May 6th, shocking images on our televisions: teenagers beaten around the head with batons; men and women punched, kicked and thrown into paddy wagons; peaceful protesters dragged across the tarmac, blood spilling from wounds inflicted by a violent police force acting way beyond the law.

In the aftermath of what organisers and participants say had begun as a peaceful ‘Reclaim The Streets’ carnival cum protest, a dozen people had to be hospitalised, while many others were injured and traumatised.

Up to 50 protesters may have been assaulted. Over 20 people may face prosecution. There were no police injuries but the scenes of brutality captured on camera led to national outrage.

DRACONIAN POWERS

So what does it mean? Can we still exercise our constitutional right to protest and demonstrate without being batoned?

Thousands of people came to test this very question by meeting outside Dublin’s Pearse Street garda station three days after the assault on ‘Reclaim The Streets’ (RTS). The huge rally was peaceful, with the gardaí performing their crowd control duties in a professional non-violent way.

There was a sense of celebration at the rally. Thousands of people had refused to be intimidated and had come onto the streets to connect with each other, to hear each other’s stories, to discuss and demand change.

Left-wing, environmental and social justice speakers gave speeches. Many said that Monday’s police violence wasn’t an isolated incident, and that ever since the gardaí were granted draconian powers of arrest under 1994’s controversial Public Order Act, there’d been a marked increase in violent police attacks on peaceful demonstrators.

Amid cheering and chants of “Whose streets? Our streets! Whose world? Our world!” there were urgent calls for the repeal of the Public Order Act, for an independent investigation into the attack on the RTS and for the setting up of a police ombudsman. Several speakers made the point that if members of the public behaved the way the police did at the RTS carnival they’d be jailed and hauled into court the next morning to receive harsh sentences for mindless violence.

The fact that the police weren’t being properly investigated, let alone brought to trial, highlighted a stark inequality, it was claimed. As Socialist TD Joe Higgins noted, these issues need to be sorted out before Ireland hosts the presidency of the EU, because no one wants blood on the streets during the large demonstrations that’ll take place at that time.

‘MAYDAY MAYHEM’

At the Garda Representative Association’s Annual Conference, held in Cork the week following the police brutality in Dublin, gardaí attempted to justify their use of violence in various ways.

“Yes, there was a riot in Dublin,” a source from the conference told me. “And there’s pictures of the gardai responding, but they’re saying that before that there were other things that happened. They want whatever enquiry happens to cover all the facts. They’re saying there was another agenda. Kicking a car with a baby in it, setting a car alight, people spray-painting buildings.”

At the conference, the gardaí produced the spoof magazine The Slate, which had carried articles urging people to run riot at the upcoming ‘Reclaim The Streets’ demonstration. Obviously satirical, an index heading read: “Mayday Mayhem: Johnny Foreigner has been rioting his hole off of the last few years. May 6th could give Ireland the chance to do likewise.” Significantly, the gardaí fed the media with copies of the article.

I asked my source from the garda conference in what context The Slate article was brought up.

“They said there’s more behind this march,” he replied. “One garda said some protesters would’ve read this magazine before the march, and obviously the magazine said go for it. The magazine said if you provoke the gardaí you’ll get what you want, which is mayhem.” RTE news reported the story, failing to comment on the magazine’s satirical nature.

“This would be a joke if it wasn’t so serious,” says Ollie Moore, a National College of Ireland lecturer in political and social philosophy who went to the RTS street party. “It’s disgraceful that the gardaí got away with saying that there was a riot magazine being published before the carnival. RTE didn’t get it, or the gardaí probably got it and lied, or if they didn’t, they’re really stupid. They’re the options.”

Moore and his young son left the carnival before the wholescale garda attack because he “didn’t trust the police to hold themselves back.” He did witness the ‘car set alight’ incident referred to above. However, it later emerged that the car was owned by a participant at the RTS carnival, and had merely had coloured smoke bombs thrown into it. People were dancing on it and Moore saw a guy who’d been pushing the car badly beaten and dragged away by the police. He believes that the police had to have known that the car wasn’t actually set alight, and that their subsequent statements referring to a car being set on fire were part of an attempt to smear RTS and justify their own violence.

Meanwhile, Chairman of the Garda Representative Association PJ Stone outraged many people by saying that a large number of complaints made against the gardaí come from people with “subversive and criminal leanings”.

GARDA CORRUPTION

Paul of Indymedia – the independent media group whose photos and video footage of police brutality on May 6th were taken up by the mainstream media – says the most telling discussion he had at the subsequent protest was with a man who claimed to have been waiting 20 years for this day.

“Twenty years ago this man says he was badly beaten in Raheny Garda Station on a loitering charge. For years he tried to get someone to listen to his complaint and no one did. Maybe, as with child abuse, there’s all these people who’ve had this happen to them. And maybe they need to get together.

“If a document of a thousand personal stories was handed into a police ombudsman they’d have to answer to it, like the church is being forced to answer to their abuse of people. If you have the police breaking the law how are you ever gonna have law and order? There have been many instances of police abuse. I know they have to deal with obnoxious people at night, but that doesn’t mean they have to be obnoxious.”

“It’s good the garda corruption is coming out now,” says Ollie Moore. “Like with the clergy and politicians, people are starting to realise if you give people too much power and make them unaccountable, they will run riot. Loads of people are seeing that we need more accountability among the clergy and the police and politicians. They’ve got away with it for too long.”