The Pit Stop Plowshares:
On Trial in Ireland

By Carmen Trotta, The NYC Catholic Worker

On February 3, 2003, long-time Catholic Worker and Plowshares activist Ciaron O'Rielly (42) and four other Catholic activists, Irish citizens Deirdre Clancy (32) and Damien Moran (22), American Niun Dunlop (31) and Scots woman Karen Fallon (30), both of Irish extraction, in a challenge to law, custom and the consciences of the Irish people, breached security at Ireland's Shannon Airport and did extensive damage to a United States Navy transport plane en route to the Persian Gulf.
Fully two years later, in a de-contextualized environment in which the fury of the US occupation of Iraq is perceived as little more than a sad fact, they will finally be tried by jury in Dublin on March 7, 2005. The criminal damage charge subjects them to up to ten years in prison. The action, its context and some ramifications are set out in what follows.

In early September 2002, after three months of planning, the Bush administration launched the propaganda campaign 'roll out Iraq,' designed to justify to the American people, the US Congress and the world its plans for regime change in Iraq. Ten years of severe economic sanctions, sustained bombings targeted via espionage within UN weapons inspection teams and a few hundred million dollars spent attempting to develop an internal insurgency have failed to unseat Saddam Hussein and turn Iraq into a compliant client state. The sanctions regime was unraveling as an international conscience was ever so slightly roused. The administration decided to go for broke.

The campaign kicked off with a Rose Garden press conference with the President standing side by side with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The President cited a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) showing that Iraq was '6 months away' from building a nuclear weapon, and commented, 'I don't know what more evidence we need.' Like so much more that had and would be said in the coming six months, the statement was a complete fabrication, the IAEA report simply didn't exist.

The hard sell was on. But across the Atlantic, in the Republic of Ireland, the administration of Teoseuch (Irish Prime Minister, pronounced tee-shuck) Bertie Ahern didn't need to be sold. They'd already been bought. The burgeoning Irish economy, the Celtic Tiger, is substantially based upon large-scale investments by 150 American corporations, and Mr.Ahern is thankful for it. Business at Shannon Airport on Ireland's west coast had also picked up recently.

Built years ago, as a pit stop for trans-Atlantic flights, it has been underutilized in the past decade as flight ranges have increased. The beginning of a 40% rise in business, touted as injecting $15 million into the local economy, was noticed in September, by members of the Irish peace community, who'd begun 'plane spotting.' The new business they discovered was US military transport aircraft and commercial cargo planes on contract with the US Department of Defense. In October, 2002 they began posting their observations and sharing their research via the Indymedia web site. Consternation grew. Ireland is typically regarded as a neutral country, and this is deeply a part of the national psyche.

They did not participate in World War II and are not a member of NATO or any other alliance. Military flights or military-related flights cannot use Irish air space or refuel in Ireland without notifying the Irish government and giving assurances that the aircraft is unarmed, not carrying munitions or surveillance equipment and is not involved in a military exercise or operation. A caveat in the policy does allow these restrictions to be voided on an exceptional basis with the expressed permission of the expressed permissions of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. More, according to Article 28.3.1 of the Irish Constitution: war shall not be declared and the state shall not participate in any war save with the assent of the Dail Eireann (the lower house of the Irish Parliament).
To be sure, throughout much of the Cold War, Ireland gave the US military 'blanket permission' to trans-ship troops and cargo (not munitions or surveillance material) through Shannon during peace time provided they abided by the stipulations listed above. It was pragmatic and profitable, and done on the clear understanding 'that permission would be subject to reconsideration in the event of a serious deterioration in the international situation.'

This policy, at least as a matter of what is public information, seems to have been adhered to with great consistency until 1990 and the first Gulf War.

Complicating the present debate, Ireland did allow US troops engaged in that military operation to over fly and refuel at Shannon. While this was deemed more acceptable by the public because it had a UN mandate and the propaganda was fierce, it may well have marked an historic policy shift. As was well-known at the time, the impetus for military engagement in that case came overwhelmingly from the US and Britain. Several peace offers, a number of which offered little more than a face-saving device for Saddam Hussein, were disregarded by the US, under the rubric of 'not negotiating with terrorists.'

More tellingly, the Ahern administration surreptitiously allowed the transshipment of troops and heavy armaments through Shannon during the non-UN sponsored NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

Most recently, on September 21, 2002, the government took the initiative to fulfill its international legal obligation to waive the customary stipulations 'on an exceptional basis' to US military flights engaged in pursuit of Security Council Resolution 1368, which was the UN's response to the September 11th terrorist strikes in Manhattan, calling upon 'all states to work together urgently to bring justice to the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of the attacks.'

In November 2002, as the US military build-up in the Persian Gulf increased, so did business at Shannon Airport. Hundreds of American troops and possibly munitions were being transported daily through Shannon to the region. Clearly a military operation. Twice during the month, when questioned by members of the Dail, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Cowen, refused to admit that any exception had been granted, or that anything exceptional was occurring. In which case, if true, we have a serious breach of Irish law.

If, in fact, exceptions had been signed for all of these planes, then we have a perverse utilization of the law by which a caveat had become a creator. In either case, Irish neutrality was breached and imperiled, and shenanigans were at work behind the backs of the Irish public.

That same month, back at the UN, the vortex of power politics was likewise wreaking havoc with the ever-presumed accord between reason, justice, law and order. The utterly tendentious Security Council Resolution 1441, declaring Iraq in material breach of prior resolutions and giving it a final chance to 'comply' was unanimously passed. Written by the US and Britain, according to James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, ''thirteen members of the Security Council were opposed to this resolution or deeply skeptical, but Washington...bent them to its will.' Legal scholars aver that the resolution was structured to create legal cover for a unilateral American assault on Iraq. Ireland was one of the rotating members of the Security Council at the time.
Shortly, a permanent peace camp was set up outside Shannon Airport. Demonstrations were a regular occurrence. The issue was moving to the forefront of the Irish consciousness. Finally, on January 12, 2003, the Irish Observer published an investigative piece in which airport workers confirmed that armed American soldiers and transports that carry only weaponry were passing through Shannon.

The next day, Minister of Foreign Affairs Cowen issued a statement that barely addressed the public concerns. He affirmed that the US was using Shannon as a transit stop, without mentioning that the transit was to a 'military operation.' He claimed that none of the military planes were declared as carrying munitions and acknowledged that troops transported on civilian aircraft were occasionally accompanied by their personal weapons, but that these were not loaded. It appears that, by turning a blind eye, the Irish Government has silently abandoned its long-standing policy.
Demonstrations continued. Anti-war groups were promoting an international day of protest for February 15, 2003. On January 19th, well-known Irish anti-war activist Mary Kelley (50) entered Shannon Airport undetected and took a mallet to a US Navy transport plane, doing damage allegedly worth 500,000. When apprehended, she peaceably submitted to arrest, claiming her action was rooted in the law, and was incarcerated.

Then, on February 1, 2003, 800 demonstrators gathered at Shannon in sight of US military AWAC surveillance aircraft, to listen to Denis Halliday. Mr. Halliday, an Irish Quaker, had been a 34-year career diplomat at the UN. He resigned in protest in 1998, ultimately declaring the sanctions 'genocidal.' At the demonstration, he charged Taoiseach Ahern with 'humiliating [Ireland] by helping the US in its illegal aggression,' and then spoke the unsanctioned
truth: 'This war is about the control of oil, it is about US empire building, it is about naked aggression.'

Six days later, on February 6th, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, the administration's 'liberal,' its most credible and urbane spokesperson, would issue before the United Nations the administration's most elaborate and emotive display of war propaganda -- a multi-media presentation utilizing a string of US intelligence fabrications -- mobile biological weapons labs, 'highly specified aluminum tubes' with an 'anodized coating' to produce fissionable material, attempts to purchase fissionable material internationally, links to Al Queda -- all of which proved baseless, in order to get an explicit UN mandate for an invasion of Iraq.

This, then, is the heady context in which the 'Pit Stop Plowshares' acted, in the pre-dawn hours of February 3, 2003. They cut a fence to gain entry to the airport. They then poured their own blood on one of its runways and set up a shrine there. The shrine consisted of candles, the Bible, the Qu'ran, rosary beads and Muslim prayer beads, St. Brigid's crosses and pictures of Iraqi children, living and dead.

The group then took up a section of the runway using a mallet (the overrun at the side of the runway, so as not to actually endanger a landing craft). As not yet detected, they approached a hangar housing a US Navy transport plane. They spray painted 'Pit Stop of Death' on the hangar door, pushed in a window to enter it and began beating on the plane with the mallet and household hammers. Thus did they attempt to enact the Isaiahan prophecy that when the nations submit to laws and judgments of God the Spirit will be sent out among them and they will beat the swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and the nations shall no longer war against each other, nor shall they study war any longer.

They were finally detected by a lone Gardai, and peacefully submitted to arrest.
Their press release read, in part:

We come to Shannon Airport around the Feast of St.
Brigid to carry out an act of life-affirming disarmament in a place of preparations for slaughter.
Like the railway tracks that ran to the town of Auschwitz, the runway at Shannon has been militarized for service on an assembly line of death. The train tracks at Auschwitz brought people to their deaths, they runway at Shannon brings death to the people.

The Irish government acts in contravention of the Irish Constitution, international law and divine mandate to service US military aircraft, troops and munitions deployments...We hope to be joined in this act...by those who encounter us...citizens, police and soldiers. We hope all will pitch in to take up this runway and ground planes servicing the war machine.
We find this easier to envision than the further slaughter of Iraqi children that the US, Britain and Irish governments wish us to consider.

In jail they initiated a fast and called for massive non-violent civil disobedience. Of course, less than two weeks later the dream came painfully close to realization. In an unprecedented global phenomena, demonstrations erupted in over 300 cities: 2 million in London, 1.3 million in Barcelona, 800,000 in Madrid, 1 million in Rome, 500,000 in New York, 400,000 in Paris, 150,000 in Melbourne. In Dublin, capitol of a nation of only 4 million, 100,000 filled the streets in the largest demonstration ever on a foreign policy issue.

While February 15th was and remains a hopeful sign, nowhere has it parlayed into a sustained resistance to the war. Nowhere was civil disobedience a central component of the day. Are we beyond such acts of human solidarity? Have we acquiesced to a corporate monoculture, the secular materialism of the post-Christian West, the spirit of which thoroughly imbues the Churches? If so, then Ireland is merely emblematic of our plight.

On February 24, 2003, perhaps emboldened by the outpouring of February 15th, but more assuredly based upon the geo-strategic calculations of France, Germany and Russia, the US and Britains draft resolution on Iraq, widely regarded as a war resolution, was rejected by the Security Council. Nevertheless on March 19th, the assault on Iraq began.

Consequently, on March 20th, Taliseach Ahern and Minister of Foreign Affairs Cowen went before the Dail, one would think, to fulfill the constitutional requirement that its consent was necessary for Ireland to 'participate in any war.' Instead, they sought and received the Dail's consent to a complex and perverse evasion of the law. Their comments clearly reference the reality of an ongoing unilateral assault on Iraq by the US and Britain. Citing the rejection of the draft UN Security Council resolution of February 24 and the 'long-held view' of Britain and the United States, that earlier...resolutions [1441] already mandate the use of force, they maintain that there is no generally accepted view on the validity 'of that interpretation.' Then maintaining a studied omission of the fact that the troops, munitions and surveillance equipment passing through Shannon were being sent to a theatre of war, they requested that the government be allowed to maintain the long-standing arrangement, dating back to before the Cold War, allowing US troops and cargo to pass through Ireland. Finally, confounding reality, they asked for and received a determination from the Dail, that what was transpiring did not amount to 'participation in any war.' Irish neutrality had been publicly yet silently eviscerated.

Moreover, on March 24, 2003, an Irish peace activist and distinguished retired officer of the Irish Defense forces challenged this determination of the Dail in the High Court. The court of Mr. Justice Kearns, citing judicial restraint in the region of foreign policy, short of exceptional circumstances (100,000 dead in Iraq!), evaded its role as interpreter of the law and validated the Dails determination.

Most notably, in his address to the Dail on March 20th, Minister of Foreign Affairs Cowen related that to now abide by the stipulations of traditional Irish neutrality (language he would not use) 'would of course be one way of registering our distress and disappointment at the failure which conflict represents. Some... argue that the United States would not be troubled by such a decision. This, in my view, is to completely misread the mood of the US administration.... In so doing, we would be perceived [by America] as in a sense siding -- at least psychologically -- with Saddam.... We must hope for [America's] quick and decisive victory over a brutal and savage dictatorship... [and] United Nations assistance... in the rebuilding of... a reformed state [in Iraq].... Hard choices must be made... a heavy responsibility that we must discharge with the utmost seriousness. We have to weigh all concerns... how to define neutrality in a very complex set of circumstances, the value of international friendships and the expectations that come with these friendships, and the implications there may be for the material well-being of our people.... The importance of our economic connections, in supporting directly and indirectly hundreds and thousands of Irish jobs, is manifest. [To now abide by traditional Irish neutrality] would antagonize two of our most important friends and partners... we have no bilateral relationships more important than those with Britain and the United States.

Thus coaxed or coerced by economic pressures Ireland has violated the stipulations of law, the wisdom of custom and the conscience of its people to participate in a war that proceeds apace. 125,000 US soldiers passed through Shannon in 2003; that number was exceeded in the first nine months of 2004. By the end of November 2004, 1000 US troops per day were filing through.
Meantime the mobilization of conscience, if it had abated, is for from dead. While the peace camp is gone, over 200 demonstrators were outside the gates at Shannon again in November. It is our great hope that on March 7th, it will mobilize again in the streets of Dublin utilizing the 'Pit Stop Plowshares' witness to put the state of Ireland on trial.

Clearly, as in all plowshares actions, this group's statement attests, they have broken the law in large measure to uphold the law. However, law properly understood must be the application of reason, rationality in the pursuit of truth as to that which is proper to the establishment, maintenance and pursuit of freedom and justice. Application to such law would bring some approximation of justice to the social body. Ongoing cultural development would be defined by its adjustment, enhancement and refinement.

As such it would command the obedience of the social body overwhelmingly by way of fidelity. However law corrupted by power perverts reason to a debase rationality in pursuit of a mechanism by which the interests of power are protected and advanced. Its social application leads to a system of patronage. It could command nothing of fidelity, but demand only obedience by coercion of force. Given a period of incubation it metastasizes into a self-contained ideology; it becomes as it were a new truth. Justice and freedom are defined by it. Such are the ongoing developments of neo-liberalism and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Contrariwise, implicit in the prophecy of Isaiah is the possibility of an international structure devoid of organized violence. Scripture avers that this is a hope to cling to. To do otherwise is to limit the potential inherent in human freedom and divine grace.

Indeed, such truths are written onto our hearts; conscience compels that they be defended - passionately. What is at issue are not legal structures and niceties in the abstract, or their present corruption. What is at issue is a monstrous assault against the Iraqi people by an imperial power
- an Irish collusion in it. It is the Iraqi people who need to be defended - passionately.
This is the truth that the Pit Stop Plowshares bore witness to. Theyve risked years of incarceration to give the powerful in Ireland the occasion to repent and retain their humanity and their natural dignity.

If heeded, Ireland would be offering America the same gift in turn. These, Mr. Cowen are the responsibilities of friendship and the surest hope for a compassionate international order. On that hope our friends rest their case.

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