The Beauty & The Beast of A Bellanaboy Christmas.

mayo | environment | news report

Wednesday December 27, 2006 13:42

by Niall Harnett - Shell to Hell.

rossportsolidaritycamp at gmail dot com

Bertie’s Batons in Christmas week. Peace and goodwill - stomped by the Bellanaboy Brutes. Shell’s Metal tested at the Gates on Christmas Day.

“ … But man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before heaven,
As make the angels weep …” - William Shakespeare.

“It’s a Hard Rain …” - Bob Dylan.

The Beauty of Bellanaboy at Christmas ...

The month of December 2006 and, markedly, the last week before Christmas has seen a revival in the spirits and confidence of local people, matched by a re-escalation in Garda thuggishness, following the shock of police assaults on women and men, young and old, during the month of November. Mainstream media attention is predictably gone from Bellanaboy and, if you are living elsewhere around the country, you’d be forgiven for thinking there was little happening on the roads around the gates of the Shell Corrib Gas Refinery Site. But, the pickets have continued every day from October 3rd till now, with numbers back on the increase and a renewed sense of the urgent need to halt this project.

Efforts to block Shell machinery and personnel from destroying the beautiful barony of Erris, and challenges to the ongoing lawless behaviour of Shell’s Cops - An Garda Síochána, happen constantly, daily and ever more regularly. The sense of Spring approaching, the building season and the upcoming elections mean that people are feeling ‘the push into the corner’ and the compelling urgency of self-preservation. Gardaí respond, stinking of alcohol, with assaults, attempts to break fingers (a new development) and (on the Friday before Christmas) … the baton.

This Christmas, as is traditional, one might be tempted to offer some kind of peace offering, and I know I gave some consideration to calling into Belmullet Garda Station myself. But No, I rejected it as I reject the members of An Garda Síochána – Shell’s whores … We Rebuke Ye.

Familiarity between Gardaí and protesters is breeding mutual contempt, sadly, in this the season of peace and goodwill to all men.

Christmas at the trailer, Shell to Sea HQ, was lovely. Children, parents, grandparents, friends, mulled wine, hot whiskeys and some hot drops of the pure! … and Aron’s banofi pie. Everybody in good form, chatting and happy. No cops. A walk up to the gate, an inspection of the infrastructure, and the dismantling of the same for a look into the site and a face to face chat with Shell security. Minutes later Detective Garda Noel Brett parks up quietly followed by a squad car with a garda and bean-garda. Chats with Ricky the security guard, some banter with Shell to Sea, no bother.

THE LAW IS AN ASS WHEN IT COMES TO THE GAS!

Supt. Joe Gannon says that it is unacceptable for ‘local people to take control’ at Bellanaboy. I say it is totally acceptable … and in his own terms … lawful, because the EU Laws of sustainability, the Aarhus convention and the Local Agenda 21 principle of local government, give communities the legal right to say how a project such as this should be managed, laws which have been ignored by this government who, with the aid of Joe Gannon and his thugs, selectively apply laws to protect Shell and to conceal the corrupt history of Bertie Ahern and his kind in Government. I say also that it is unacceptable for An Garda Sochána to exercise control at Bellanaboy and they must be removed.

Moreover, it is a LEGITIMATE STRUGGLE, JUST & TRUE, to oppose and resist this project because it is simply ‘the wrong project in the wrong place’, and it is the duty of us all to take responsibility, as Shell to Sea has done …for the stopping of it.