How community opposition beat international capital
By Robert Allen
TEN years ago a whisper went around east Cork. The
American chemical company that had made Agent Orange
for the US military wanted to build a drugs factory on
the rich pastures outside Killeagh.
Local communities were galvanised into confrontation
against corporate America.
Merrell Dow, a pharmaceutical subsidiary of Dow
Chemicals, were all about power and money. But Cork's
modern peasants were undaunted. As Adrian Peace puts
it, ``not least because it evoked parallels with the
distanced, imperialist authority exercised over
previous centuries.''
The conflict was about the power the 26 County state
and Merrell Dow believed they held over the communities
in east Cork; the effluent which would destroy the
livelihoods of the families who raised dairy cattle and
tilled the land. Poisoned air, water and land were no
good to them.
So in order to show Dublin and Merrell Dow that they
had no rights over the people of east Cork, the
campaign shifted into what Peace (quoting EP Thompson)
has described as ``a theatre of control.''
Adrian Peace's book `A Time of Reckoning: the Politics
of Discourse in Rural Ireland' tells how the people of
east Cork came to totally dominate this particular
theatre of control, how, in the end, Merrell Dow
returned home with its tail between its legs and how
the 26 County State returned to its industrial
development draft, and how the mechanisms of the 26
County State were shown to be a sham.
Peace, a senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide,
is no ordinary social anthropologist. Born in
Huddersfield in northern England, he is one of the few
academic visitors to Ireland who had a profound
understanding of its people.
Peace was in the coastal village of Ballycotton when
Merrell Dow arrived on the scene.
``I focused on the economics and politics of farming,
kinship and community relations; the drawing of
domestic and communal boundaries; local party politics,
and the social organisation of coastal fishing. I was
thus situated just by good fortune to focus close up on
the Merrell Dow business. My family and I were
profoundly attached to our community and many of its
residents were fine neighbours and friends.
``By contrast, I had no such relation with the major
proponents of the development. Neither Merrell Dow's
managers nor senior representatives of the Irish State
resided locally; they were not engaged in the area's
social life, and most of their information derived from
flying visits in which they had minimal contact with
residents.
``The Merrell Dow management remained conspicuously
aloof from the unfolding wave of opposition, with
interviews seemingly granted only to conversative
newspapers and business journals. Similarly in 1988,
leading proponents with Cork County Council proved
difficult to access, as did members of the regional
political elite.''
It could be argued that the Merrell Dow conflict would
not happen today, because Dublin has learned its
lesson. The IDA certainly learned a lesson. When Sandoz
(now Novartis) decided to come to Ringaskiddy in Cork
Harbour, the 26 County State made sure there would be
no repeat. Despite even greater opposition, Sandoz got
to build their factory.
The lessons of Killeagh had been learned alright, but
they had been learned by the state, not the people. The
Sandoz campaign was characterised by domination,
authority and vanguardism. There was no domination or
authority or vanguardism in the Merrell Dow campaign.
There was instead solidarity.
When conflicts of interest and focus arose, people
split into smaller groups and got on with the task of
stopping Merrell Dow.
Much of the social and ecological protest that now
takes place in the 32 Counties is driven by the same
single issue focus as the Merrell Dow conflict but it
differs because there is little real understanding of
the mechanisms of power wielded by state and industry.
There is no acknowledgement about why ``the politics of
discourse'' are crucial to this understanding - about
power and about money.
Peace's book, more than any other book written about
community opposition to undesirable development, is
essential. This is the story of how successful
campaigns can be run.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)