Fuelling the fury

As Shell settles a major legal action over protests in Nigeria, closer to home emotions are running high over a gas pipeline near the Irish village of Rossport, sparking violent clashes and bitter recrimination. Harriet Grant and John Domokos report

* Harriet Grant and John Domokos
* The Guardian, Wednesday 10 June 2009

It is a clear spring evening on the wild north-west coast of Ireland. Atlantic waves surge into a wide bay surrounded by open countryside. In a field close to the beach, 200 police officers are inching their way along a high metal fence as a crowd of about 100 protesters closes in, some pulling chains from under their jackets as they prepare to attack the fence. A mile up the road, police roadblocks have been stopping cars from approaching the site since late afternoon.

Welcome to Rossport, a small but divided village in County Mayo that has become yet another battleground for Shell. The fuel giant agreed this week to pay almost £10m to settle a legal action with human rights protesters in southern Nigeria, after being accused of collaborating in the execution of nine leaders of the Ogoni tribe, including the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. In Rossport, it is up against a group of protesters who have now held a gas pipeline at bay for almost a decade. This summer, Shell is due to put in place a massive security operation to help finally bring the pipeline ashore to its Bellanaboy Bridge gas refinery, a couple of miles inland from the village.

Standing in his garden looking out across the pipeline route, Noel Philbin sums up the anger and defiance of those who say they will never give in to Shell. "Everything is wrong with the pipeline. It's unsightly, there'll be chimneys blowing up 365 days a year and effluence pipes going back into this beautiful bay. Once they get the pipeline ashore, the battle will be here in our village. We'll do everything we can to stop that pipe and we're not afraid of going to jail, it's as simple as that."

When gas was discovered 50 miles off the deprived north Mayo coast in the Corrib field, local people thought the area would be getting prosperity and jobs. Indeed, many still support the project - they say the protesters are a small and vocal minority who oppose Shell for ideological reasons. The supporters also claim that they are afraid to speak openly, so deep are the divisions in the community.

In 2005, five men were jailed for refusing to allow Shell on to their land. The jailings sent waves of rage through the community. After three months, Shell backed down and withdrew the injunctions - and also dropped its original pipeline route. Now a new route that skirts the village is proposed and the final public hearing is under way. Once that is over, the Irish Planning Board will make the final decision, but for now Shell is pressing on with the work, determined to bring the pipe ashore.

Activists from across Ireland have been arriving to help locals launch attacks on the Shell site, attempting to tear down fences at the place where the pipe will be brought ashore. At one of the weekly demonstrations, local people - some in tears - scream abuse at police officers. But not far beneath the surface, the village is as traumatised as it is defiant. This is a community that all sides agree will struggle to recover from the bitter divisions over the pipeline.

Philbin thinks the damage done by the dispute has gone too deep to mend. "Even if Shell pulled away in the morning, this village would never get back to the way it was. There can be no harmony, no trust here ever again."

The tension in the area has been increased by allegations of assault made by a long-time opponent of the pipeline, farmer Willie Corduff. He claims that while protesting peacefully under a truck on the Shell site, he was severely beaten by a group of men in balaclavas.

Corduff was one of the men jailed in 2005. An unlikely activist, he has lived in Rossport his entire life. With his wife Mary and their six children, he works the farm his father built out of peat bogs 60 years ago. "I was stretching my legs after lying so long under the truck when about six men in balaclavas appeared, hit me over the head, then knelt on me, blocking my throat and badly beating me," he says. He has photos that show him lying in hospital, swollen and bruised, and says he is preparing evidence with a lawyer before he approaches the police.

Shell denies that anyone assaulted Corduff on its behalf, instead claiming that a balaclava-clad gang attacked its property that night with a digger, causing millions of euros' worth of damage. The security firm Shell is using to protect the site, I-RMS, adds that its only concern that night was with Corduff's welfare. Even Archbishop Desmond Tutu has weighed into the debate, expressing his concern for Corduff and backing him in his fight against the pipeline. Whatever the truth of the night of 23 April, it lit a fuse under the simmering tensions in the area.

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