Sunday Indo reckon Shell to Sea campaign to redolent of "the North"

mayo | rights, freedoms and repression | other press Tuesday November 21, 2006 02:02 by Indo watcher

This is obviously interesting as a spin on the Shell to Sea campaign, that people shouldn't be interested in it because Sinn Féin support it, and the fact that it chimes in with SF politics should make everyone wary of it.

What is also fascinating is the insight into the worldview of the author (and by extension, those who pay him and read him). He believes that if something reminds people of the recent conflict in and about Nothern Ireland, then people in the rest of the country will turn off from it. Not because of the issues, but just because it brings up unhappy associations.

Therefore if the police want to diminish public support, they should baton charge the protesters, the author seems to be saying. Perhaps plastic bullets would be the next logical step in Mayo?

Writhing in the ecstasy of oppression

WHILE you were all off on your holidays last summer, members of Sinn Fein were busy as usual. In relation to the Rossport controversy, here is their schedule for one day, according to an internet source.

Sinn Fein picket at Shell in Clare Hall; Sinn Fein picket at Donnycarney church; Sinn Fein picket at Shell in Glasnevin; Sinn Fein picket at Shell at Lucan bypass; Sinn Fein picket at Shell, Taney Road, Dundrum; Sinn Fein picket at Shell in Dalkey; Sinn Fein picket at Statoil in Castleknock; Sinn Fein picket at Statoil in Hartstown.

Picketing was from 5pm to 7pm, and venues outside Dublin were not listed.

Yes, they're everywhere. And you can say that in a spooky voice or you can just say it as a matter of fact, but that's how it is. They're everywhere.

And they're all over this Rossport business like the proverbial cheap suit.

Most of you, being regular folks, would have had a certain awareness of the Rossport 5, and the time they spent in prison.

But you probably wouldn't have thought that Sinn Fein were devoting such time and resources to the cause. In fact, you probably wouldn't have thought that any organisation in Ireland had the time and the resources in the first place to be mounting such demonstrations.

As you fill up another tank of petrol after another day working for The Man, you're probably not expecting Sinn Fein to show up, shouting slogans, denouncing the very juice that you are buying off the evil Shell. But that would be them, all right, high on the improbability of it all.

Could Sinn Fein, indefatigable as they are,

have invented a controversy more suited to their needs than Rossport?

Here in one package is the perfect gift for them, wrapped up in an emerald green ribbon - an apparent David vs Goliath struggle which can make them look good, for a change; an issue which stirs the old nationalist blood, with the all-powerful foreign oppressor looting the natural resources of Ireland and grinding down the poor but defiant Irish people; a controversy which can advance Sinn Fein's project in the South, and a means of getting an immediate result by chipping away at the local political establishment, the Enda Kenny types who echo McDowell's dark talk about "Provo tactics" when they refer to "outside forces".

But that sinister and desperate attempt by the lickspittle running dogs of capitalism to slander the good men and women of Rossport, and do them down, hardly makes much difference anyway at this stage.

Because any vaguely normal Irish person has already turned away from Rossport, for one obvious reason: when the light catches it a certain way, what's going on there looks like something brought down from the North. Which, to the vast majority of folks watching the "clashes" on the RTE News, means that they don't want to know about it.

The blazing intensity of it, the sheer west Belfast style of the protests, including some outstanding footage of men resisting arrest, writhing in the ecstasy of oppression as they are carried away by the peelers, all this turns the hearts of the people of the Irish republic to stone.

We have nothing in common any more with those lunatics up there. Their ways have become as alien to us as the activities of some subversive outfit in Uzbekistan. So if we see anything than looks or sounds like the North, or even gives the slightest impression that it is influenced by events which took place in the North at any time over the last 100 years or thereabouts, we are not interested. We do not want to know.

We figure that the west coast of Mayo is probably further away from most of us than the North, at least physically.

But psychologically it is closer, and we don't want this stuff in our heads, making us mad like it made the North mad.

Yet is this being unfair to the legitimate protestors of Rossport, who have not officially aligned themselves with any political party?

If you were running a campaign like this, would you not be grateful for whatever support you could get, be it from the New Age travellers or the Old IRA?

After all, the Rossport 5 could hardly stop Gerry Adams and Martin Ferris visiting some of them in Cloverhill, and they obviously didn't imagine that any of their allies could end up making Shell look good - or at least not as bad as Martin Ferris, who brought guns ashore, not gas.

But then, part of the statement issued by the Rossport 5 on their release might have been drafted by Adams himself, with Ferris pacing the floor adding helpful suggestions.

It went: "We remind Shell and their Irish Government partner that imprisonments have historically and will always fail as a method to secure the agreement of the Irish people."

Ah yes, it's that old ecstasy again - though with the TV cameras rolling and the press writing it all down, and an appearance on the Late Late, these days even oppression is not what it used to be.

At this point the men were evoking the tradition of romantic republican heroes, the last line of resistance to the Crown.

At this point too, the cause was lost.

Declan Lynch