The campaign against Shell’s inland refinery and high-pressure pipeline near Rossport in Co Mayo has been long and extraordinary, inspiring communities everywhere. Local residents began their campaign in 2000, adopting the name Shell to Sea in early 2005. Tactics have ranged from High Court actions, planning objections and lobbying politicians to grassroots campaigning and civil disobedience.
When the inland gas refinery near Rossport was proposed in the late 1990s, many local people welcomed the project. But when they did some research, they quickly became extremely concerned. They discovered this was an experimental project; nothing like it had been tried anywhere in the world.
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yal Dutch Shell, Statoil, Exxon Mobil and other global corporations will be taking billions of euro out of the country in the next couple of decades. In other countries they would have to give the majority of this money to the State, but not in Ireland. In 1987, then Minister Ray Burke, later jailed for corruption, abolished the State’s 50% share and all royalties.
Three wards in Crumlin children’s hospital were closed recently because of a €9.6 million deficit. The value of our offshore fields is 43,750 times the cost of keeping those wards open. It is 300 times the money that will be raised from the public sector ‘pensions levy’.
In order to break the resistance of the inhabitants of Erris to the Shell experimental gas pipeline dozens of people are now being prosecuted. Belmullet District Court is in the second day of a special 3 day session to carry out Shell’s prosecutions. But things are not going Shell’s way, of the 16 people being prosecuted in yesterdays session only one prosecution resulted in a fine.
To quote someone who sums up the intellectual times in which we live, Sarah Palin: “now is not the time to experiment with socialism” This, during the worse crisis since the 1930s! Anarchists would say that is precisely the time – but only as long as we are talking about libertarian socialism!
In terms of the development of a libertarian movement in Ireland the march on the EU summit at Farmleigh will probably be seen as a turning point. For the first time the movement mobilized large number of people from outside its own ranks, in a demonstration that was in direct defiance of the Irish governments attempt to ban such demonstrations.
Pic: The front of the march on Farmleigh on the Navan road. From uk.indymedia.org, photographer not credited there. I’d no camera with me so all these photos come from indymedia, photographer is credited with the name used to post them to indymedia
It was expected that this (May 6th 2002) would be the largest Dublin Reclaim the Streets to date due to the massive level of publicity for it. The city centre had been covered in posters, stickers and graffiti from three weeks before advertising the event plus. Posters had also been put up in Cork and flyers distributed in Belfast. What was not so expected was that by the end of the day 24 people would have been arrested and over a dozen hospitalised by a police riot on Dame street. Pic:Gardai face crowd at RTS
An interview carried out August 2009 on the legalised squat / collective housing project Kopi with Shane about anarchism and political activity in Berlin.
Interview with anarchist squatter in Berlin – Kopi 2009 by Andrew Flood on Mixcloud
An interview with Andrew Flood about the impressions of the North American anarchist movement he formed during his 2007/2008 44 city tour of the US and Canada. The interviews ends with questions about the comparison of the movement in Ireland with that in Britian and the promotion of anarchism via the internet. This was submitted and published in Black Flag.
If we do not wish to see society divided into order-givers and order-takers we should not take part in choosing the order-givers. Our goal is efficient grassroots democracy, which will be co-ordinated nationally and internationally. We hold that everyone affected by a decision should be able to have a direct say in making that decision.