Direct Action and Defendant Support

international | rights, freedoms and repression | feature

Sunday January 16, 2005 00:29

by Terry - NUIG Ecology Society/Organise/Anarchist Federation (personal capacity)

room101ucg at yahoo dot co dot uk

Since the inception of Indymedia Ireland in late 2001 well over one hundred people have faced court actions, ranging from injunctions to imprisonment, for participation in movements reported on by this site. This has been the case with the anti-bin charges campaign, with Shannon, with Carrickmines, with Mayday2004 and with the May 2002 Reclaim the Streets.

There has been a long running controversial debate on Indymedia around allegations that Dublin Grassroots in particular has not successfully provided support for the Mayday 2004 defendants.

Meanwhile, longer articles have started to appear in left-wing journals and publications looking back at the Mayday 2004 weekend and the issues arising from the various internecine conflicts. The WSM have a feature in their "Red and Black Revolution" about the buildup, and "What Next?" has an article from a Marxist viewpoint critical on the Wombles (taking the ESF and their attitude in Dublin as discussion points).

Arrest and court is a process of intimidation, and needs to be met with a programme of counter-intimidation. This is actually especially relevant in regard to people done on relatively minor public order charges after random arrests at demonstrations, for the simple reason that this has the largest impact in terms of numbers. That is to say these cases have a bigger ‘it could have been me factor’, and hence greater intimidatory potential.

A counter-intimidation programme involves three aspects: legal support, defendant support and prisoner support.

Legal support meaning the supply of bust cards with a phone number to collate information on arrestees and, if possible, the provision of a decent solicitor, this is for the day itself. Later we have defendant support.

Defendant support needs to be defendant led but not necessarily defendant organised. Each defendant will have different priorities, some will just want it over as quickly as possible and to keep their heads down, some will want some support but not want to make a big deal of their cases, some will want to fight their way through the courts.
There are two crucial aspects to defendant support.
Firstly money: money for fines, money for solicitors, money to transport supporters and witnesses to court.
Secondly bodies: supporters in the court room, courts being designed to cut you down and make you feel small, the supporters presence there to do the opposite.

Prisoner support is beyond my personal direct experience but the two things which people principally seem to be doing are writing to prisoners and holding protests or vigils outside the prison, as has gone on Dublin with bin charges prisoners and in Limerick with Shannon prisoners, most likely from the same point of view as supporters turning up in court. It would be nice to see more embassy protests for international prisoners in Ireland.

Thus far only a small number of people from the anti-capitalist/anti-war movement have been sentenced to prison in Ireland, notably Fintan Lane of the Cork Anti-War Campaign, for 60 days for his part in the October 12th 2002 mass tresspass in Shannon, and some people from the bin charges struggle in Cork.
The impact of the of this support on defendants is a positive one.
What impact it has on the authorities is a bigger question, certainly people who have seen the inside of far more courts than I have feel that a good support network does inhibit heavier arresting and sentencing policies.
In the case of prisoners it is generally accepted that an influx of letters can improve their conditions.

What is needed to get to a healthy situation in regard to this issue is two fold. Firstly a cultural change where we begin to seriously prioritise this issue, personally I’m thinking that this has begun to happen, mostly cause with the regularity of court cases these days it is not easy to ignore.

Secondly serious committed organisation involving larger numbers of people, on the second point in that if we are to have libertarian networks people need to move away from the idea someone is going to do it for them, none of us are professionals. In regard to the first point these issues illustrate perfectly why ad hoc loose ‘organisation’ is just not good enough, defendant and prisoner support require long term planning and lasting organisation long after the dust has settled and the big day of protest is over.

On the immediate agenda is the trial of the Pitstop Ploughshares starting in the Four Courts on the 7th of March.
This is the trial of the five people who disarmed a U.S. military plane in Shannon on February 3rd 2002, an action which was a pivotal contribution to a series of actions which saw three of the private companies commuting U.S. troops to Iraq pull out of Shannon.
As I understand it they need fundraising and publicity (they have posters and leaflets made up) and infrastructural support for during the trial itself, e.g. people to provide accommodation, people to run some form of centre.
More details here
Ultimately the important thing to remember is defendant support isn’t an optional extra, it is an essential part of direct action and public protest, if the people who end up in court receive support, and other people see that and are confident of receiving support, we will collectively have more confidence and hence more actions.