Gardai help a car through the picket

An ongoing dispute between members of the Building and Allied Trades Union (BATU) and Collen Brothers construction which has led to the jailing of three workers now appears to be escalating into a major dispute between workers and the company. Today (Feb 21st 2006) a picket at one of Collen's sites at University College Dublin (UCD) Belfield managed to halt work despite the presence of 60 hostile Gardai.

Despite the actions of the Gardai, which involved an early arrest of a picketeer and the construction of roadblocks in order to attempt to impede people joining the picket, there was no damage or trouble. A succesful blockade of the site was undertaken with the assistance of UCD Student Union. The Student Union had earlier passed a resolution supporting the 3 jailed bricklayers.

Although instinctive sympathies run high in support of the men, there are some questions over whether the demand for "local labour" as opposed to "union only" is diverting the campaign into a xenophobic dead-end. This could be a significant misstep in maintaining public sympathy and the sympathy of the broader labour movement.

Update: Feb22 Garda/Collen actions condemned. Feb23 picket continues

Shell Dubin HQ Blockaded

After a relatively quiet Winter, spent on speaking tours and accumulating resources to re-open the Rossport Solidarity Camp in the Spring, the Shell To Sea Campaign swang dramatically back into action with blockades and protests and a promise that this was only a taster of the direct action to come in Mayo if Shell and their cronies in Dail Eireann continue to trample on local people and force through their on-shore refinement plant.

The Action:
London Shell Station Blockaded
Galway Shell to Sea Action
Nottingham Actions 2
Cork Statoil Protest
(See The Rest Of This Feature For Account Of Dublin Action)

Background From Indymedia Ireland Archives

Stephen Baxter has written a novel for the long haul – we humans are notorious for believing that our brief existence is of pressing importance, so any novel that spans 600 million years can reasonably be described as taking “the long view”

Two Stephen Baxter sites:

• http://www.themanifold.co.uk/
• http://www.baxterium.org.uk/

Evolution:

• Basic introduction to the reasoning of biological evolution
• Main Wikipedia page on evolution
• Other useful site on evolution

Popular science:

• Richard Dawkins’s Wikipedia page
• Evolutionary Psychology on Wikipedia
• Richard Lewontin: well known critic of sociobiology
• Grapic depection of hominoid evolution
• Brief account of moden humans from an archeological perspective

A portent of all that was to follow on the discovery of gas off the Mayo coast must surely have been that all of the local SIPTU and other workers who had been involved in the exploration were immediately dropped. Foreign workers from the Phillippines and elsewhere were flown in and out from that point onwards - without ever touching Irish soil. Clearly, there was a determination to keep matters out of Irish hands from before the find - itself only a confirmation of what had long been known/suspected about our resrouces off the west coast (despite propaganda to the contrary that had been circulating in the years preceding the find).

At the Maxwell lecture theatre, Hamilton Building, Trinity College on February the 9th, Eamon Dunphy together with Micheal O Sheigin of the Rossport Five was addressing an audience in advance of the Five's expected appearance in court today. Dunphy said he believed that what Charles Haughey and Ray Burke had done in relation to this issue amounted to treason. Against all the rules of public administration, they had met in secret, (i.e. without any other government representative present), with oil company representatives and had concluded a deal the details of which are still not known to this day. What is known is that the Irish people have no rights whatever to their own natural resources as a result of that deal. What is also certain is that on the very same day in January 1993 that subsequent legislation governing the issuing of exploration licences came into force, Enterprise Ireland applied for a license for the exploration of the Corrib field. Statoil, also on the same day, applied for four exploration licences. What amazing foresight they must have had - or perhaps they knew something the rest of us did not?

Joanne Delaney - Dunnes' Union Nemesis?

At a meeting in Crumlin Village Tuesday evening (Feb 7th 2006), about 60 local activists and residents agreed to form a support group for Joanne Delaney, sacked by Dunnes Stores for wearing a trade union pin, last October. They also agreed to place a weekly picket on Dunnes Stores in the Ashleaf Centre starting next Saturday at 12 noon.

An image of Joanne Delaney was one of the last pictures on the top of the newswire of this site before the layout changed. She was a Mandate worker representative in Dunnes in Ashleaf in Crumlin last October when she was fired for wearing her union pin. An Irish owned retailer, Dunnes was famously involved in a pay off in 1997 to a Taoiseach (Haughey) and a minister (Lowry) leading to the wonder of Tribunal land. It achieved international notoriety in the 1980's as 11 workers stood firm for nearly three years over a Mandate member who was suspended for refusing to handle South African fruit during apartheid. It is heavily involved in both retailing and land deals around Dublin 12, both in the Ashleaf centre where Joanne worked and in the Crumlin and other shopping centres in the area.

Joan Collins and Pat Dunne with Joanne 0.33 Mb Brendan Archibald talking to the crowd 0.71 Mb Joanne wearing her union badge 0.32 Mb