Mary Harney Visit to UCD Seriously Disrupted by Protests

by antrophe Mon Oct 13, 2003 16:55 antrophe at hotmail dot com

Dearrests, blockades and scuffles in UCD
Mary Harney visited UCD today to open up the new Nova centre. She was greeted by a throng of about 60 students. While we were greeted by a combined security force of about 50 cops and security people.
Last week the students union called an open meeting on cutbacks in UCD which was attended by about 60 people. As part of a number of approaches agreed upon and discussed at the meeting, one was to protest at the presence of Harney on campus at 12pm today.

People gathered outside the Arts block and proceeded over to the Nova centre where there was a strong security presence. Hoping to pin us away from the entrance and the road way in we were directed behind a white fence seperating the road froma green area. After some time of chanting and doing the usual Harneys car appraoched. It had been waiting some distance down the raod for a period of time before moving towards the building. A majority of teh crowd lept over thef ence and proceeded to attempt a blocakde of her entrance, we were eventually forced back into a pen by the cops, one of those temporary types you see outside the Dail.

At this stage teh SU president, Paul Dillon entered the building where Harney was with the support of the demonstrating students to find out what was happening. Despite previous refusal in the press, Harney apparently told the assembled knob ends in at the opening ceremony that she had no attention of raising the registration fee to €1500, she also played up the role of the PD's in forcing Dempsey to back down earlier this year, ignoring the role of student protests.

At this point, there was some confusion as to wheter or not the demonstration had made its point, a group decision was made that we would continue it untill she emerged. Penned in, we spread ourselves around its edges, some of us had identified weak points in the actual barricades such as a failure to actual lock them togther in parts, the lack of a support base to secure them and the manner in which it was not actually sealed at either end. As her car left it became clear that there wasnt enough of us pyhisically engaged in trying to break through the cordon, but spontaneously people jumped back over the originally white fence and circumnavigated the cordon blockading her car as it raced off with a garda jeep tearing after it behind and a cop car in front.

At this point the garda interevend and actually threw people back over the fence, resulting in some bruising but doing nothing to deter the protesters. One person was dragged out of view and threatened with arrest, people with cameras of course were forced away from this and were given no chance to take adequate photos of the person been held on the ground.

One student who was simply standing at the wrong side of the fence was hauled off for asking under what legislation he was being threatened with arrest. The paddy wagon was located a good distance away, nonetheless people raced to it and surrounded it with a sit down blackade on all sides, the cops were then forced to let him go.

We proceeded back towards the main campus, after a brief regrouping, we agreed to continue to harrass Harney as she was speaking at a society meeting in the Science building. Her car was blockaded by students,a nd once again a governemnt minister was forced to leave the building through the back door and in a security van.

While fees provided much of the impetus for militancy in UCD last year, this year there is not the same national media glare on educational issues. But the numbers involved in these sort of actions and coming to the meetings that organise them has not subsided one bit. While the issue last year was fees, this year we can create our own agenda for the sort of education system we want to see in this country.

At the demo solidarity was expressed towards those arrested for taking part in Bin Tax blockades.

I have photos which i will upload later this evening...

by Chekov Mon Oct 13, 2003 17:01

getting up the noses of the powerful like Harney is very emotionally rewarding! Managing to free the arrestee was quite a feat - not too easy to get the cops to surrender their cargo. Way to go.

by Astounded! Mon Oct 13, 2003 17:28

Is there REALLY a Young PD branch in UCD?

Years ago it used to be a standing joke about how they set up a stall each Freshers Week and gave out free golf umbrellas, pens and folders. Then no one ever saw them again for the rest of the year. A bit of pressure applied and they would give you a free umbrella without you even signing up :)

But then what would one do with an umbrella with the PD slogan on it? Maybe bring it to SWP pickets to confuse 'em. :)

The alleged 'Young PDs' once did a series of posters. One of these claimed the PDs were the only party with a tree in their logo. This led to numerous Greens hopping up and down. They also had various sanctimonious flyers about how their party did not come out of violence and war. Ho hum, there was me thinking they came out of bloodletting in FF, with a few has-been Blueshirts tagged on to take the bare look off it.

Congrats on the protest BTW. I recall a similar one against Charvet Charlie way back in the good old days. He legged it off campus pretty quickly too.

by ipsi Mon Oct 13, 2003 18:09

yiz got the mammy. I must say I really like the ministerial van idea.

by Gaillimhed Mon Oct 13, 2003 18:28

Congrats to all involved
It used to be said that Irish students were about as radical as magnolia paint,
well i think those days are over,
remeber that every time you carry out an action like this , successful or not, you inspire others to join in similar acts of expression.
Fuck it, if frustration and anger is what you have then these are the people to vent it on, and god knows they deserve worse.

by R Isible Mon Oct 13, 2003 18:43

Can't wait for the photos. This sounds like an incredible demo and is exactly the way to put pressure on people like Harney.

by Gaz - libertarian (cfe) Mon Oct 13, 2003 18:49

who did they try to arrest?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/campaignforfreeeducation/

by antrophe Mon Oct 13, 2003 19:56

I think it was a guy from Business and Legal. He was released after the blockade of the car. I was running around and being poleaxed over fences by security, so many of the photos are a bit dogy, blurred and generally of a low enough quality, nonetheless I'll stick them up later..

by UCD head Mon Oct 13, 2003 21:00

I think the guys name was Eddy maybe, he had a distinct haircut, blonde on top and black the rest.

Anyway the police were very very rough today especially with the more lively members like Paul Murphy and Oisin and all and some guys from SA. I think some people are going to make complaints, one garda didnt even have a number, apparently he was a rookie.

Hope we ruined her day.

by pasionaria Tue Oct 14, 2003 01:34

well done for running the over fed and under worked pig out of UCD. hopefully fees can be defeated as easy

by Conor - UCD SA ( ) Tue Oct 14, 2003 13:09 Conor at ziplip dot com

Well done everyone involved. As james said ~ 60 people did a great job. I dont think she will be thundering down belfield way too soon.

a particular high point was getting the gardai to release that 4th bbls guy. there was one particularly ( e 97 i think ) hard - ass garda just dying to lay in to some students. when they were taking mr 4th bbls away we kept asking ( as did he ) waht the charge was for. in typical garda style , the reply was " get in the van, that ill be enough out of you " - real fr ted stuff. in fairness, they did steer clear of using " ya young pup ya ".

we all sat around the van, and chanted " arrest one arrest us all ".

Then harney went into the science bldg to give a talk on the governments science policy.we all followed her over. myself and donal o laithnain managed to walk in.the chants from outside were deafining at one stage, but petered off. harney passed a joke about "students protesting" to the ususal har ha thats so quirky,when will they grow up kind of nonsence ( thats nonce - sence ) reply from the gathered PDs/ Scientists. donal held the ADC (Anti - Deportaion - Campaign) banner, i asked her why it was necessary to have 40+ gardai and security staff around her. she replied that she diddnt look after security , and the gardai obviously thought it necessary to keep "your crowd" away (more pd har hars) she then stated that her party were responsible for the fact that there "were no fees this year" i asked her about the 700 yo yo we all must pay, she smirked in the way only a fat little facist can. she asked if i had any qs on science , so i askd her about her appointment of known military industrialists (IONA founder Chris Horn ) - whoose companies specialise in missile guidance software - to the science research board. she certainly wouldnt answer this, first talking guff about the pds intrest in science, so i aked her again then she said it was "founded in myth" (that iona are military developers) ,then (somewhere it came up that i study engineering) she told me to be happy i "dont have to emmigrate" followed by some broad attack on the left to which i got angry (throughout this i was being hissed told to shut up etc by the audience), so i ended up quite geting irrational and immature and calling her and mc dowell " a bunch of fat cunts". she said that my choice of language was regrettable, and it was. pretty fucking low. a low point, so she honed in on that, mor talk of bin charges , shannon etc came about, until i was cut off, and she finished her speech talking about "links between science and industry" etc, usual pd rethoric.

i cant help but feel that if mor people just walked in , or at least if the protest continued outside till the end, it would have been much more effective. C

by and a dollop of I ..."ego" Tue Oct 14, 2003 13:10

She is mixture of many contemporary Irish stereotypes and is in common parlance a heavy muddah. She is very well conected my friends.

by An Púca Wed Oct 15, 2003 21:15

Its true you know.

by Pablo Thu Oct 16, 2003 10:03

any chance of some photos of this protest?

by antrophe Thu Oct 16, 2003 17:00 antrophe at hotmail dot com

Sorry about these being late, been kept away from a pc for a few days and then had to deal with the whole file compression fidgety thing...

Anyway here you are..bit less than quality but i was running around pens like something from 'One Man And His Dog' for most of this one.

by antrophe Thu Oct 16, 2003 17:08

and another..

by antrophe Thu Oct 16, 2003 17:10 antrophe at hotmail dot com

Grrr....despite efforts some of the photos are still a bit too big...

Gardai drag student along ground out of view and restrain him.

by antrophe Thu Oct 16, 2003 17:15 antrophe at hotmail dot com

here ya go...