Shannon Ploughshare message from Prison

national | miscellaneous | news report

Tuesday March 04, 2003 03:06

by Deirdre Clancy

Limerick Prison, Mulgrave Street, Limerick.

Deirdre Clancy speaks from prison

While still on remand for a disarmament action at Shannon airport, Deirdre dictated this message in response to recent comments.

Some material from Indymedia was read to us in prison, which included an amusing posting from John Kelly, entitled “Disgraceful” (date February 12th).
In it, Mr. Kelly refers to “Deirdre and her imported friends” disgracing the anti-war movement through the use of “extreme violence”
Mr. Kelly ought to get his facts right. Three of our group are Irish citizens and two are of Irish extraction.
I’ve no idea therefore why he thinks they’re my “gang”.
They’re all highly intelligent, thinking people in their own right, and quite capable of making their own moral decisions.
In reality, we were all following our own consciences, even while acting as a community.
I am flattered that Mr. Kelly thinks I’d have the power, influence or charisma to import activists from abroad, but the reality is that I don’t.
Also if Mr. Kelly characterises an act of disarmament as “extreme violence”, then he should look up the term “violence” in the dictionary. Machinery that is on its way to aid and abet the killing of innocents is already damaged goods: its transformation into something less effective in this regard is the direct opposite of violence.
Mr. Kelly is also concerned that the money spent on policing and aircraft repair will be excessive to the taxpayer. He implies that I should feel personally guilty for this, given the state of the schools and hospitals in my own parish!
He seems confident in the extreme that had we not acted in Shannon, our current government would have poured funds into the schools and hospitals of north Dublin.
Instead, however, they said “Darn! Now we have to spend it all on supporting an oil-based attack on an already suffering population by an administration made up of oil barons! And to think all of our plans to be ethical and humane have gone down the drain all because of Deirdre and her gang!”
Four words for Mr. Kelly:
I don’t think so.
As someone who has for several years paid taxes in this country, all I’ve seen for my efforts are: elderly relatives left on trolleys all night in Beaumont A & E because of bed and staff shortages; relatives who are teachers frustrated by leaking rooves and dry rot in our primary schools, along with a lack of staff to teach special needs children; increasing traffic on our roads along with increasingly inefficient public transport; an increase in the numbers of homeless people on our streets; a dramatic decrease in the quality of rented accommodation and a dramatic increase in rents. I could go on but suffice to say that I noticed all of this long before I ever graced Shannon airport with my presence. I think I am safe in saying that the schools and hospitals in and around my parish will be unaffected one way or the other by my anti-war gesture, such is the unethical nature of our current government’s economic policy, where the poor become ever more disenfranchised.
So, while I’m flattered that Mr. Kelly thinks that I am potent enough to divert all of this money from health and education into policing Shannon, it’s not me he should be thanking, but Bertie and his friends.
I found his reference to the parish in which I grew up somewhat worrying ; first because it suggests that Mr. Kelly thinks he has some insight into my life, and that this is somehow relevant to the debate; second because it suggests that he thinks my concerns should be parochial rather than global.
He writes as if he knows me and addresses me directly, but the only person I know of by this name is the DJ and TV presenter, who would have more savvy than to write a posting like this and who I’ve never met.
The very real possibility of mass genocide worries me more than the comparatively minor ills of the already quite privileged area in which I grew up (privileged in comparison to developing countries at the very least)
However, if the denizens of Clontarf were in danger of being bombed into oblivion, I’d like to think people in other parts of the world would project themselves into our reality and oppose their ruler’s complicity in such an act. However, I doubt that they’ll start drilling for oil in St. Anne’s Park anytime soon, so it shouldn’t arise.