What happens when the Guards don’t support the Government and the media won’t report the Guards? One of the most frustrating and revealing aspect of the war over turf cutting – and there are many – was the media’s failure to report what actually happened on the night of Wednesday 20 June 2012 at Clonmoylan Bog in County Galway. According to the media ‘Protesters maintain officials from the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) yesterday tried to remove machinery belonging to turf cutting contractor Michael Darcy from a field outside the conservation zone. But when an excavator, worth about €60,000, was destroyed in a blaze after it was detained, Mr Darcy collapsed and was taken to hospital. A deal was brokered and a stand-off called off when it was agreed to return the remaining machinery to Mr Darcy.’ Sympathy for the turf cutters abounds in the national and international media. In countless rural papers we hear about ‘freehold’ and ‘rights’, as with this from the Galway City Tribune: ‘That disjoint is also responsible for the awful scenes on Clonmoylan bog over the last week, where ordinary people – law-abiding citizens – find themselves subjected to the full rigours of the law for continuing to do something that their fathers and forefathers did before them.’ What actually happened that night? Ming’s flash mob were called in – and there are hundreds on the text list – when the NPWS made an attempt to seize the machinery on the bog. The gardai could have prevented the crowd from assembling as the vehicle was being put on the lorry if they had stopped them at the top of the road – but instead they allowed them down to obstruct the vehicle leaving. NPWS Offcials were then trapped in their jeep all night, lights shone on them, sods of turf thrown at the car. And the Guards just walked away. The Offcials were actually trapped in the jeep when another machine went up in flames – much less being responsible, as one media report had it, from a botched hot wiring. Again and again the Guards have openly sided with the turf cutters, refusing to escort Rangers on site, making it clear where they stand. This is Government policy and the Guards are refusing to implement it. So we have mob rule. And imprisoning the NPWS Offcials in the car is kidnapping. The trouble with mob rule is that it turns ordinary law abiding citizens into criminals – and it denies us the right of protection for individual liberty and safety upon which any society rests. Ming, an elected TD, is well behind all this – and the media, who knew damn well what happened that night, never reported the truth. It’s sick. And its dangerous. =========== This Blog was revised on 12 July, 2012
