The Ban Bus

The next day took us across the country to Limerick and a talk at the University. Mette drove the bus and Raechel filmed while I write and sorted the talk. The organiser was a guy called Edward and he was a real civil society campaigner. He realised that the local airport was being used for US troop transporting to Iraq and Afghanistan and set about creating a local protest group that picketed the airport and other actions. Part of their reasoning was that Ireland was a neutral country so should not have been assisting the US in any way in their conduct of this war. Many of them had been arrested and they had even managed to get through the fences and damage some planes. These people were real activists with a huge social conscience and they weren’t just talkers but doers.

Edward organised a lecture room at the University and advertised broadly around the campus. We arrived and set up our banners and pictures and Mette worked the campus grounds talking to whoever she could collar for a conversation about cluster bombs. The hour for the talk arrived and a steady flow of people came in till we had a full house. I was as primed for this as I could be and launched into a fast and aggressive history of the international use of cluster bombs. The affect on the audience was immediate and people were incredulous that these weapons were not banned years before. As I bounced from one issue to the next the engagement completed with people wanting to get involved. We steered them to the Irish coalition and urged them to follow through on the campaign till the treaty was concluded in three weeks time. The clock was definitely ticking and people were coming to the issue. This is why outreach work is so important.

After the talk Edward wanted us to come with him to Shannon Airport which is the site used by the US military and their troop flights to Iraq and secret CIA movements. He had been barred, banned and arrested while being anywhere near the airport but still he was not intimidated by any of this. We dumped his car in an industrial carpark and drove him into the airport in the Ban Bus. Now one thing about the Ban Bus is that it is not exactly subtle with all of the very large signage. A stealth vehicle we are not and now we had the local super campaigner in the front seat navigating. What could possibly go wrong, besides arrest that is.

We cruised the perimeter looking at planes and looking to see if there were any military aircraft or secret unmarked ones. On this occasion there were none but if it wasn’t for the vigilance of people like Edward, then no one would have known about the secret CIA rendition flights. He and his group had spent many weeks watching every aircraft movement through Shannon and cross checking their information with an international network doing the same thing. This way they could cross check aircraft movements and build travel lists of many of these flights. It’s just one of the many ways to look into the secret way this so called war on terror was being conducted.

We took a photo outside of the airport terminal then it was time to load up and head north to Galway. We dropped Edward at his car and parted company at the freeway split.

The west of Ireland is beautiful and now it was bathed in warm afternoon sun. The flicker of the light through the trees has a slightly hypnotising strobe affect on the senses and makes you dream of other things. I was thinking about the upcoming treaty negotiations and what pressure that we as civil society could really put on the worlds governments. I knew one thing for sure, it was not going to be easy.