The Human Rights In Ireland blog has a ‘blog carnival’ on at the moment around civil disobedience and its policing in Ireland that should be of interest to readers of ILR.

Vicky Conway provides an introduction and the context for the carnival:

“There are many reasons for hosting a blog carnival this week on civil disobedience and the policing thereof in Ireland. Yesterday was the 55^th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ decision to disobey the order to sit at the back of a bus, an act which became a symbol of the American Civil Rights Movement. This week saw the release of the US Cables via Wikileaks, which includes content relating to the protests at Shannon over the landing of US planes during the War on Terror. Tomorrow sees the nationwide release of The Pipe, the film which follows members of the community in Mayo which has been involved in resisting the building of an on-shore gas refinery.  And this month An Bord Pleanála is due to give its decision on the building of the on-shore pipeline in Mayo, the final stage before the piping and processing of gas can begin at the already built terminal in Ballinaboy.

The protests in Shannon and Mayo could be considered the most significant acts of civil disobedience in Ireland in recent times. Large sections of the media have been highly critical of these activists. Many have been heavily policed, prosecuted and convicted of crimes for which they have spent time in prison. Both centre on real issues of human rights - the rights to health and life are at stake in each case.”

The word “carnival” stimulates that old English grad part of my brain embedded with the memories of Bakhtin and his idea of the Carnivalesque. Bakhtin saw in medieval carnival the opportunity for communities to enjoy a certain amount of civil disorder, where the fool becomes a king for the day and where the power structure is turned upside down, albeit only on certain festival days (although there were a fair number of those back then). He also illustrates how the deep roots of ancient Menippean satire continue to exist in the modern novel, where this flipping of a ‘natural order’ continues in contrast to its relative absence in modern life.

It’s appropriate then that one of the contributions to the carnival is one of Ireland’s best novelists, William Wall, with a review of The Pipe, Risteard Ó Domhnaill’s film about Shell Oil’s state-assisted assault on the community of Corrib.

Vicky has her own post on the coercive tactics of the Gardai in Corrib, enacted in the interests of Shell. Here’s one story:

“Jonathan O’Donnell laid crab pots at sea, knowing that the vessel, the Solitaire, was coming to lay off-shore pipes on the same spot. He was entitled to do so, meaning that this was not in fact an act of civil disobedience but it is important within the context of how those involved in the campaign perceived they were being policed. Gardaí boarded his boat and politely asked him to remove his pots and vacate the area. While they were polite, he was entitled to be there and there is no clear authority for this request. When he refused the police stated that they were arresting him. O’Donnell asked why and was told that he was a danger to other boats in the area. In what way he was a danger was unclear, particularly as the only boat in the visible vicinity was the garda boat. Eventually Jonathan had to drop his gear, with a value of several thousand Euro, and submitted to arrest. The Solitaire was now free to lay the pipes. Its hard not to feel that this was an instance in which the gardaí were exercising their coercive power without authority.”

Amanda Slevin, a PhD candidate in the School of Sociology in University College Dublin also looks at policing and the Corrib Gas Project arguing that consistently the State has acted directly against the interests of the local community and in the interests of Shell, even to the point of circumventing the legislative arrangements put in place, ostensibly, to protect all members of civil society.

“Opposition to the project in its current form has remained consistent since 2001, yet this campaign is not anti-gas or anti-progress as some detractors propose. Indeed, the community and local parish priests have suggested compromises such as an offshore refinery (hence the name ‘Shell to Sea’) or locating the refinery at Glinsk, a remote onshore location east of the current refinery.  Despite the community’s efforts, Shell and partners continued with their plans and in a process of project-splitting were granted permissions separately for various aspects of the project, including planning permission by Mayo County Council for the refinery in 2001. Residents immediately appealed this decision to An Bord Pleanála (ABP) and, after the second longest oral hearing in its history, ABP overturned Mayo County Council’s decision in April 2003 and refused planning permission with the location of the proposed gas terminal described as ‘the wrong site’.  Although planning permission for the refinery did not exist, in April 2002 Minister Frank Fahey approved construction of the pipeline, exempt from planning.”

Illan Rua Wall provides the full contents of a memorandum published on the 30th of November by wikileaks, which of course are the cables sent from the US embassy in Dublin to Washington DC on how the situation in Shannon Airport was being dealt with by the Irish government. What is most shocking is the attitude around the aquittal of the ‘Shannon Five’, but as Illan mentions, it also shows “the responsiveness of major world powers to democratic mobilization in Ireland”. And in an amusing disclaimer, “All spelling errors were in the original”.

This document, which I read yesterday, is genuinely amazing. As Amnesty International has said, it shows how the widespread feeling of horror by the majority of the Irish people by being implicated in the US invasion of Iraq through the use of Shannon was a matter of inconvenience for the Irish government. The document shows that they sought the appearance of acting in the interests of the Irish people for the sake of an election while at the same time working closely with US officials to ensure that there was minimum damage done to the arrangements.

Following on from that topic the carnival features a guest post by Joe Noonan, the Solicitor for the Ploughshare activists who is writing about the case and the subsequent acquittal of the activists.

“By virtue of the ‘lawful excuse’ provided for in Section 6(2)(c) (cited in the post) an accused will have a defence to a charge of criminal damage if he/she can establish that the act was carried out for the purpose of protecting another or the property of another and that the action was “reasonable” in the “circumstances” as he/she “believed them to be“.  Under Section 6(3) it is immaterial whether that belief was justified as long as it is honestly held.”

Of course, the Court and the jury support the view that it was “honestly held”. Joe provides a neat conclusion:

“No one is privy to the discussion in the Jury room. International law is a systematic effort to bend States to a code of behaviour which is considered to be in some sense ‘right’.   This necessary effort finds an echo in the remark of one juror speaking immediately after the trial: ‘There are days when you just have to do the right thing.  This was one of those days’.”

The first post in the Carnival but the last on the front page when you look is Illan Rua Wall’s excellent post: Civil Disobedience: Protest, Violence and Anarchy

Illan right says that “the starting point for civil disobedience is injustice”, but the debate always centres around whether acts of resistance involving the breaking of laws are ever justified. He highlights that the  development of the political theory around civil disobedience rests on two major questions.

“Firstly, there is the question of whether civil disobedience is non-violent by definition. And secondly, there is the question of whether civil disobedience requires a sort of existential choice between security and order”.

Illan addresses both, and refers to the current student protests in the UK and Ireland, and how the action is portrayed in the media as an example of whether civil disobedience must always be non-violent by definition:

“In the media, the paradigm of a peaceful action is held forth. However, many I have talked to in the current round of protest have mentioned the utter failure of the peaceful protests against the Iraq invasion. This failure has become a mobilising force. If over a million on the streets cannot convince a labour government to change its foreign policy, 50,000 students will not convince an ideologically driven con-lib coalition by simply marching en masse. There must be something more. The question of whether minor illegality can be used to challenge major wrong stands as one of the most important aspects of the debate. Many that I have talked to suggest that to them it is a question of tactics rather than morality.”

These are very important discussions which need to be taken up more widely. Once again, amidst such gloom it’s great that a sophisticated forum like Human Rights in Ireland exists in order to help make that happen. It’s almost enough to give one hope.