In our ordinary lives struggle is a word used against unseen enemies. We struggle to pay the rent, wake up, get to work, and conquer a hangover. These are the battles we fight, to get through everyday, the things that we endure are vague and bare no higher purpose but to eke out our comfort riddled lives. To go from a life of work and play to Rossport was an education in struggle and cause.
I came from Leeds, at a time when I didn’t see much point in my daily routine. I was working for a corporate film company, the war in Iraq had ebbed into the background and with it popular protest. Complacency and the daily slog had reared it’s head, the summer waned, succumbing to autumn, as the leaves fell around us I was told of my redundancy. I didn’t feel dejected as some others may have been, the job was soulless and poorly paid, full of long hours and infuriating bosses. The house I was living in was the usual Leeds student slum, even though I’d stop being a student years ago. I wasn’t that happy with my life, it seemed achingly pointless, I’d watch TV programmes about climate change, sweat shops, foreign wars, global species extinction, blended with reality TV’s hailing of the moron. Slack jawed illiterate idiots celebrated as ‘down to earth’, emotionally cross-wired celebrities hailed for their slow self-destruction littered my surroundings, essentially pointing out how nothing really amounted to anything substantial.
As I sent out my C.V. to a plethora of third rate agencies, deciding which customer service battery cage to sign up for, I bumped into an old friend of mine. He invited me to attend a talk about what he’d been campaigning for in Ireland during the summer. Dave, was someone I’d befriended whilst working for the CND at Glastonbury festival, he was a funny, monotone, Swedish guy with a love of left wing politics and a strong leaning towards activism. I’d spent many a summer arguing about the actual impact of various activist movements and the motivations behind them. We rambled on about my scepticism of a lot of actions carried out by more forthright protestors, and talked of bridging the gap between the ‘loony left’ as it was so affectionately known and the masses. However, it was at this meeting, in a grotty little, ‘shared space’ that I was introduced to the plight of Rossport and the shocking truth about what was going on In our neighbouring country.
The images of police officers hitting women, dragging old people, and crushing civilians behind fences whilst driving JCB’s through crowds shocked me. I couldn’t believe that this would happen so close to home. It was the motions more reminiscent of the 80’s poll tax riots or the general strike picket breaks, not actions fitting this sleepy rural setting. What I saw really did change my view, and I thought, that at this point of my life, when I had no partner, no job and no ties to think of, now would be as good a time as any to do something worth doing and help some people worth helping. I wasn’t sure how much help I would be, but I really couldn’t just shake my head, say, ‘what a pity’ and get back to watching the Simpsons.
Within a week, I had thrown or given away what I couldn’t fit into a rucksack. This was my life, as far as I was concerned. Everything I owned and needed was here. I’d gathered the last of my cash, bought a, 'sail and rail' ticket to Dublin and set off the next day. The feeling of leaving everything behind, a life full of alphabetically arranged CD’s DVD’s and games, PS2’s and a million useless knick knacks, felt as if a planet of shit had fallen off my back and with it all the stress of modern life.
The next 6 months were as life changing as can be considered. The stereotypes of activists and protest camps did rear their heads, as well as new ones, but myths were also dismissed with great ease. The locals, strong, burly men with sandpaper hands and glistening eyes, their faces weathered by the Atlantic, their backs, hardened by toil in the peat bogs, they didn’t care about global warming, or the trouble and strife of the modern anarchist movement. These weren’t, ‘trouble makers’ or woolly hat clad trust fund children avoiding work, these were people that had lived in a corner of Ireland, that seemed forgotten by the Celtic Tiger that was rampaging through Dublin, raising the wages and beer prices to boot. There was no business boom here, except one, a large ugly boom that snaked through peoples land and settled in protected peat bogs.
But I digress. The cottage we lived in, was something out of a fairy tale, albeit a brothers Grimm one. At first, early autumn days were long enough that the house had light to cook dinner in, before long cooking by candlelight was introduced along with nicked fingers and roaming sliced veg. Aron had returned and I was introduced to this short red bearded grumbler, that saw us as the useless bumbling children that we probably were. With the aid of Eoin, our very own 5 and a 1/2 foot Kerry surfer, he brought the cottage into some liveable form, with solar panels and turbine. It must be said as one of the foreigners in the camp, the Irish put us to shame for organisation and honest toil. Although I didn’t sleep half as much as the incredible sleeping man (Swedish Dave) and dozing house cat Katie T, or regress into the hermit/meat osbsessed lifestyle of our Arsenal Devotee, Carl, I wasn’t as keen on the hard work needed for country life.
I was a soft Englishman all around, wittering on about silly Leeds scene bands, making foul jokes and whinging about carrying a few bags of peat. On my second day I climbed a hill behind the house and nearly passed out from the effort, I’m sure I’d seen a sixty year old man saunter up there earlier. Julie was the only Brit around who seemed capable. This blonde, dreadlocked, bullshit destroyer possessing a strange obsession with glitter kept us all grounded, In times of complete madness.
It does get strange up on that hill in the winter. A dark and cold place, where the cause and reason for it all is nearly caught on a wind that sometimes growls. I’ve never experienced a gale that you can actually hear circle you until I moved into that house, or seen such a beautiful site as the estuary, at low tide at dawn, salmon leaping before blue clouds rolling over distant mountains. I’ve seen that river change colour a hundred times, spotted 7 rainbows on a walk into town, talked to various unimpressed donkeys, been followed by very unnerving cattle and watched a Gardai stall his car In Belmullet whilst trying to intimidate me.
These were a puzzle to me as much as anything, a strange group of people if I ever had seen one. In the city, the police force is faceless, you’d never know a copper by their name, they went unnoticed, ignored. Here everyone knew them, some had been known from youth, like confused bullies who didn’t know how to make friends. They’d say hello, joke with you then kick you in the shins and try to throw you down a ditch. The locals had known them for years, unlike the British concept of the faceless bobby, these Gardai had grown up with a lot of the locals, drank with them and then one day Shell came in and turned them against the farmers and fishermen that lived here and in a way against themselves.
And what of the locals? There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of the hulking incoherent grumble machine that is Lawrence, his wry grin, conspiracy theories, bottomless desire for Guinness with Martin beside him, peeking over the fence at disgruntled security guards whilst Mary pours tea and unwraps a never ending supply of sandwiches. These are just a few of the never ending cycle of locals who turn up when they can to help. It’s hard to mention everyone in this campaign, from Grainne who puts me up in Dublin, normally at no prior notice, Terrence's unending verbal abuse to Bob’s late night fireside chats, about the future about the place of the anarchist movement in modern society, and very disturbing punk songs. Even if I leave you out of this article, I can’t leave you out of my memories, and mind. Because despite my inherit flakeyness as I sit in a grubby room in north London, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Rossport’s hills, salty air, smooth Guinness, ineligible accent, and scuffles.
