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April
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April 8,
2003
A Report from the Frontlines
Outside Hillsborough
Castle
By HARRY BROWNE
Dublin, Ireland.
It's late Monday night, on the bus back from (outside)
Hillsborough to Dublin, and
though there was no time for a pint and a chat in the local pub,
we're carefully measuring the proverbial glass. Half-full? We
had a spirited demo, where young militants literally ran past
their more moderate elders, where authority was confronted, provocation
was resisted and speech after speech comprehensively demolished
this war-summit-under-peace-pretenses. Half-empty? Our crowd,
gathered in the middle of nowhere at short notice, was small,
a few thousand, it never got close to the brothers-in-blood in
the castle; our allegedly leading anti-imperialist party, Sinn
Fein, failed to bring big numbers the 15 miles from Belfast and
continued to defend their intention to talk 'peace' with Bush
and Blair on Tuesday.
On balance, we're disappointed. We all
know people whose work and personal commitments kept them away.
But with the weight of the world on our shoulders, as the only
peace people with a chance to get near potentates while Baghdad
is being butchered, surely we in Ireland could have done better.
I say "we in Ireland" rather
than Northern Ireland, because this was definitely an all-Ireland
demonstration; sometimes, indeed, it felt like one of the recent
Dublin demos transplanted. Several busloads came from Dublin
-- home of one of today's named war dead, Ian Malone from working-class
Ballyfermot and the Irish Guards regiment of the British army.
More buses and cars came from elsewhere across the border. Among
the Northerners, more distant Derry seemed better represented
than Belfast.
Our wandering four-hour bus journey north from Dublin was good
fun, considering the mood of injured outrage among Irish people
about this summit. Rita Fagan from the inner city led us in a
rousing rendition of 'Victor Jara' while the Police Service of
Northern Ireland (PSNI) shunted us into a side road; the Trots
from the Socialist Workers Party tried to sell papers and start
a debate about whether we should block the Sinn Fein speaker
or just boo him; Shannon 'Plowshares' activist Ciaron O'Reilly
explained his group's legal strategy, and his pacifist colleague
Deirdre Clancy spoke of the inspiration she took from her grandfather's
efforts in the War of Independence (1919-21) that rid Ireland
of imperialism. (Her words were only slightly undermined by the
British army watchtowers we were driving past at the time.)
Spirits sank when we reached Sprucefield
shopping centre, our gathering place. We shared the car-park
with the B-team of the international media, those too low-powered
to merit accreditation for Hillsborough village proper, two miles
up the road. About 10 white vans were there, their cameras and
powder-puffed reporters faced with a grim choice of backdrop:
the Anglo-American twin towers of Marks & Spencer and McDonald's,
and a combination of spiky fence, scraggly trees and the grey
skies of Ulster.
We waited a while for the promised Sinn
Fein troops to materialise. They turned up by the dozen or two
at a time rather than the hundreds -- the rank-and-file evidently
as confused as the leadership.
Marches always look better once they
are stretched along the road, and ours was no exception, once
we left Sprucefield to walk south along the A1 toward the next
roundabout, past roadworks, a Shell station, a used-car lot,
all the attractions of this lovely corner of Ireland, and not
a spectator in sight -- scarcely even a cop. Up the empty highway
we enjoyed the usual clever signs and slogans (e.g. "This
is what democracy smells like!" If you want to know more,
get to your nearest demo this weekend.) About a mile up the road,
in vaguely agricultural country, we reached a small stage, set
up by the North's trade-union congress leadership (appropriate,
some said, that it sat in the middle of the road). The front
of the march was largely young and southern-based socialists,
whose leaders held a quick 'conference' on the grass median.
"Where's the police line?" "Another half-mile
up the road." "Let's go."
Their 'decision' probably validated a
collective fait accompli: the open road ahead was very tempting,
and it shamed a shame to come all the way to the wee North and
not sample the cross-community local custom of marching right
up to the riot shields. Most of the marchers ran on past both
sides of the baffled union leaders on the platform.
Then there the police were, still nearly a mile outside Hillsborough,
positioned across a narrow side road where the adjoining fields
and hedges were nearly impassable: the PSNI, in front of armored
cars and wearing ski masks under their riot helmets to conceal
their features. Some shields still had "Royal Ulster Constabulary"
labels stuck on them. There was no way past, so we put up some
verbal resistance ("Police protect the bombers! Police protect
the bombers!").
A handful of close-cropped men suddenly
appeared, one of them up a lamppost (where a "For Sale"
sign had been scrawled with "Irish Peace Process")
waving a Betsy-Ross Stars and Stripes and shouting support for
the war. A light object or two flew in their directions, but
the anti-war group largely ignored the provocation, and argued
reasonably with one bewildered interloper. What was he doing
among us, when the pro-warriors had called their own prayer vigil
(yes, it's like that over here too) in front of Belfast City
Hall.
Back in the middle of the road, the speeches
continued. Those of us who had gone forward to see the whites
of the eyes of the Empire's Protectors were back in time to hear
what were probably the most important speeches, from our own
parochial perspective.
Sinn Fein's articulate vice president,
Mitchell McLaughlin, tried simultaneously to denounce the war
and to pull anti-imperialist rank against his party's critics,
but was nearly drowned out by boos and chants of "Boycott
Bush!", surely a novel experience for the party's Northern
leadership. Calling for unity, he rather petulantly complained
that when his party was on the frontline of struggle against
repression and censorship, they didn't have big crowds ("the
likes of you", he wanted to say) to support them.
McLaughlin had the misfortune to be followed,
and buried, by his Derry neighbour, socialist Eamonn McCann,
the best Irish agit-orator of the last 35 years -- only Ian Paisley
comes close. Clad in black t-shirt and jeans, his right-index
finger gradually emerging from his pocket to slice any air that
dared approach him, he took us quickly, brilliantly through the
struggles of the Middle East and Ireland, forecast the future
of resistance in Iraq and stabbed home the eternally pertinent
question, "What side are you on?" To the SDLP and Sinn
Fein he cried: "I ask them even at this late stage to think
about it tonight, if word went out from this place tomorrow to
George Bush and to the world that democratic leaders here in
Ireland had said in simple, clear terms: 'We will not bend the
knee to you. We will not allow you to use the yearning for peace
of the Irish people as a cover for your imperial adventure in
Iraq!"
For a moment you could almost believe
that McLaughlin would change his mind, that he'd call Gerry Adams
and they'd beg off meeting Bush.
It won't happen. Sinn Fein and the IRA
are preparing some small gesture as their next offering in the
eternal 'peace process', and feel they need to avoid embarrassing
Blair. The Shinners find themselves outflanked on the left, and
not only by the likes of McCann's Socialist Workers, whose West
Belfast poster mocks an old Gerry Adams quote about the IRA with
"Imperialism: It Hasn't Gone Away, You Know". Even
the SDLP's Mark Durkan, with fewer immediate political asses
to cover than Adams, can admit to being unhappy about this most
cynical summit.
Back in the parking lot, the cops were
dressed to kill and guarding a closed-up McDonald's. They must
have had us confused with some other protesters. We were tired
and wanted to go home, to argue about what we had done and seen.
Harry Browne
lectures in the school of media at Dublin Institute of Technology
and writes a weekly column in the Irish Times. He can be reached
at harrybrowne@eircom.net
Yesterday's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
Colin Powell's Shame
John
Chuckman
Was Einstein Right About Israel?
David
Krieger
The Meaning of Victory
Tom
Gorman
The Mantra of the Troops: Support
or Treason?
Adam
Federman
The Absence of War
Vijay
Prashad
There Are No More Arguments
Tom
Stephens
The End of the Innocence
Mickey
Z.
Makes Me Sic (Sic): Copy Editing
Bush Speak
Pierre
Tristam
War Coverage: a Dishonest Reality
Show
Hammond
Guthrie
The Deadly Mihrab
Steve
Perry
War Web Log 04/04
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