Is the Shell to Sea Campaign going anywhere?

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Monday December 18, 2006 19:06 by Anamia

A brief analysis of where the campaign is and how it got there

Shell to Sea has, from the very start, been about more than the fact that a community in a remote area of Ireland were being used as guinea pigs in a vast experiment to see if natural gas could be processed on shore.

What was at stake was whether the state would support the needs of big business against its own people. The central question of the campaign has always been whether communities are expendable, not in the interests of the nation, but in the interests of the shareholders.

How far, the campaign asked, is a European government willing to go to support the desires of a multi-national, when these run counter to the demands of its own citizens?

Could the Left in Ireland use the energy of the state's unquestioning support for Shell to expose and undermine the state's apparatus of control?

Between the events described in the Garda Review article (http://www.indymedia.ie/article/80229) and the morning of Monday November 20th, the Shell to Sea campaign was gathering momentum, thanks to the hard work of the support groups throughout the country and abroad, and the brave local people who, with support from visiting activists and campaigners from the Rossport Solidarity Camp, were up every morning to protest at the refinery site.

It was evident in October that a lot of preparations had been undertaken over the previous year, with leaflets, stickers, flyers, and posters available quickly, as well as core groups of dedicated activists ready to travel to Mayo and also carry out actions in their own areas.

The media was hostile in the main, but thanks to the state's fear of the prospect of using injunctions and arrests, the sheer obviousness of the plan to use violence to force the project through was making the serious issues of the campaign plain to the general public.

Positive support for the campaign was also being attracted to the campaign by events, which are often overlooked, like the garage pickets, the debates in universities, the putting up of posters around the place. Coupled with news pictures showing protesters being brutalised, the non corporate media's support, and the work in preparing the ground by activists who had travelled far and wide in the previous year building up a network of supporters, the plan to brutally "break' the campaign within a couple of weeks was proving much more difficult for the state than government ministers had been led to believe.

The first day of action on the 20th of October attracted a huge public to the issue, and made it clear that the campaign was not going to be destroyed easily by sending in violent police to control the site, and protests would continue. The fact, for example, that a whole bus load of activists from UCD were prepared to go down to Mayo to be pushed around in the rain for a bunch of people they didn't know sent a clear signal to the establishment that this campaign could easily de-rail plans for a quiet election in 2007.

In the midst of all this, we had a call for the policing cost to be charged to Shell, a quite clearly ludicrous idea put forward in the most cack-handed way by Jerry Cowley; and then a call for a commission of enquiry, which, while a broadly interesting idea, was poorly presented and badly thought-out. Shell to Sea groups around the country had no idea about it before journalists started ringing them up about it, and details are pretty scarce on who or what the commission would comprise even today. We were also treated to the strange spectacle of one protester claiming she was seriously injured and then, supposedly concussed, grand-standing on a radio phone-in show, doing incredible harm to the base support of the campaign. Those in the pay of Sir Anthony O'Reilly and other corporate media (isn't it amazing how many people who work for the state broadcaster also write newspaper columns, and participate in corporate events?) queued up to mislead the public the about the pipeline's safety and the pressure under which it would operate, while the public was busy learning lessons about police control and media manipulation.

The only thing that was working in the campaign's favour was the regular protests. The only story getting in the papers was the blockades. After the first day of action, there was even interest from the British corporate media, the type of coverage that makes executives in Corrib House very nervous.

The second day of action was obviously going to be an even bigger media event, and the combination of protests around the country and the Ken Saro Wiwa anniversary made the campaign seem, in the public mind, to be not only strong, but also right.

Concentrating on Shell as the villain reminded people that this wasn't some ordinary corporate entity, but a company with a serious history of community and environmental destruction. But activists cannily also targeted the minister for the marine at his giveaway conference for the oil bosses in the Burlington Hotel, showing that the campaign was not going to be limited to a debate about a refinery site in Mayo, but would insist on being the cockpit for a national discussion about the husbandry of the country's natural resources.

A huge wave of support came to the campaign in the aftermath of the baton charge. As stories trickled out about even worse Garda excesses away from the cameras, the stage was set for a serious political crisis, as campaigners around the country rallied to the task of building for an even bigger showdown on November 24th.

The press conference in Dublin showed the range of political support from right across the party spectrum, and people who'd struggled to get the name of the campaign in the national consciousness couldn't believe it when "Shell to Sea" became a household catchphrase, bigger than the Rossport Five had been.

Here was something that everyone from David Norris to Gerry Adams could support, that students, environmentalists, economists, and journalists could agree on. And the discussions weren't about whether you can build a refinery in a bog, or how thick the walls of the pipe need to be. They were about how the country was being run, about what the Gardaí were for, about whether the govt should be more than a committee to organise the affairs of the rich and powerful while others would be beaten if they questioned the status quo.

In the few days between November 10th and November 20th, the country woke up to Shell to Sea, and the stage was set for a huge conflict between the state and its supporters and those who question the authority of the powerful, rich elite.

Who would blink first? Would the Fianna Fáil backbenchers in places far from Mayo who were waking up to the ramifications of the campaign on their own electoral chances keep supporting the government? Would the corporate media realise it couldn't keep printing lies when the people could see with their own eyes what was happening? What would the reaction be to another baton charge, or a deployment of the army? What were the prospects for huge support demonstrations in Dublin, for further days of action in the New Year and in the spring? It seemed the campaign had the state in a no-win situation, with public support gathering, and all the nonsensical stories and smears not amounting to much.

The mud wasn't sticking to the campaign, but the issues of the resources sell-off was sticking in people's minds.

But it was the campaign that blinked first. Prominent figures in this "leaderless" group had always been uneasy of the campaign being a focus for wider agitation, so they engineered the decision to "stand down" the protests and blockades. No more days of action were planned. A strategy of concentrating on the internal politics of Norway has been adopted. Lobbying the state through the corporate media is planned, but it is not clear how this will be any more effective now than it was when the campaign was in the doldrums back in the summer.

Those in the campaign who sought to use the state's own violence and energy against it have been sidelined, and it seems Shell can look forward to a quiet time while they remove the rest of the peat from Bellanaboy.

It is extremely uncertain whether the campaign can be resurrected. It is now only really of interest to activists and the micro-left political parties, who having come a bit late to the possibilities inherent in what had seemed to their blinkered views to be an obscure environmental campaign are now busy fighting over the scraps, rather than putting any effort into advancing the cause of fighting Shell, and causing a genuine political crisis to expose what Fianna Fáil (and the other factions of the business party) are capable of doing to stay in the good books of their friends in the multi-national business world.

The people of the country, who had been so willing to get behind the people of Erris, now ask why they should be expected to give any support to what seems to amount to a local campaign where the protesters aren't willing to stand up for themselves, preferring to let outsiders lobby in the parliament and the newspapers on their behalf. "If the people of Rossport aren't going to resist the work", people think, " then why should I?
"Last year the Rossport Five were willing to endure prison rather than agree to let work continue unimpeded. But this year the only thing the campaign can agree to do is go to Norway (to meet politicians and academics there) and write letters to the newspapers. Why should I get involved in something that clearly even the locals don't care too strongly about?'

Public opinion is sophisticated. People know when they arte being asked for too much. Decisions taken in the early part of 2007 will decide whether the campaign will be a footnote in history or the beginning of something much bigger and more important than even Shell might believe.