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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
4 6 December - January 2017
‘F
ROM BENDED KNEE to a New Republic: How the
fight for water is changing Ireland’ by Brendan
Ogle, promises in its opening pages to take us
on a journey “through the travails of a nation broken,
sold and left in penury”. Ogle, unlike the many politi-
cians and political parties he describes, fulfils this
promise. The book brings you on a fascinating, inspiring,
informative, and thoughtful journey through inequality
in Ireland and “a nation’s fightback against it”. It should
be clear from this that the book, just like the protest
movement itself, is about much more than water. It com-
prehensively answers the question that many have
asked: why was water the “issue that Irish people would
take their first and biggest real stand against
austerity?”.
Ogle is the Education, Politics and Development
Organiser for the Unite trade union in Ireland and one of
the founders of the Right2Water and Right2Change cam-
paigns. The first quarter of the book provides detailed
analysis of the political, economic, and social circum-
stances that gave rise to the Irish water
protests which are “the biggest (per
capita) and most peaceful protest move-
ment for social change anywhere in the
world”. These include the global water
privatisation agenda, austerity, poverty
and the health and housing crises. Neo-
liberalism is explored before an analysis
of the self-evisceration of social democ-
racy through Tony Blair’s ‘third way’
acceptance and implementation of neoliberalism, and
its adoption by the Irish Labour Party. He suggests the
Labour Party has become an “obstacle to progress
toward a more equal Ireland, and is in fact an enabler of
neoliberal inequality”.
Ogle spends the rest of the book describing how the
Right2Water campaign was organised and the
challenges it faced in becoming a mass movement. He
recounts how he and Dave Gibney, the other main organ-
iser in Right2Water, withstood difficult negotiations with
local communities who had been let down by trade
unions in the past but had started this new movement in
order to build trust and a strong working partnership
with them. He writes about how ‘civil society’ organisa-
tions failed to offer much support to the movement. He
describes the constant work required to build unity
amongst the fractious left-wing parties that make up the
‘political pillar’ of the movement.
We can read how he and others in the water movement
which “could so easily have been just another failed
campaign in a failed Republic”, actually developed the
most successful mass-protest movement in modern Irish
history. It is, therefore, an essential read for those look-
ing to understand not just how and why the water
movement developed in Ireland but for those seeking
lessons of how to build successful social movements.
A central purpose of the book is to set out the origins
and purpose of the water movement, and to tell the story
of the water activists, which, as Ogle rightly says, you
won’t read about in the media or many other places. The
book provides an important contribution to document
-
ing Ireland’s recent socio-political history and
geography, particularly the excluded voices and views
in society which are too often ignored.
The book documents how the movement was built
from the grassroots up in working class communities like
Edenmore in Coolock in Dublin and by “wonderful
people” from all over Ireland “who were determined to
make a difference”. It tells the inspiring story of water
activists such as Karen Doyle, a “housewife and mother
who also works part-time outside the home” from ‘Cobh
Says No’. She got involved in the water charges move-
ment and formed one of the hundreds of ‘meter watch’
groups, which were the heart of the movement across
Brendan Ogle has a vision
and a plan, starting with
the water campaign
Book review by
Rory Hearne
The book, just
like the protest
movement itself, is
about much more
than water
POLITICS
Cometh
the hour
December - January 2017 4 7
the country, to obstruct water meters being
installed.
It is from such actions that a broader social
movement was born. Ogle writes: “Every week-
day morning someone would rise about 4.00 to
5.00 am and find where the meter contractor
vans were heading. Text alerts were sent so that
by the time the vans arrived people like Karen
were at estate entrances to protest. A caravan
and trailer were procured and soup, tea and
coffee produced every day for sustenance. Mar-
garet Thatcher would have hated it. Society!
People came from their homes, their individual
isolated bolt holes, to start sharing stories about
where it had all gone wrong, how their lives had
been impacted by the breaking of a nation, which
gave them the strength, the determination, to do
something about it”.
These groups, according to Ogle, faced prob
-
lems from “some on the ultra-left” who saw the
local groups “as a vehicle for advancing their
own agenda, viewing people like Karen as poten-
tial recruits”. He describes how “people who got
involved in a campaign out of genuine concern
for their community and their country”, were hurt
as they found themselves “the focal of bitter and
personalised attacks”. He notes that in the past
“many have walked away from the campaigns,
surrendering them to the dogmatic ultra-left and
the inevitable failure to deliver on their promise”.
But not this time.
Karen and many other community activists
like her continued on and developed their own
spaces and confidence to keep building a broad
and inclusive movement. Important in this was
the support given by the Right2Water trade
unions, and Unite in particular through its
political economy education. It ran nine free
‘political economy’ courses for 150 ‘non-aligned’
community activists “with the objective of giving
activists who were central to the growing water
movement access to the type of information that
would enable them to understand the political
economic agenda behind water privatisation”.
This was a very innovative approach which pro-
vided an important longer term empowering
aspect to the movement. Ogle writes how
“through the training we not only helped them
connect with each other on a national level but
showed how the tax and privatisation agenda
are global issues…giving renewed energy as to
how to challenge the neoliberal consensus”.
Ogle persuasively tackles the critiques of the
water movement in relation to water conserva
-
tion. He highlights how people in the UK, which
has water metering and water charges, have
higher water consumption than here in Ireland.
He points out that the most effective and effi-
cient way to ensure investment in water
infrastructure is through progressive general
taxation funding a state-based public model. He
describes how the government has admitted
that it did not conduct any research into the envi-
ronmental impact of introducing domestic water
charges and the water-meter programme. There
is an impressive level of detail in the book about
the impact of water privatisation and charging,
and the global corporate agenda to commodify
water.
The book is also the personal story of Brendan
Ogle as he navigated the various challenges
resulting from being in a leadership position and
a public spokesperson. It is clear that there were
some very difficult moments that affected him
deeply, personally. In particular he describes the
hurtful impact of sectarian attacks on his “per-
sonal integrity” by some within the AAA/
Socialist Party and their broader “union-bashing
agenda” and disruptive role in attempting to
infiltrate and disrupt Right2Water meetings and
events.
In an important reflection on recent talk of a
resumption of social partnership, Ogle is
strongly critical of the “shameful” role of the
wider trade union movement “in collaborating
with the policies that wrecked a nation (so-called
‘social partnership’ from 1987 to 2009)”. But he
highlights that there were those “within the
movement who not only resisted that lazy part-
nership consensus but who are now trying to
forge a new model of community and workplace-
based ‘lifelong trade unionism’”. The
Right2Water unions have spearheaded this vital
new approach to trade unionism that was central
to the success of the movement and he notes
that “this model seeks to assist citizens acting
‘in union’ through campaigns”.
The book ends with an exciting chapter that
asks “where will our progressive government
come from?”. Ogle believes that the Right2Ch-
ange policy principles, developed last year by
the Right2Water unions with strong participative
community and political input “could form the
bedrock, the founding principles of a new egali-
tarian Republic”. He argues that this progressive
government is unlikely to come from the various
political elements that make up the ‘political
pillar’ of Right2Change as “the existing players
provide no real hope of delivering a broad pro
-
gressive Government around these principles”.
Unless “there is a new broad popular political
evolution”, he warns, “I see Fianna Fail and Sinn
Féin in talks as Sinn Féin will quite reasonably
look at the rest of this movement and point out
that no alternative potential partner exists”. He
writes that “unless the citizens who are now
more alert, organised, educated and capable of
taking control of their destiny, develop, or are
helped to develop, a broad progressive move-
ment for change, then the opportunity will be
lost and the forces of century-old ‘conservative
consensus’ will recover the ground they have
lost”. The new movement he says must be,
“‘Broad’, as opposed to ‘narrow’ or ‘sectarian’,
‘progressive’ as opposed to ‘regressive’ and
‘iniquitous’”. “Can we do it?” he asks, and then
answers defiantly: “We have the policy platform,
a mobilised movement, the opportunity as
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael contract, the young and
dispossessed looking for something that is
hopeful and fair. We have the support from
unions like Unite...We can bloody do it alright,
and we must”. This movement’s time has come.
Rory Hearne, author and researcher, writes
here in a personal capacity.
We have the policy
platform, a mobilised
movement, the opportunity
as Fianna Fáil and Fine
Gael contract, the young
and dispossessed looking
for something that is
hopeful and fair
