Filmmaker John Ford would have loved this tale of Ireland’s little men making their misguided stand against the oil industry. Yes, we’re back to the Corrib gas field project and the so-called Rossport Five, who are again in the limelight (OGJ, July 11, 2005, p. 25).
This time, the Five are out of jail and promoting their new book, Our Story, telling of their time in prison for protesting against the gas project undertaken by Royal Dutch Shell PLC.
The five men were advised by prison wardens not to mix with other inmates for their own safety.
But senior Five member Michael O’Seighin said otherwise: “One of the lads, he was waiting for trial, and he came to me early on and said: ‘I guarantee you that there’s no one going to hassle you.’”
Cell doors
In fact, O’Seighin says, prisoners supported the cause by banging their cell doors in solidarity whenever the Corrib gas protests were on the news.
“We stuck out a mile. We were the oldest that were there; they were nearly all young. You met all types of people in there for all different types of crime,” said farmer Willie Corduff.
The book, which has sold out its first print run of 3,000 copies, describes how the Five received postcards from schoolchildren and nuns while in prison, and it tells of the strain jail time put on their wives and families.
For some members, the book redeems the entire experience. Five member Vincent McGrath said: “I think when people see what we’ve gone through, especially our wives, they will understand what it’s all about.”
That point was echoed by Corduff, who said the 208-page book would give people an insight into the dispute.
“We want to tell what we were going through and our suffering-for no gains,” said Corduff. “But if we hadn’t done it, we’d probably be a lot worse off like in Nigeria, where 300 people were killed on New Year’s Day when an oil pipeline exploded.”
More misinformation
Oh dear! Here we have a justification based on more misinformation, which is really aimed at stirring up negative feelings against the oil industry. That’s where right-thinking folks-whether in the oil business or not-lose sympathy for the Rossport Five and their supporters.
The Nigerian pipeline-a gasoline pipeline, by the way, and not crude oil or gas-did not spontaneously explode. Instead, the pipeline was ruptured by thieves and burst into flames as scavengers collected the fuel in a poor neighborhood.
More to the point, the gang of thieves had been illegally tapping the Nigerian pipe for months, carting away gasoline in tankers for resale.
That’s a far cry from the scenario the Rossport Five would have people believe-one in which a natural gas pipeline will simply explode-and it is that sort of false scenario-building that continues to hurt the oil industry.