O Seighin. “Gunmen are deployed to shoot and not to sing lullabies – just look at Abbeylara. The crowds, in spite of our anger, did not give the invading force an excuse to use their guns.”
In just two weeks of the Garda siege, at least three locals have had to get hospital treatment and many more have received minor injuries. Women have been battered on the ground while men have been arrested. Numerous incidents have been logged by monitors.
Vincent McGrath, another one five men who spent 94 days in jail last year, emphasizes the intensity of State intimidation and harassment. “We have a back-log of complaints against the Gardai,” says Vincent. “At least 20 incidents have been documented, including some physical injuries and some verbal threats such as the Gardai saying to campaigners that they will ‘shut them up’ and ‘take care of them’.”
Vincent says the community is effectively under occupation.
“We have never seen anything like it here. Riot vans, with grills on the screens, are driving around quiet country roads. The riot vans went into one small village of seven houses, three times in one day. We are being followed and harassed by the occupying forces of our own state – the Gardai.”
Friday the 13th of October was unlucky for Shell to Sea campaigner and local schoolteacher Maura Harrington. Maura, an outspoken opponent of the Corrib project since the beginning, was attending the early morning protest at the proposed gas refinery site at Bellinaboy. Accounts of what happened vary – but what is clear is that she was pushed over by Gardai and had to be hospitalised.
“It was an unprovoked attack by the Gardai without any warning,” says Maura. “I was standing holding a cross bearing the names of the Ogoni Nine who were hanged by the Nigerian government for opposing Shell exploitation in that country. I was upright one minute and the next I was sent flying back in the air. I wasn’t a threat to anyone – I’m only six and a half stone. They know what they did was outside the law.”

OVERTIME BILL
The parallels between the abuses and destruction in Nigeria and the worsening situation in Mayo are being made increasingly difficult to deny by the continuing deployment of State police as a private army.
“I’m rattled, shaken and shook,” says Maura. “This is a frightening development in a country listed as a democracy because it certainly isn’t a democracy here in North West Mayo. It’s reminiscent of Thatcher’s Britain, and of the violent reaction against the Civil Rights Movement in North in the late ‘60s. Let no one think this is just a local issue.”
Some members of the police are particularly comfortable with expressing their contempt for the campaigners with one especially truculent garda being accused of telling a local resident: “I’ll shut your fuckin’ mouth for you, I’ve got your number, I’ll take you out of it”.
On Thursday of week two of the siege Jerry Cowley, Independent TD for Mayo, publicly questioned the cost to the tax payer of the deployment of hundreds of Gardai, just to escort Shell contractors into the terminal site at Bellinaboy. Unfortunately other TDs – notably Fine Gael leader and Mayo TD Enda Kenny – and Labour Party leader Pat Rabbbite, who is from Mayo – have all been silent as lambs and have refused to support the campaigners.
Dr Cowley pointed out that the overtime bill for the Gardaí, just for the fortnight, amounted to €750,000 – a figure provided by the Department of Justice. At that rate, if the protest, as seems likely, continues for months, the full garda bill for protecting Shell will run into hundreds millions of euro and every cent will be paid for taxpayers.
Campaigners, meanwhile, are not impressed at the arrest, at the protests, of three fishermen. These arrests came a day after the Erris Inshore Fishermen’s Association issued a statement criticising the Government’s deployment of gardaí to facilitate Shell. Campaigners now believe that more arrests will happen so that the Gardai can justify both their continued presence and heavy-handed tactics.
Contrary to the general portrayal in the media, the Shell to Sea campaign is supported by a majority of local people and by a significant proportion of the public at large. An opinion poll carried out for Nuacht TG4 last month showed that six out of ten people in Mayo think that the Corrib Gas Terminal should be located offshore. Less that a quarter think that it should be built at the planned Bellinaboy site.
The Poll also showed that two thirds of the people questioned supported the stand being taken by the Rossport Five. Only one in five disagreed with their stance.
Vincent McGrath is very worried that if this project goes through in Mayo, then communities all over the country will feel unable to object to bad planning or developments being put in against their will as they will fear that hundreds of cops will be sent in to enforce decisions. “That is why it is important for people from around the country to support us,” he says. “The issue of the give-away of our natural resources also affects people. Every time gas prices rise, you have to pay for hospital charges or a school is under funded, you should think of the give away of the Corrib gas to Shell.”
The Corrib Gas field is worth billions of euros but it won’t benefit Irish people in any substantial way because, thanks to changes introduced by Ray Burke as Minister for Energy in 1987 and Bertie Ahern as Minister for Finance in 1992, the Shell/Statoil consortium will only have to pay a tiny amount of tax, if any, on their profits.

SHELL’S COPS
Despite Shell’s propaganda broadside and the attempts at intimidation, local opposition is holding firm. On the morning of Friday 13 October, 220 people were out on the picket at Bellinaboy. The population of the Rossport area is around 2,000 people – so that amounts to over 10% of the local population getting up at 3am every morning, heading to the picket in cars, and staying there for hours, sitting on the road and getting hauled off it by the Gardai.
“We will be here for years,” explains Vincent. “Their aim was to intimidate us when they came in on Tuesday last week. There were 80 of us and hundreds of police dragged us off the road. They thought we would be overwhelmed – that we would be intimidated and think what was the point? But the people’s reaction was to come back more. We are going nowhere.”
Shell are trying to get more machinery into the site before the winter makes work impossible – but when they start again in spring ‘07, they will have to take out half a million tonnes of peat to build the terminal. That’s when the campaign will hit them, explains Vincent. “Then we’ll need people from all over the country to come and support us.”
Vincent believes that – just as during the time of Jim Larkin and James Connolly, when the police facilitated William Martin Murphy to break the workers’ strikes – today Shell is being protected and facilitated by the Gardai. “They are diverting all local traffic, school buses – everything is subordinate to Shell’s vehicles. These are not Gardai working for the people any longer: they are Shell’s cops.”
The protestors see themselves as being up against the combined might of what they call Shell’s government and Shell’s cops. It’ll be a tough battle – but they’re hardy people. That much they have already proved.b