Stifling legitimate protest with sensational scare stories is a sinister development, writes William Hederman
An "anarchist army" is plotting a Mayday "bloodbath" for Dublin, according to the News of the World, while Ireland On Sunday has revealed that "stockpiles of weapons have been stashed by anarchists at secret locations across Ireland".
This was the peak of absurdity in what has been a period of sensational scare stories in the past two weeks. The Evening Herald, the Daily Star and others have thrown their own fuel on the fire with reports of "sinister" groups intent on "smashing" Dublin and 15,000 "hate-filled" activists causing "mayhem" during the first weekend in May, when Ireland hosts the EU summit.
Broadsheets have made a more subtle contribution. The Sunday Independent reported that gardaí were "concerned that terrorists will slip into Ireland among the large number of anti-globalisation protesters", while the Irish Independent has focused on the "massive security operation . . . aimed at curbing violence being planned by international and home-grown agitators," under the front page headline, "Riot troops drafted in to put down EU protesters".
On closer inspection, the tabloids' "investigations" consist mainly of browsing a couple of minor websites. "Infiltration" of an anarchist organisation invariably turns out to mean attendance at a public meeting of the group.
An Irish Daily Star journalist recently "infiltrated a secret meeting" of the "notorious Wombles anarchist group" in London.
A photograph shows the reporter leaving the pub where the "sinister"meeting was held: signs advertising the meeting can be clearly seen on the wall outside the pub. In fact the Wombles are a small group committed to non-violent protest and they hold open meetings. Often the information about planned violence is attributed to an unnamed "senior garda" or else there is no mention of a source.
The Garda press office says it has not provided information to the press about violent protesters, nor was it the source of reports about expectations of 15,000 protesters coming from abroad, plans for a detention centre and predictions of 1,000 arrests.
Protest organisers say they don't know how many will come from abroad, though they describe 15,000 as "ludicrously high". And they certainly weren't asked for a figure by any journalists researching these stories.
The main organisers of protests at the summit, Dublin Grassroots Network, recently issued a statement challenging "those making these allegations either to put their name to them . . . or to retract". Privately these activists say they are convinced that senior gardaí have been prompting journalists to run scare stories.
Why might the authorities wish to have the protesters portrayed as violent? Two motives suggest themselves. The more obvious one is to deter as many people as possible from taking part, so making the whole weekend easier for police.
The second, more worrying, aim might be to generate public hostility towards the protesters, so that if violence does break out, it will be assumed that it was the protesters - rather than the gardaí - who caused it.
This tactic has been used in other countries in advance of major protests, for example in the run-up to the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001, when scare stories in the Italian media included one about subversives planning to drop bags of
HIV-infected blood on the city from remote controlled aircraft.
Whatever about the source of this sensationalism, the potential effect is clear: people who might have come out onto the streets on this traditional day of international left-wing protest will think twice, thus undermining the principle of public protest. And an unfortunate spin-off from the media scare campaign is that rank-and-file gardaí will be reading the stories too and its effect on them is not hard to guess at. A nervous police force raises the likelihood of trouble.
Aside from the fantastical tales of bloodbaths and arms dumps, this coverage is remarkable for the absence of any mention of what the
activists are protesting about, which will leave many readers with their assumptions that anarchists and anti-capitalists are nothing but nihilistic troublemakers.
Some newspapers encourage this misconception. One editorial described protest organisers as "dangerous thugs \ have no principles and no beliefs other than to cause violence and disorder".
No beliefs? Ironically at a time of such political apathy, the anarchists, environmentalists, anti-racism campaigners, community activists and others that make up the Dublin Grassroots Network are among the most idealistic people you could meet.
They are reasonable, decent people with strongly-held beliefs about how the EU is being run, beliefs they have outlined in a leaflet which they are delivering to
as many households as they can. And far from being secretive, they have spokespeople who are available to talk to the media.
You might disagree with their viewpoint, but you'll never know what that viewpoint is, unless you happen to get one of their leaflets, or the media decides to give them some exposure.
This scare campaign raises obvious issues about people's right to protest, as well as their confidence to take to the streets when they are unhappy with the way their society is being run. Reports of groups coming from abroad to "target" Dublin are bound to arouse feelings of, "why do they have to come to Dublin to fight their cause"?
Let's not forget that 25 prime ministers and their officials will be meeting here and that their decisions will affect every one of the 450 million people in the newly-enlarged EU. If EU citizens are concerned about such things as privatisation of public utilities, anti-immigration policy or the militarisation of the EU, they have as much right to protest at this summit as Irish people do.
The Irish Government's refusal to accept the result of the first Nice referendum has convinced many that taking to the streets is the only way to influence policy. Street protest is fundamental to democracy.
We owe many of our freedoms to the street protesters of the past. One only has to think of the Suffragettes, the American civil rights movement or the fall of communism in eastern Europe.
William Hederman is a freelance journalist and activist