Rossport Endures to Prevail; Today Smelt Like Victory (photos)

mayo | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Friday November 09, 2007 20:21 by TD - Shell to Sea

Not in our name !

Today, to commemorate Shell's judicial murder of the Ogonii 9 and a look back in anger at the Garda baton-fest a year ago, some 400 activists journeyed from all reaches of Ireland to voice our outrage outside and inside Shell's Bellanaboy site, I was with the section of protestors that first manned the front line at Bellanaboy bridge at 6AM at the request of S2S when it was rightly surmised that Shell and the Guards would attempt to steal a march by bringing the workers in early - for a while, before Garda weight of numbers prevailed, we were effective in blockading and preventing them from earning their 30 pieces of Mammon silver inside.

After being prevented from joining the main group by a two deep line of Guards, we successfully scaled the gates of the refinery to be greeted inside with wanton violence and rough handling by Shell's thugs dressed in security uniforms.

What stimulated the title was an encounter with a German from Riegen and a couple from the UK Midlands who had spent the previous 48 hours travelling overland from mainland Europe and England just to attend today's protest, what committment?, even so, the people of Erris match it and, further afield, activists, who with a granite sense of conscience turn up again and again in Bellanaboy to bear witness against a rogue corporation and their shoe shine boys in government who pave and grease their way?.

Scaling the "security gates" of the site