1968 didn’t just happen in France. Inspired by the Black civil rights movement in the Southern US, residents of Derry’s Bogside chased out the unionist police forces and built barricades to keep them - and later the British army - out of Free Derry until 1972. I mention it now because nine Derry protestors are about to go on trial for another radical act of resistance, during Israel’s 2006 attack on Lebanon. Stop The War reports:
Support the Raytheon 9: Resisting war crimes is not a crime
Nine people in Derry in Northern Ireland have been charged under terrorism laws following an occupation of the local Raytheon plant during which, police claim, £350,000 damage was done to computer equipment.
The US company Raytheon is one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world, supplying guidance systems for many of the missiles and bombs used by US and Israeli forces in the Middle East. Raytheon systems guided the Qana bomb to the bunker where it blasted and crushed at least 51 people, including many children, to death.
Three of the arrested men, Colm Bryce, Kieran Gallagher and Eamonn McCann are members of the Derry branch of the Socialist Workers’ Party while another, Sean Heaton is a member of the Socialist Environmental Alliance. The five others, Eamonn O’Donnell, Gary Donnelly, Paddy McDaid, Jimmy Kelly and Micky Gallagher are Republicans, from the IRSP and the 32-Country Sovereignty Committee.
After hours of questioning, all nine were charged with Aggravated Burglary and Unlawful Assembly. These are “scheduled” offences, meaning they would be heard before a Diplock, non-jury court. These charges also meant that the men couldn’t be given bail by the Magistrates’ Court but had to be remanded to prison before a bail application in the High Court.
The only reason for the remand in prison and the severity of the charges is that the protestors live in Northern Ireland. This would not have happened in Britain or the South of Ireland. Despite the New Labour talk of a new NI, political dissent is still treated differently here.
At the bail hearing, the Crown tried to raise Eamonn McCann’s convictions on public order offences going back to the civil rights movement 1968/69/70. However, the judge said that the “vintage” of these charges made them irrelevant.
The arms merchants were brought to Derry in 1999 by SDLP and Ulster Unionist leaders John Hume and David Trimble: the announcement of the plant was made at the pair’s first joint public appearance following their receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. It was part, they said, of “the peace dividend.”
The savage irony was immediately apparent. An argument over Raytheon has continued in Derry since. However, all the local mainstream parties—John Hume’s SDLP, Gerry Adams’s Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley’s DUP—have backed the company’s presence, arguing that the Derry plant isn’t directly involved in arms manufacture and that driving Raytheon out would deter other investors in an area of high unemployment.
Speaking from a window at the plant during the occupation, Eamonn McCann said: “We had to dramatise the argument so as to force the issue into the mainstream.”
Documents and computers were hurled from windows and the computer mainframe and other equipment put out of action.
The idea for the occupation emerged from a packed meeting of the Derry Anti War Coalition on August 2nd addressed by former Abu Ghraib interrogator Joshua Casteel of Iraqi Veterans Against War and Hani Lazim of Iraqi Democrates against the Occupation. Discussion from the floor focused on Raytheon, and the role it gave Derry in the arms trade. The activists knew that, despite the line of the main parties, there is real anger in the town at the idea of software developed in Derry helping to murder people in Lebanon and Gaza.
On August 9th at 8am, protestors arrived at the building Raytheon shares with a call centre. The police were already in position. At about 8.30, an employee about to go into work hesitated for an instant and the anti-war activists rushed the door. Police started grabbing people by the scruff of the necks and literally throwing them back out. The nine now charged are those who made it into Raytheon’s premises.
Once inside, the protestors erected barricades against the police and set about decommissioning the equipment. Many files thrown out the window gave the lie to the claims that the Derry plant had no connection with the arms trade.
Once local radio started to report the occupation, others started to arrive to join the protest. In the course of the day, between 80 and 100 people kept the solidarity picket going. Cars on the main road honked their horns in support.
Local residents brought coffee, sandwiches and cake. Armed police in riot gear stormed the buildinng after eight hours and carried the protestors out in handcuffs.
Almost all were battered and bruised in the process.
At the bail hearing, barrister Joe Brolly pointed out that Raytheon had had a turnover of $21.9 billion last year, and described them as “purveyors of death”.
Bail was granted but the restrictions are draconian. Conditions include an exclusion zone around Raytheon, and also ban the protestors from attending any public meeting or any private meeting of Derry Anti War Coalition or the Irish Anti War Movement. They were told that a “private meeting” means any meeting of three or more people.
A Raytheon 9 Defence Campaign is now being established across Ireland
Trial Update
The trial of Derry Anti War Coalition activists, the Raytheon 9, is set to start on Monday May 19th. It is to be held in Belfast. The trial was moved to Belfast after the Prosecution Service applied to have it moved; it argued that the Derry jury pool is likely to know too much about the campaign against Raytheon, including the non-violent direct action taken on 9th August 2006 and that any jury from Derry may be too sympathetic to the action and/or intimidated by the level of support for the Raytheon 9 because of all the protests held outside the court over the almost two years since the nine were arrested.
The Derry Anti War Coalition is confident that, wherever the trial is heard, there will be large demonstrations in support of the Nine and that any jury who hears the truth about what was happening in Lebanon when the action took place cannot but find that the Nine acted to stop war crimes and, therefore, committed no crime.
Anyone wishing to support the Raytheon 9 can do so in several ways: Send a message of support to resistderry@aol.com
Organise a fundraiser for the defence fund Spread the word about the role of the arms trade in fuelling war. If there is an arms company in your town, organise a protest at it.
Jet Pilot: “The sheer wanton destructiveness of it… dropping computers from an office window!”
Update: See this short documentary from Derry Stop The War. RickB is posting updates on the trial as they come on his blog Ten Percent.
Meanwhile in Belfast… http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/05/belfast-mural.html
i saw eamonn in london t’other day at the may 68 and all that conference
Did he mention any of this? I assume the emphasis was more on the events of ‘68, but surely his impending trial for war-resistance would have been of interest?
Meh. Meh, I say. You break the law - and this really is breaking the law, not violating some pointless, dictatorial government edict put in place for the simple purpose of silencing dissent like some of their no-protest laws - to make a political point then you’ve got to be prepared to deal with the consequences. I have shit all sympathy for them.
Actually British law does recognise elements of international law against aiding and abetting, even passively, war crimes or crimes against humanity, which does authorise people to take direct (and otherwise criminal) action, including sabotage, to prevent such crimes. The Summer War definitely falls into one or both of those categories, although I doubt such a defence would work because 1/ you’d have to demonstrate that sabotaging the Derry plant would have directly contibuted towards impeding for war crimes and 2/ because such laws are rarely held up because of their implications.
Anyway, I’m not particularly scandalised by the reaction of the state and the police (well, I am a bit because it reflects the disproportionate repression inflicted upon Northern Ireland, but let’s say I wouldn’t be particularly scandalised by a response that was more in line with what we’d get in GB or RoI). My intention was more to cheer on the Raytheon 9 and to inspire other people ready for an attack or Iran or sometihng than to cry scandal at their victimisation by the police.
Obviously, the cops upheld the status quo, and defended Raytheon’s right to accessorize mass murder for profit. That’s their job. The Raytheon stuff was the property of the Raytheon corporation, who choose to use it as an accessory to mass murder, and not the property of the people of Derry, who would probably have chosen to use it for other ends if at all. The police will always uphold this system of property rights even if it means allowing war profiteering, or environmental destruction, or exploitation or whatever.
That, when push comes to shove, is what we have a police force for. So obviously their reaction was legitimate within the confines of their system, but you have to ask what, in the final analysis, gives them or it any real legitimacy? If you would really condemn someone throwing computers out of an office window to prevent people from dropping cluster bombs on Lebanese villages, I think you need to ask yourself what side you’re on.
Never knews this about Raytheon. Thanks for the story.
I have no use for mob justice, and that’s what this is in the end. It’s hardly a peaceful protest is it, barging into a building and smashing everything you can get your hands on? I’m all for the right to a protest but my support for groups ends when they decide to start playing vigilante crusader.
Why do I view things this way? Because what’s a society that lets people take the law into their own hands? It sure as hell isn’t one governed by the rule of law and without that you’re heading down a path I have no desire to walk with you. It’s bad enough now with far too many people (and governments) basically acting as they please and laughing off what meagre punishments they get slapped with, thank you very much.
And frankly, it’s easier said than done to get a war-crimes conviction, as has been proved quite adequately by recent(ish)(I suppose not all that recent by now) events regarding what happened in Kosovo and how, despite a wide international consensus at the time that war crimes were happening, guilty verdicts have not followed. That kinda adds a third caveat to your list there, and a fairly major one.
Anyway, isn’t the whole point of civil disobediance that you know you’re breaking the law but you do it anyway to make a point? Kinda takes the oomph out of it if you then turn around and whinge when what you knew was going to happen happens.
Also, I really don’t see much point in complaining that the legal system in NI is different to that in the mainland. I don’t think there’s ever been one common set of laws across the UK. Scotland has certainly held onto it’s own legal traditions and given that the UK is a dying beast these days** there probably never will be a common legal system across it. Frankly, I don’t see anything terribly shocking in a nation(ish) having harsher laws when they’ve had people blowing large chunks out of it for decades and have had to deal with that. The whole bit about unlawful assembly is definitely bullshit, though. I have even less time for that than I do for vigilantism.
* Let’s face it, this was nothing more than a mild inconvience and publicity the firm could have done without. Off-site backups and the cheapness of modern computing hardware even without insurance kicking in ensures that.
** Does anyone see it surviving much past the next general election? It’s finished, for better or worse.
Wasn’t it one of the two? I don’t disagree in any case; I was merely pointing out that, if law was just a set of principles to be upheld everywhere without bias, it might well have been on the side of the protesters in this case. Whereas the law is more about preserving the balance of power than anything else.
I don’t think an independent Scotland is on the cards, or at least not as soon as you think. But it’s disingenuous to compare Scotland’s case with that of NI. Scotland’s legal system developed indepedently of England’s, before the formal union of the two countries. NI’s legal system developed under British occupation. The two are completely different. I’m not scandalised by NI’s laws being different simply because they are different, but because they are a lingering vestige of imperial oppression. Had it happened in Scotland I wouldn’t really be arsed about the discrepencies.
Who’s whingeing? I’ve said all along that the police were obviously going to act the way they did and that (barring the NI irregularities) I’m not particularly scandalised by the fact that they did. However part of the point the Raytheon 9 were making is that resisting war crimes is not a crime. I agree with you that the legal system is highly ulikely to uphold this point - although in theory it could - but the Raytheon 9 owe it to their cause to argue that point as far as they can; even if (as will probably be the case) they fail to get a legal victory, they can win a very important moral victory.
Justice is already applied by a mob, a highly organised mob backed by the machinery of the state. I’m not being facetious: the police are under no democratic control, and the rest of the legal system is little better. So what gives them their legitimacy? Especially when you consider that the actions of the Raytheon 9 was more inline with the principles the law is supposed to uphold (an attempt prevent mass murder and dispossession, albeit of foreigners) and, more importantly, of the will of the people (most of whom opposed the war).
I suppose you could make a case for it being included, but I felt it was an important enough point to stand alone. No conviction, no punishment. And that lack of conviction would put the approach of using war-crimes as a justification for this on dodgy ground.
I disagree. The next general election is a Tory win - I’d bet the house on it if I were a betting man - and that will push independance right to the front of the Scottish political agenda while giving a massive boost to the pro-independant movement at the same time. Unless Labour manage to pre-empt with a referendum now while opinon is still fuzzy - and they’ve already pretty much bollocked that up - then I can’t see any way in which the union can survive the Tories returning to power. That’s assuming the SNP don’t bodge things themselves and enact policies which turn people against them, of course. It’s always possible, I suppose, though they seem to be doing quite a job of avoiding that right now.
The Diplock courts no longer serve their stated purpose - paramilitary intimidation is no longer an issue, or at least it damn well shouldn’t be now that we’re supposed to be at peace - so they should be done away with entirely, I agree. I was under the impression that they *were* done away with till I saw that article. It all seems rather odd on that front. I think I might do a little research to see exactly what’s going on there.
You? No, not you. The article. It has a distinctly woe-begotten air to it, as if the police attempting to restrain a group moving to smash some office up is somehow wrong and shocking. The police aren’t good for much these days, but ocassionally the remaining front-line officers do manage to get away from the triplicate forms and do their job.
What gives the legal system legitimacy? The same thing that gives their ultimate masters - the government - legitimacy. The judges can interpret the laws and even strike down illegal laws, but it’s the elected government that ultimately sets the terms of the game.
We may not have direct democratic control of the legal system - and would that even be a good thing? Populism is a pretty bad way to run things, and unless you can nullify the influence of the media & somehow make people think with the minds instead of their hearts it would end up being rather unpleasant - but we don’t live in a directly democratic state. Our MPs are supposed to be representing us.
That probably made you laugh, but that’s how it’s supposed to work. The habit of using media influence to shape public opinion towards their ends subverts any even-vaguely democratic system in the end. It’s the least-worst system at work, again.
Well, I think we’re getting to the core of what we disagree on now (although by the way, I do agree on predicting a Tory victory at the next general election and continued SNP dominance in Holyrood for a while, but I still don’t think this will lead to the independence of Scotland any time soon):
It doesn’t make me laugh, I find it a bit saddening when the idea of democratic control over our society is dismissed as dangerous populism. What I’d say to that is, it’s exactly the kind of thing they used to say about universal suffrage and I don’t think it’s ever been vindicated. Insofar as the state actually has been made accountable to the people, I think it’s been a marked improvement. My problem is that it’s not accountable enough.
Anyway, you’re right that the article is written in quite an indignant tone. But why not? The perpetrators of and accesories to war crimes don’t only get off scot free, they can count on state protection from those who try to stop them. That is appalling, no? But the point is, it’s not a shocking deviation from the normal workings of the system, it’s just that kind of system.
My apologies for not replying sooner. Laziness struck (and then a go-live day that had me crawling out my pit at an absolutely unholy hour which didn’t do much for my chances of accomplishing much of anything that day) and my interest in politics tends to come and go.
Anyway, I simply do not believe that direct democracy would work. How could it? Just watch the Sun and the Daily Mail spew out their daily dose of bile and hatred (hey, it’s like Margaret Thatcher in text form) and, look, here comes a few million people happily voting for utter lunacy because their favourite rag told them to. It’s bad enough now but at least there’s some insulation from that gutter trash nonsense even if the politicians have to pander somewhat to win their votes. That doesn’t even go into the millions who would make perfectly rational short-term decisions that were very much in their self-interest - drastic falls in fuel tax, for example, and let’s not kid ourselves: it would happen in a democracy, people HATE those taxes - that would promptly ruin us all in the long-term. Humans are really bad at judging the deferred reward as opposed to the immediate.
Maybe I’m being excessively misanthropic but that’s the way I see things.
In a perfect world, where everyone made just and rational decisions without letting the latest idiotic moral panic affect their judgement, democracy would be wonderful. We don’t live in that world. Our government is terrible, no doubt, but it could be an awful lot worse.