Galway book launch on controversial anti-war action

galway | anti-war / imperialism | event notice Sunday November 23, 2008 16:57 by Gway head - Gway

Galway launch of Hammered by the Irish, by Harry Browne

It was probably the most important anti-war action to happen in Ireland this century – and it was certainly the most daring.

At Shannon Airport five people took on the might of the US military – and put a Navy war-plane out of action. Even more amazingly, they ultimately convinced a jury that to do so was not a crime.

But the story of the Shannon Five has hardly been told, until now. For the first time, a new book reveals the inside story of an intrepid act of peacemaking.

book cover

On February 3rd, 2003, five Catholic Worker peace activists, calling themselves the Pitstop Ploughshares, broke into a hangar at Shannon Airport and, swinging hammers and a pickaxe, did more than $2.5 million to a US Navy transport plane.

Nearly four years later, a Dublin jury decided they could have ‘lawful excuse’ for their action, because they did it to save lives in Iraq. They were found not guilty on 10 separate counts of criminal damage.

The Pitstop Ploughshares were a mix of Irish-born and Irish-diaspora: Deirdre Clancy from Dublin, Damien Moran from Offaly, Nuin Dunlop from the US, Karen Fallon from Scotland and Ciaron O’Reilly from Australia.

‘Hammered by the Irish’ shows the people behind the hippie caricatures, and takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride: from secret planning in a Limerick monastery, to a dark and dangerous night on a runway, through three often-bizarre trials and finally a stunning legal victory for the five.

Action from Ireland (AfrI) is the Irish distributor of ‘Hammered by the Irish’ by Harry Browne, which has just been published in the United States by Counterpunch Books and AK Press. The book is available at selected shops and on amazon.co.uk and abebooks.com.

It features a short introduction from a legend of the US anti-war movement, Jesuit priest Father Daniel Berrigan, who helped to found the prophetically inspired Ploughshares tradition of disarmament actions and is now 87 years old.

Harry Browne is a journalist who worked for the Irish Times from 1990 to 2003, and has contributed to many other publications, including the Sunday Tribune, Sunday Business Post, Evening Herald, Village, the Dubliner and Dublin Review. He teaches journalism at Dublin Institute of Technology and is a frequent contributor to radio and television programmes. ‘Hammered by the Irish’ is his first book.