DON’T MISS
The protest against Joan Burton in Jobstown was an ugly display of mob rule. Last week’s verdicts don’t change that, writes Eilis O’Hanlon
The Jobstown protest was nothing to be proud of, says Eilis O’Hanlon
HISTORY is written by the victors. That certainly seems to be what’s happening now after six men were found not guilty at Dublin Circuit Court of falsely imprisoning then Tanaiste Joan Burton and her advisor Karen O’Connell during a rowdy protest in Jobstown in November 2014.
There were “jubilant scenes” in the court when the unanimous verdict to find Solidarity TD Paul Murphy not guilty was announced, and a standing ovation at the end after the other five men were also acquitted on all charges.
There was never much doubt that it would end this way. Most legal experts thought the charge of false imprisonment was, as Murphy himself put it, “bizarre”. The affair wasted the court’s time and Garda resources, and was a gift to left wing agitators who were only too eager to take up the mantle of martyrdom.
In hindsight, these were the wrong men, on the wrong charges, at the wrong time. The public mood is sceptical about Garda evidence right now. Had they been convicted and imprisoned, it would’ve left a sour taste in the mouth.
But let’s not get carried away. They were not collective reincarnations of Mahatma Gandhi. There was no justification for news bulletins to treat their exit from court to huge, adoring crowds, as if they were the Birmingham, rather than the Jobstown, Six. Nor to give such uncritical prominence to their supporters’ allegations of an “orchestrated conspiracy”.
The verdict rested on the definition of “totally restrained”. The bar of evidence was set very high. Prosecutors had to prove not only that Joan Burton and Karen O’Connell were trapped in the car by the sitdown protest, but that they had no recourse to any other way out, such as on foot.
The jury appears to have placed great weight on a recording from a Garda helicopter above, when an officer can be heard to say: “The Jeep could have went (sic) backwards ages ago, but they seemed to not want to do that. So there’s no hassle really.” This was no more than an opinion from someone who was, literally, not even on the ground.
Others who were there saw it differently. It was the jury’s call to decide between them. The result was that the six men walked away with their names cleared and no blemish against their reputations. Not guilty means not guilty. “You are free to go,” Judge Melanie Greally told them. That’s the end of the matter.
The current Tanaiste, Frances Fitzgerald, was right about that. “We respect the court decision, of course. This was a jury trial. The jury makes its decision and justice takes it course.” She speaks for the entire country in that respect. There is no need to “rerun the evidence”.
But that doesn’t mean the argument about what happened that day in Jobstown has or should come to an end.
If anything, it makes the picture clearer. Those who decry what happened can do so now without fear of being accused of wanting to criminalise certain individuals for exercising their “right to protest”. The trial made it harder to condemn the Jobstown protest for the shabby, odious episode that it was.
Only the passing of time allows it to be coated with a nostalgic tint. It’s worth going back to that day and remembering what actually happened. There is plenty of footage available, much of it uploaded by protesters themselves in the apparent belief that it proves them blameless, when in truth it’s the most damning evidence against them. This was not the work of “ordinary voters” who only wished to “express their concerns” to the Tanaiste. It was a ruckus, and they were a rabble.
Burton was there that November to speak at the graduation ceremony for a local adult education centre. Outside protesters gathered, chanting: “Take her out!” After the first part of proceedings was over, she left the building to follow the graduates down the street, accompanied by a small number of guards, to a nearby church. Protesters surrounded her, chanting “shame on you”. She can’t move for a time. A water balloon hit her on the side of the head. She kept her dignity, walked on.
There’s no need to take anyone else’s word for it. It can be watched in real time.
Presently Burton reached the church and protesters can be heard discussing which other exits she might attempt to leave from later.
In the event, Burton and her adviser left by a side door and got into a car. It’s at this stage that a mob swamped the car, banging on the windows and roof, hurling abuse, as the guards — constrained from drawing batons and knocking on a few heads to protect the minister, as they might justifiably have done in the past — appeal for calm: “Lads, will you please get back?”
Protesters demanded that Burton seek “sanctuary” back in the church, warning it’s “the only place that’s safe”. An hour later, they were moved to a Garda Jeep, but that too came under attack from eggs and bottles, rendering the occupants unable, in their own version of events, to leave. Protesters sat at the front of the car to impede its progress.
None of this amounts to false imprisonment. The court has spoken.
But nor should it be excused or called by anything other than what it was — disorderly conduct of the most reprehensible sort. One’s moral compass would need to be seriously skewed to watch all that and not feel the wrongness of it, much less to tell Karen O’Connell that she’s wrong to describe it as one of the “most scary experiences” of her life.
This is certainly not, whatever was said in court, a mere “inconvenience, delay and a nuisance”.
At one point, Paul Murphy addressed the mob through a megaphone: “If they withdraw the Public Order Unit, do we agree to let her go?” The crowd generously gave its assent.
“So is that agreed?” Murphy continued. “We march her out slowly?”
It’s as if it’s normal for some jumped up, smirking, middle-class boy playing at being a Lenin wannabe to be negotiating the terms under which one of the State’s ministers should be allowed to go about her lawful business. There’s nothing normal about it.
It was during this slow march on the last few hundred yards towards the Tallaght bypass that the guard in the helicopter above made his remarks.
It came at the end of hours of a disorderly stand off with the potential to turn violent at any time. Anyone who has the audacity to say that Burton and O’Connell had no right to complain at their treatment, simply because they could have exited the vehicle at any time and taken their chances on foot, needs to check their humanity in for a refit.
In court, though, there were times when it seemed that Joan Burton herself was on trial, her every word dissected, her outbursts under duress twisted to indict her entire character, rather than recognising them as understandable human responses to a distressing situation.
Nor was she the only target of such protests. Earlier that year, local Labour election candidate Martina Genockey was accosted whilst out canvassing in Tallaght.
Once again, the footage can be seen online. It shows her being followed down the street by a man and woman yelling “traitor”. Clearly upset, Genockey, a resident of Jobstown since she was three years old, remains defiant, saying: “This is a democracy. I’m running for the Labour Party. I’m entitled to do that, I can run for whoever I want.”
Her harassers are unimpressed by this talk of democratic rights. “You keep out of this estate,” one woman shouts as a parting shot, as if they have the right to enforce no-go areas on people who don’t share their views. (Genockey had the last word. She was elected to South Dublin Co Council a few weeks later).
Even President Higgins found himself on the receiving end of this viciousness. When he visited Colaiste Eoin in Finglas early in 2015, he was met by a protest at the gates, held back by guards who faced a volley of abuse. “Scumbag.” “Smirking c**t.” “You’re just a c**t with a badge.”
When the President emerged from the school to drive away, a voice can clearly be heard shouting: “Take the f ***** out!”
There was an ugly mood in the air during 2014 and 2015. Protests against water charges had escalated into a rowdy free-for-all, in which the threat of violence lurked menacingly beneath the surface. This was all justified under the banner of the “right to protest”, but that was never under threat.
The only rights being threatened were those of the targets of the protesters to express a contradictory point of view without getting the same bullying treatment as Joan Burton.
Speaking on Morning Ireland around that time, Leo Varadkar, then Minister for Health, identified the “sinister fringe” amongst the protesters, adding: “They abuse the gardai, they break the law, they engage in violence, they spread all sorts of misinformation.”
He wasn’t wrong, but because the dangerous, nasty circumstances under which he made his remarks have faded from memory, no one wants to remember any more how trouble was being organised by malign elements making political capital out of disorder.
Solidarity TD Mick Barry said in the Dail last Thursday that the verdicts in the Jobstown trial were a “stunning defeat for the political establishment”.
He’s entitled to that view. Let it not be said, though, that the protest itself was other than a stunning defeat for democratic decency at the hands of a mob. An Garda Siochana — the Guardians of the Peace — should not have to haggle with gleeful anarchists to maintain order on the streets. They only have to do so now because they’re under constant surveillance by professional victims with iPhones who misrepresent every legitimate show of force as outrageous oppression.
Just because six men were found not guilty on the specific charge of false imprisonment doesn’t mean that the others who were there that day did anything of which they can be proud.
‘The guards shouldn’t have to haggle with anarchists’