Symbolic Victory on Wednesday night?

Thursday April 03, 2003 12:36

by Aidan - IMC Ireland

IMCer's report on the protest.

As protestors flittered away from the post stand off rally, heading for the pub or last bus home, they missed the rhetoric and hyperbola of the Protestor organisers and TDs. Joe Higgins cheered on the this “victory” for the IAWM, and announced boldly that “now those in the Dail know what the people of Baghdad feel like". Right. Was this a success?

Early on in the evening, as the protest opened, this journalist spoke to peace activist Caoimhe Butterly. Caoimhe a member of the Shannon peace camp, and Ciaran O’Reilly had approached IAWM organisers and pointed out that there was a very obvious back door to the Dail off Merrion Sq, and why hadn’t stewards moved some of the group around to the other side. If this was to be a blockade it seemed foolish to them, to leave a very obvious entrance and exit open. IAWM organisers curtly told them to “stop trying to hijack their (IAWM) demo. Obviously this was to be a symbolic blockade, then. Which to this reporter seems vaguely pointless. But anyway...

I went around up Kildare st. to see what the handful of demonstrators on Merrion Sq were doing, and as I did, I saw the Public Order Squad disembark from three vans on Kildare st, they moved behind the vans and began kitting up very obviously getting ready to go in. I Phoned a fellow IMCer still in the crowd, and she moved to inform the IAWM with the Van mounted PA. In her reasoning and logic this should be announced to the crowd, people should be made aware of this. She approached the PA and a senior IAWM organiser “There’s a squad of riot cops getting rea…” She was cut off “We’re not announcing that”. He didn’t hear her out and seemed like this wasn’t the first time this information had been passed onto them.

I came back just as the riot squad moved in, schooled in the brute force and ignorance school of crowd control, they waded into the crowd flinging people left and right, dragging people from the sit down, one of the people treated in this manner was an elderly woman with arthitis, who couldn’t get up from the ground were she lay after being thrown there by police. Protestors formed a protective group around her, but on several occasions Gardaí threw people on top of her.

The Gardaí tactic of dragging protestors from the mass pulling them a few yards, to the side, and then dropping them was getting them, slowly, up Molesworth st. Slowly because often the protestors fresh from being man handled would pick themselves up, catch their breath, and then join the back of the sit down protest again. After about half an hour, and grappling with the same protestors up to three or four times, the Public Order squad was well, knackered. Heaving, red faced, and sweating the lads had a breather.
This stand of continued for over an hour, with protestors chanting and singing as the riot squad looked on. In the IAWM’s defence the front line of the sit down group (which had been pushed back past Buswells hotel at this point) consisted of IAWM stewards. The protestors had elongated into a peninsula down Molesworth st. with handfuls on either side of Kildare st. They even drew a laugh from the Public order squad with the chant “This is what overtime looks like”.

Negotiations between TDs (several of whom, John Gormley and Joe Higgins, had been manhandled roughly by Gardaí, Higgins lost his mobile in the fray) continued for a while, until it was agreed that the public order squad would withdraw, and then after a short rally would happen, and then the protestors with leave.

The Squad pulled out to jeers and catcalls, and you were greeted with the strange sight of unarmoured Gardaí forming a protective shield around the public order squad, as the crowd surged towards them.

As the protest wound down to the traditional speeches, there was an illuminating moment, three teenagers in blink 182 tops, new found friends, united through their participation in this civil disobedience reliving the fun and excitement of the night, while a middle aged woman stormed off after hearing a speaker (I’m not sure which one) demand more DA, “Well I’m not giving them more money if they’re planning civil disobedience” she remarked huffily.

Which is the bind the IAWM find themselves in, trying to appease the older more responsible groups, and unions, while at the same time, keep the energy and momentum of youth on side. Tough trick. The behaviour of the IAWM tonight is a quantum leap forward for them from March, but it still has a long way to go, and some serious rethinking of tactics to do on the way.

But back to the start, “was this a victory”? A symbolic blockade, which is no blockade at all? The removal of the Public Order Squad? How was the squad’s retreat in any way a victory? They’re supposed to maintain public order, and in this case they restored public order by leaving. They lost nothing in retreating. As for the blockade symbolic victories are the only victories the IAWM appear to be chasing.