Action

At the end of May, Bristol Rising Tiders joined others from around the UK and the Republic of Ireland for a weekend gathering at the Rossport Solidarity Camp at Glengad in County Mayo. The gathering had been called to support the local community in their fight to stop Shell and Statoil from wrecking their environment and destroying their livelihoods of farming and fishing. Shell and Statoil (the Norwegian State oil and gas company) are extracting gas off the coast of Co. Mayo and are now planning to lay a gas pipeline to connect the drilling rig to the gas refinery they are building on seized land at nearby Ballanaboy. The 150 people who came to the gathering took part in direct action workshops led by the Tripod collective from Scotland and learnt from local activists about the massive oil and gas developments planned for the Atlantic seaboard of Ireland. A workshop run by an activist from Platform also showed that the struggle at Rossport was just one of many being waged by small communities around the world against Shell - the multinational oil company. The hallmarks of Shell’s operations are disregard for the environment, destruction of livelihoods, coercion and violence against local activists and gaining favourable terms by giving backhanders to politicians.

"You may well ask: 'why direct action? Isn't negotiation a better path?' You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored"

Test

Unmasking industry greenwash