Joe Horgan Column
By Joe Horgan
IT is strange how quickly the police, who are surely supposed to be an
arm of the community, become an arm of the government. That is not to
call into question any individual garda, as they can hardly be expected
to examine the political nature of each shift but it does call into question
the government’s willingness to use the gardaí, not to uphold
the law, but to implement unpopular or deeply divisive government decisions.
As the multi-national oil company Shell, with the full backing of the
government, finally begins work on its gas terminal site in north Mayo,
community opposition is now being beaten down by the use of hundreds of
gardaí. They are there, the Irish state tells us, to ensure the
rights of the company and the rights of the people being bussed in to
work on the site.
Not, we should note, to ensure the rights of those protesting. Somehow
it seems that the gardaí in these circumstances can be used to
ensure the rights of some but not the rights of others. So we are presumably
to take it as a rule of law that the right to go to work has some legal
precedent over other rights. The gardaí are enforcing and ensuring
the rights of Shell and their employees but literally dismantling the
rights of those protesting over the use of what was once their own land.
At this point we should remember just what is happening up there in north
Mayo, especially as the powerful public relations arm of a corporation
like Shell has been able to find enough willing hands and voices in the
Irish media to suggest that the only sinister element in all of this is
to be found amongst the protesters. Five local men have served prison
sentences over their opposition to Shell’s pipeline going over their
land, after that same land was taken from them by compulsory order. That
is not in dispute.
In a country with dramatically rising energy costs there has been no
definitive description of just how this exploitation of a natural resource
off the Irish coast will benefit Ireland’s energy needs. That is
not in dispute. Yet, if you were to listen or read the Irish media you
could end up believing that amongst the protestors there is a deeply threatening
crowd who are busy intimidating any supporters of the pipeline.
In this version of the world turned upside down we are to understand that
up there in Mayo unarmed local people are a sinister, aggressive mob.
The government on the other hand, the multi-national corporation and the
gardaí as deployed by the current coalition are the innocent bystanders
merely trying to go about their lawful business. In this version of events
it is the powerful who are being threatened and the locals who had their
land taken who are the cause for alarm. In some way we are to accept that
it is in fact the government and the multi-national oil corporation that
are being bullied and that they therefore must be protected from the local
citizens by the use of the gardaí. It is the powerful who need
our help.
But just what can we infer about the protestors and what can we infer
about Shell? Though five local men have indeed served prison sentences
because they would not promise to end their opposition to the pipeline
there is nothing to really suggest they have been involved in anything
truly horrendous. We cannot though say the same thing about Shell with
any great certainty. Is it not the case that the family of Nobel nominee,
the poet and environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the Nigerian
military along with eight others, have sued Shell for their part in his
death? How was Shell involved? Well Ken Saro-Wiwa spent many years protesting
at Shell’s exploitation of oil on tribal territory. He protested
at their appropriation of land. He protested at their amassing of profits
and siphoning off of natural resources without any gain to the locals.
He protested at their doing this under the protection of the state.
There was an interesting sideline to all of this in the middle of the
recent Bertie Ahern scandal. An opposition TD was making a speech about
Bertie’s financial dealings and wandered on to describe how the
Dail should not even be discussing this it should be discussing things
like the Shell dispute in Mayo and the scenes of trouble between protestors
and gardaí occurring there. As he spoke the cameras shifted around
to the government front benches whilst the TD’s voice could still
be heard in the background. What the cameras showed was the whole of the
government front bench laughing as the man tried to make his point. It
was kind of revealing.
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