"There are rich people who live near here who are being inconvenienced by this protest. That's why it's being stopped"
That's a direct quote from a Guard who was policing the Ballybrack protest and who had as low an opinion of "rich people" getting their way as the rest of us.
Without even being asked, a Guard told protestors that the decision about how to police the Ballybrack protest didn’t come from anyone on the ground… up to and including the Superintendent.
His professionalism didn't allow that Guard to go into details but it was strongly implied that political influence had been brought to bear.
Early in the week Richard Boyd Barrett TD and Cllr Hugh Lewis met residents and told them their complaints about the centre were unfounded.
Last Wednesday a letter was sent to residents by Jennifer Carroll-McNeill TD implying that the grounds for their protest no longer existed.
On Saturday residents received a letter from Minister Roderick O'Gorman that did nothing to allay fears that men would be put in the centre as soon as it was repaired but simultaneously tried to infer that the grounds for protest no longer existed – “no contract has been entered in to” (yet).
And finally, that same message - no legitimate basis for protest - was what Guards on the ground said was the reason for how things were policed. Arrests, women and children thrown around, kids screaming.
Nice to have that kind of pull. One more benefit of living in Killiney.
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?
There were two arrests last Thursday, the first of them being Ferg. The Superintendent from Dun Laoghaire was responsible for both. He was the Guard who began grappling with Ferg for his flag and then handed off the arrest to his men.
Once Ferg had been arrested tensions grew, the crowd was shouting back although still obeying Garda instructions to stay out of the road and up on the path. However that level of obedience wasn't enough and the Superintendent came over, pointed at a second person, said "Section 8" and they were arrested too. If they're arresting people for verbals then lock every one of us up and most of the public with us.
The Superintendent is Fergal Harrington, winner of the Scott medal and brother of Padraig, by the bye.
The following day, Friday, the language online was getting more and more extreme, emotions were being stirred up, things were being said and deleted.
That evening, the evening of the standoff with the Guards, David was the first person to be arrested, allegedly for verbals. That was followed by two more arrested for standing or just sitting quietly in the crossroads, the charge being wilful obstruction under the Public Order Act. In the last three years of protesting no one has been arrested for wilful obstruction. Two days previously East Wall had blocked the road for half an hour while chatting with the Guards on duty, asking them what they thought of Drew Harris and them laughing back in response. That's how it's been since November in East Wall where they were blocking the main arteries of the city. No arrests, no suggestion of an arrest.
If the protesters had marched, or just walked around, as they had on previous days, the arrests on the grounds of wilful obstruction could have been avoided. This was confirmed by the Guards. On the other hand they were arresting people for verbals which in practice meant they were just going to lift anyone they wanted.
It was also very clear from talking to the Guards that on both days they had picked out targets for arrest in advance.
You can tell a lot about people by how they behave in new, stressful and threatening situations. The outrage that was felt about Ferg being arrested was based on people knowing, even before they had seen any video, that there was no way Ferg could have been doing anything that could have reasonably led to an arrest. At any protest, under any conditions, you look around and Ferg is the one behaving with common sense and reserve. He stands out as the one person among us all with real character.
To the Guards though - in their own words - "Ferg's no angel".
Short of standing off to the side and reciting a decade of the Rosary - and even that probably wouldn't have been enough - it's hard to see how Ferg could have avoided being arrested last Thursday. On the other hand in court it's going to be Ferg's word and any amount of video evidence against the word of a Superintendent; so hardly worth entering a defence, you'd think. Consider that you can be put away for years solely on the word of a Chief Superintendent
David was the first person to be arrested the next day, Friday. Described on OffGridIreland as an elderly man - which is probably going to annoy him a lot more than being arrested - he seems to have been in the Guard's crosshairs from the minute he showed up that day. Guards claimed they remembered things that David had said over the previous days. Hurty words, allegedly. The Guards did remember somebody saying something to one of them about a cold sore and where they had got it which to be fair was pretty memorable. This has been an unpleasant experience for some of the Guards. Others volunteered to work on days off just to be there.
It seems that most of the arrests were of people they wanted to pick up and they were just looking for an opportunity - hence the arrest for insulting and abusive language and the unprecedented arrests for wilful obstruction
It also seems, from talking to locals in Ballybrack, that they are subject to a lot more attention from the Guards than most people would be used to - a lot of it for relatively minor stuff. Small things seem to have more serious legal consequences in Ballybrack then they do elsewhere like say in Killiney. There were plenty of stories and as if to illustrate the point one woman taking her dog for a walk past the protest was stopped, questioned by the Guards about a dog licence and her details taken. Can't imagine it happens too often on Dun Laoghaire pier.
It's as if Killiney and Dun Laoghaire were not the kind of places that should really trouble a Guard - they're good people you know - and all that’s left for Dun Laoghaire Station to focus its considerable energies and attention on is the small area of Ballybrack
Notwithstanding all of the above, taking it all into account, the real takeaway is not what happened last Thursday and Friday in Ballybrack but why it happened.
All's changed... a terrible beauty... etc.
The fact is that last Thursday something changed about the approach the Guards were taking towards the protest in Ballybrack and that decision was not made in Dun Laoghaire Garda station
Prior to last Thursday things were very different.
The previous week there was a standoff with the Public Order unit. Up close in your face shouting, nothing physical. For the most part we were the ones responsible for that disturbance - maybe there was a bit of an over reaction by an individual Guard to an individual on our side saying something but ultimately we were the ones confronting the Public Order Unit and that day the Public Order Unit stayed calm, backed off and a female uniformed Guard intervened and peace prevailed. The Guards that day were under different orders than they were this weekend.
Normal policing rules were in place all the way up to this weekend. According to the women who were most involved in the protest the Superintendent had been very friendly, obliging and reasonable every day up until last Thursday. According to those women he had even reassured them that he didn't believe anyone would be going into the centre.
Things obviously changed on Thursday and Friday.
The lesson we're supposed to learn
The first clue we have as to what caused this change came on Saturday evening. One Guard told the early arrivals that if protesters blocked the intersection they would be arrested again on wilful obstruction charges but this Guard was a bit more forthcoming about the rationale behind it.
According to him "the issue has been dealt with". Immigrants were not being put in the centre and therefore there was nothing to object to and so obstructing the crossroads would not be tolerated and would probably lead to arrest.
People were more than a little surprised to hear that the issue had been dealt with.
There was more clarification to come. It emerged that earlier that day (Saturday) a letter had been sent to residents that came from Roderic O'Gorman himself. The main point of the letter was to clear up the question of which buildings were actually intended to be used and also to say that it would be mid-September at the earliest before anyone would be put in them, together with the usual meaningless promise that it would be all women.
The implication being that there were currently no grounds for the Ballybrack protest.
That letter came with a cover letter thanking "Minister/Deputies/Senators" for their "ongoing engagement with my Department with respect to... refugee accommodation in Ballybrack"
O'Gorman's letter mirrored the message in a letter sent to residents last Wednesday (26th July) by Junior Minister in Finance and FG TD for Dun Laoghaire, Jennifer Carroll McNeill. In her letter she stated that the building had not yet been approved to house IPAS residents. A detailed assessment would have to take place first.
Hence no immediate grounds for the Ballybrack protest.
As a sign of the confusion and poor communication that exists around this, Carroll McNeill's letter explicitly says "the property that was damaged last week is not the property that was intended for consideration as refugee accommodation". O'Gorman's letter three days later says "the property being offered is Ridge House and the adjoining retail unit that faces out on to the corner of Wyatville Road" i.e. the property that was damaged.
Earlier in the week Richard Boyd Barrett TD and Cllr Hugh Lewis met residents. It was described as being a waste of time. Residents were told their complaints hadn’t any merit for the same reasons as above.
This is the same narrative the Guards had on Saturday - and probably had since Thursday - to explain the change in policing. No legitimate grounds for protest in the eyes of those who matter so you're going to be arrested if you try.
The reality is that it will take until mid September to repair the flood damage done to the centre. Nothing in the meetings and the letters rule out hundreds of economic migrants being planted then in Ballybrack. Previous departmental assurances that they will all be women have almost always been false. That's why the protests continue.
It was also on Saturday evening that a Guard said the thing about rich people live here and they don't want to be inconvenienced going about their business (and to repeat he was as disgusted as any of us by the fact that all of us there, protesters and guards, were being dictated to in that way)
One Guard wanted to make clear, without anyone even raising the subject with him, that the decision about how to police the protest over the previous two days had not been made by anyone in his station.
He was professional enough not to go in to detail about who he believed had exerted that influence and how. But we've been given more than enough clues. We’re told the decision about policing was made outside the local Garda structures. We have meetings with Boyd Barrett and a letter from Jennifer Carroll McNeill saying the protestors no longer had a legitimate grievance, then a follow up letter from O'Gorman making the same point, and then that narrative being repeated by Guards on the ground as their understanding of why there was a change in policing.
Another sign of political influence: when it was brought up with the Guards that there had been a very negative reaction online to the policing operation at Ballybrack with the five arrests over two days and that there was an especially bad public reaction to the confrontation on Friday evening one Guard mentioned that he had got a lot of text messages from councillors congratulating them.
What we're being told here is that not only will Killiney and Dalkey not be taking any more than token numbers of immigrants while landing hundreds into Ballybrack but Killiney and Dalkey will also not take kindly to being inconvenienced by any objections Ballybrack might have to this being done to them. "Know your place" orders are being issued by people with political clout and the ability to have the Guards directed to do their bidding.
The lesson we should actually learn from all this
What happened this week was also about something bigger than Ballybrack. It was a life and death moment for the protest movement for anyone who remembers rocket man and the Grafton Street riot during lockdown. 2,000 people showed up on Grafton Street for a demonstration, one man let off a rocket at the Guards. It might as well have been fired at the protest movement itself - we rarely got many out marching after that.
In the last month there have been signs that some people feel the peaceful protests are not achieving anything and it's time for more direct forms of action. People have uploaded video of themselves throwing punches at People Before Profit demonstrators, the centre in Ballybrack was physically attacked (someone has apparently been questioned over it), there was confrontation with the Public Order unit in Ballybrack a week ago and then the online reaction to Fergus arrest was a lot more excited than anything before (with the possible exception of Ballymun early this year).
In fairness it has to be said that in terms of shutting down centres this direct action is the only thing that has worked. Bargaintown in Finglas had the windows smashed and later the door was set on fire and - open to correction on this – no one has been put in there, permanently at any rate. The official reason given by the Department is that the Bargaintown centre was shut due to local opposition. The Ballybrack centre has had the windows smashed, plumbing destroyed, walls graffitied and with the threat that it may happen again - next time with better operational security - it does seem unlikely that the centre in Ballybrack will actually be filled. It has to be recognised that this approach works on a local level for an individual centre.
But in terms of the big picture the downside for us is enormous.
According to one woman in Ballybrack her mother, who lives only a few doors away from the crossroads, was understandably very upset at the thought of the centre opening. But she still wouldn't attend the protest because of the confrontational scenes she had seen.
Move away from peaceful protest and you lose the support of local communities, you kill off the spread of this protest movement across the country and that's not even the worst of the consequences.
There was a reasonable chance that Friday, the second day of arrests, the day of the skirmish, might have turned in to a major setback for us. There was a chance we were going to give (Walter) Kitty Holland something to write about that she didn't have to make up. We could have turned locals off protesting and we could have smashed that 75% support we have in polls back down to 30 or 40%. That's what us rioting in response to the Guards provocation could have done. And instead, surprisingly given all the build up and given the extremely provocative arrests being carried out by the Guards for no good reason, we did no more than shout our objections and outrage. We got pushed by the Guards, flung around, women and children pushed around in every direction, young girls bawling crying, but we didn't attack back. We videoed it on our phones. (A bit of an eye opener about the pacifying effect of smartphones. Rather than jump in, people were creating videos in which they were the victims and the Guards the villains. A kind of in your face pacifism.) And then in the Twitter reaction afterwards we came away the winners. Victory from the jaws of defeat. Our peaceful protest model, unique to Ireland, and so successful, seems surprisingly robust. If it was going to collapse it was probably going to collapse last Friday in Ballybrack. It didn't and we came away having solidified that 75% support.
We have a lot to thank rocket man for. Lesson learned.
Meanwhile Killiney and Dalkey have a message for Ballybrack and they have the power to bash heads in order to drive it home. Say it loud and say it clear Killiney and Dalkey won't be taking in any unvetted men, they're going to Ballybrack and if Ballybrack get uppity about it in a way that inconveniences Killiney and Dalkey they'll be shown who's boss.
To exercise that kind of raw power over those weaker than you and still be convinced that you're the "good people", that must be nice.
If Rosa Parks' bus had been going to Killiney you'd never have heard of her and she'd still be in jail.