April 2010

I defy anyone to go to Erris, County Mayo and spend time with the local people there without finding that the place eventually gets into your soul. Though it seems at first to be a strange, even bleak landscape to those unfamiliar with it, the extensive peatland with all the colour of its extraordinary plant life, the surrounding mountains and the superb Atlantic coastline all conspire to draw you in.   Driving along the road through the small town of Bangor on the Belmullet road, the atmosphere is palpable.   Here a community of people had been attending to what is still in some respects a remote and unique way of life in undisturbed peace and quiet until the arrival in their midst of the giant oil and gas conglomerate, Royal Dutch Shell. Shell were invited in by the Irish government with all the decorum of a gangster’s moll (if the comparison is not offensive to gangster's molls) for the purpose of building a gas refinery and exporting gas reserves that hitherto had been the property of the Irish people until the rights to it were sold in secret by a government politician, Ray Burke, who was subsequently jailed on unrelated corruption charges.

 SINN Féin has called for the release of Shell to Sea’s Pat O’Donnell from prison, describing him as a “principled man” who has genuine concerns about the Corrib gas project, writes Marian Harrison.

Mayo councillors Gerry Murray, Rose Conway Walsh and Thérése Ruane and TD Martin Ferris visited the Rossport fisherman in Castlerea Prison last week.

The group said there was “no useful purpose” served by the detention of Mr O’Donnell and called for his immediate release.

THE COVERAGE of the Passport Office industrial dispute here in Ireland was nothing short of a summary of our times.

Of course other disputes that are integral to the workings of this Republic of ours are not deemed worthy of coverage.

So the dispute in Mayo over the Shell pipeline is given cursory coverage in the general media and salacious, biasladen coverage by certain journalists whose motivation seems to be strangely in line with that of the multi-nationals.

Across the planet, in the places where fossil fuels are sourced, people are resisting new energy developments.

Communities are standing together to defend their homes, health, land and water, and our shared planet… This is localised resistance with huge global significance….

From the tar sands of Alberta, Canada to the woods of Mainshill, Scotland….

from the rivers and plains of the Niger Delta to the Amazon jungles of Peru….

and from the valleys of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales to the Northwest coast of Mayo, Ireland…

The Merthyr to Mayo cycle caravan will spend two weeks travelling between Merthyr Tydfil, Wales and Rossport, Ireland: two community struggles resisting fossil fuel extraction in their areas.

The time we spend in these communities will provide an opportunity to learn from one another, to share stories and to explore our areas of commonality; we will look at how we can work in solidarity with each other.