Breaking law can be good for democracy

Which is more important? Dry, abstract legal principles or justice, which takes account of real life, and which equalises the power of ordinary people against the might of a foreign multinational?

While the rights and wrongs of the Corrib gas pipeline, the original deal, and the best method of processing the gas have all been discussed in detail, there is a more important question: whose law operates in Ireland? That of the people, or the judges?

Defenders of the established power argue that it is undemocratic to break the law. But if that were true, we wouldn't, of course, even have democracy, let alone a state of our own. Honourable, principled men broke the law to highlight the wrong of the law, and so helped to bring about change.

Five Mayo men from Ros Dumhach (Rossport) will spend the rest of the summer in prison. They are not anti-social in any reasonable definition of that word, they are not criminals: they are family men fighting for the lives and safety of themselves, their families and their neighbours, and it is apparent from the evidence that their fears in this regard are not baseless.

It is also clear that there are strong doubts about the legality of Shell's work on the Corrib gas pipeline, on the basis that they didn't have the required ministerial consents – and that's the opinion of the Minister himself.

They were put in prison for refusing to give an undertaking not to interfere with this arguably-illegal work but, under pressure from the Minister, Shell has agreed to suspend this work until a ministerial safety review is completed. So, even if the men wanted to, they couldn't breach the injunction, since there is now no work to interfere with.

Nevertheless, Judge Joseph Finnegan, President of the High Court, refuses to entertain any arguments on this point until the men shall have "purged their contempt" – until they give an undertaking not to interfere with Shell again, to apologise for having done so in the past, and to be quiet and willing to submit to living with the potential danger to their lives that Shell is bringing in.

What sense is there in this? Is the technical majesty of the law – even when it's in the wrong – more important than the real rights of a small community in the West of Ireland?

For Shell, these men are just a minor irritant. After all, if you've looked on impassively at the slaughter in Nigeria, particularly against the Ogoni people, how can a handful of Mayomen be allowed to upset you?

What solution does the judge propose? Well, that's not his business apparently. His business is only to impose and uphold the law, and if the law is wrong...

In real life, peaceful agitation for change frequently involves breaking unjust laws and challenging unjust administrative decisions by refusing to comply with them. It's what makes real democracy function. And in the case of the Ros Dumhach Five, it should be stressed that theirs has at all times been a peaceful, non-violent protest. That's something that Shell can't say about their operations in Nigeria.

It was clear this week that the politicians wanted the men out of prison. While the Ros Dumhach campaign remains sceptical of Noel Dempsey's safety review, the establishment of that review and Shell's agreement to the Minister's request that all further work on the project be suspended were all designed to allow space for the men to be released.

The judge was having none of it. And he refused to accept that he had been misled by Shell. Well, if he wasn't misled, then he did it deliberately, closing his eyes to justice and to right in sending men to jail for interfering with illegal work.

Shell's local manager has complained that the local people shouldn't take the law into their own hands. But that's exactly what Shell have done. And as for taking the law into their own hands, isn't that what the people of Mayo have done ever since Oliver Cromwell took the law into his and sent them there?

And isn't it because they took the law into their own hands historically that we have an independent State (of sorts) at all, and that Judge Finnegan has an Irish High Court to preside over?

The country is awash with petty thugs and drug pushers who walk the streets with impunity, but five decent, upright men, fighting for justice for themselves, their families and their neighbours, are confined to jail, while a judge, resplendent in his robes of office and his sense of the dignity of the Law, refuses to hear their case.

"Those who come to Equity must come with clean hands," the legal saying goes. But when did Shell wash their hands, and when will our judicial system clean up its own act and realise that social realities are more important than legal technicalities?

Eoin Ó Murchú is the Eagraí Polaitíochta of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is writing here in a personal capacity