Ireland’s West Awakens, Fights Back as Changes Threaten Its Way of Life

This was once Ireland’s Siberia.

When England’s Oliver Cromwell put down an Irish rebellion in the 17th Century and turned the rich Irish midlands over to English landlords, he offered the displaced natives a choice of death or banishment.

“To Hell or to Connaucht!” was Cromwell’s cry, using the name by which the region west of the Shannon River is still known. And given the stark, mountainous terrain, infertile soil, heavy annual rainfall and biting winds characteristic of much of the area, that may not have been much of a choice.

Two hundred years later, the potato famine took an especially heavy toll in Connaucht. And of the millions that fled Ireland through the centuries, the western part of the country contributed a disproportionately high share of emigrants.

The same history has marked those who stayed behind as well, teaching them first how to survive, then how to love their unique region--and implanting in the western Irish character notable streaks of individuality, determination and a general distrust of bigness and outside authority.

Now, another element has been added--an enthusiasm for grass-roots political organization. And the whole lot has been mobilized into a vigorous defense against what residents see as threats to their land and the style of life it nurtures.

Recalling Cromwell’s dictate, Murrisk schoolteacher and community activist Denis Carroll told a visitor recently: “West of Ireland people--I think they’ve had enough of being pushed around. They feel very strongly about preserving something that for so long was seen as useless.”

Amid a general environmental awakening throughout the region, residents are particularly making their weight felt in two continuing conflicts.

Both are complex, with no clear divisions into good guys and bad guys. But they have each captured national attention and, in the process, given the outside world a new prism through which to view the Irish experience.

Here in Murrisk, at the base of the mountain from which the 5th-Century patron St. Patrick is said to have banished snakes from Ireland, citizens have mounted a campaign to block development of a local gold strike. It’s an Irish echo of the early days of America’s environmental activism, with opponents insisting that the danger to the area’s pristine air, water and scenery is not worth the boost the project would give to the admittedly depressed local economy.

The Roman Catholic Church has weighed heavily into the debate. And a rally in nearby Westport a few weeks ago drew a crowd of more than 3,000 people to hear environmentalists decry the dangers of mining. It was reputedly the largest such assembly since anti-British protests in colonial days.

Meanwhile, a few miles south, anglers around wind-swept Lake Corrib are leading the way in a two-year-old boycott to protest the government’s introduction of a mandatory “rod license” for trout fishing. The conflict has gotten nastier as striking anglers, defending what they see as their historic right to free fishing in local lakes, square off against neighbors who say their right to make a living has been infringed by the boycotters.

The fracas is said to have cost Ireland tens of millions of dollars in lost income from tourists who traditionally flock here for the trout fishing season. Anti-rod license activists also campaigned vigorously against Prime Minister Charles Haughey’s Fianna Fail (Soldiers of Destiny) party and, according to political analysts in Dublin, may have cost it June’s general election.

“Everybody you talk to in the west of Ireland thinks everything is tied up politically,” said Robert O’Connor, a Connaucht native now working as a consultant for Dublin’s Economic & Social Research Institute. “They’re very cynical about things in that regard.”

Connaucht no longer exists as an administrative entity, but the name is still commonly used in reference to all or part of six counties: Clare, Galway, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo. The population is about 400,000 out of Ireland’s total of 3.6 million residents.

The region they inhabit remains the poorest part of the country, O’Connor said. Incomes are nearly 20% below the national average. Where the center of the country has lush meadowlands, the west of Ireland has peat bogs.

But at the same time, this is the Ireland of the picture postcards. Tidy houses with white lace curtains dot the hills, set off by neat stone fences. Sheep graze mountains and foothills blanketed in a seemingly infinite number of shades of green. And there is water everywhere: mountain brooks, scores of fresh water lakes, bays and inlets off the Atlantic Ocean.

The waters are famous among anglers for their salmon, trout, pike and perch. And except for salmon, which have long held special status, fishermen have traditionally been free to cast their lines at will.

“Here in the west of Ireland there was always this--you could fish any of the big western lakes for free,” said Des Nolan, an Anaugh Down teacher and spokesman for anglers protesting the new rod license. “Even when the English ruled this country, you didn’t have to pay.”

The license fees, enacted in December, 1987, were ostensibly to be used to improve the lakes and keep them stocked. But Ireland’s anglers see darker motives afoot--everything from a government lake grab that will turn their waters into corporate fish farms, to a surreptitious attempt to introduce the principle of a national identity card.

More than that, said Nolan, the issue is freedom. “As far as we’re concerned,” he added, “this is an infringement of our civil rights, pure and simple. It’s not just catching the trout. It’s the pleasure of being out there on the lake, knowing you’re free. There’s something about it that’s beautiful.”

Nolan shrugged helplessly. “No one is ever able to write it down.”

When bailiffs began confiscating boats and fishing gear from anglers who defied the license requirement, the fishermen decided on the opposite approach. They quit fishing, and did their best to make sure everyone else did too.

One sees the impact in Oughterard, a village of 700 on the shores of vast Lake Corrib that is sometimes called the capital of the “rod war.” The boycott placards tacked up all over town are obvious; the signs of the severe economic impact more subtle.

The latter are found at the Anglers’ Bar & Lounge, which was virtually empty on a recent Saturday night. Or at Sweeney’s Oughterard House Hotel, where owner-manager Patrick Higgins recalled wistfully how he used to drum up business.

“If there was a good catch of fish, what I would do is pop them up on the bar,” he said. Then he’d offer to set up a fishing outing for admiring guests the next day.

They don’t arrange fishing trips from Sweeney’s these days. For that you have to go to the other side of town, to Lal Flaherty, who is defying the boycott. Flaherty, who runs a 10-room lakeside guest house catering to fishermen, won an injunction in June against local anglers who were harassing his customers.

The narrow road to his place is lined with hand-lettered posters reading “Traitor” and “Don’t Sell Out for 30 Pieces of Silver.”

Flaherty said he didn’t want the rod license any more than anyone else. But now it’s the law, and besides, “This is what we make our living doing, and nothing else.” He said he would have more respect for the protesters if they defied the license requirement and went to jail for their beliefs rather than pressing their case by trying to impose their will on others.

Flaherty’s business is down by about 60% in the nearly two years since the conflict started, he said. A native of Oughterard, he added that he is “surprised and very disappointed” at how the issue has come between him and friends he has known since childhood.

Flaherty concedes he represents a small minority. Meanwhile, Nolan and the great majority here promise that the boycott will continue until the government backs down. They’re even ready to accept alternate types of fees, Nolan said. But the rod license must go, he added, because “it’s a matter of principle.”

Around Murrisk, meanwhile, the matter is an explosive mixture of gold, religious tradition and environmental protection, and the conflict is just starting. Developers Burmin Exploration and a subsidiary of the Finnish state mining company don’t even plan to apply for necessary government permission to exploit their estimated $100-million claim until next month. But because of its location on Croagh (Mt.) Patrick--”the Mt. Sinai of Ireland”--the battle has already begun.

In addition to its scenic perch overlooking the shellfish-rich Clew Bay, Croagh Patrick has been a site of religious pilgrimage for 1,500 years. On the last Sunday of each July there is a special ceremony at a chapel on the 2,500-foot summit that attracts thousands.

“It represents over a period of 1,500 years an incomparable accumulation of spiritual wealth,” the area’s Roman Catholic archbishop, Joseph Cassidy, said of the mountain.

While the gold might mean economic development, the clergyman cautioned, “There is more wealth on the surface of that mountain than could ever be taken from inside. To be passionately protective about Patrick’s mountain is not an exercise in pious obscurantism; it is an instinctive and enlightened response by a thinking people.”

“People are aroused at a number of levels,” Father Tony King, pastor of St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church in nearby Westport, said in an interview. “It’s an issue of people, their place, their environment and their national heritage.”

Because of the additional powerful element of Irish religious tradition involved, environmentalists consider it vital to make a stand.

“If mining in the Croagh Patrick area goes ahead, there’s no area in Ireland that’s sacred,” said Denis Carroll, the teacher who also heads the recently formed Murrisk Residents Assn.

A second gold strike in a valley a few miles south of Croagh Patrick has some people talking about a possible “Irish Klondike” in Connaucht.

Burmin officials admit that the amount of opposition they face caught them off guard. But they insist that they are being unfairly judged and that once they complete their development plans, they will be able to satisfy all but their most obdurate critics that they can mine on Croagh Patrick without damaging either environment or religious tradition.

A government Geological Survey official agreed that the fears have gotten out of hand. “These are Irish lads,” he said of Burmin’s executives. “They’re not people coming in from outside who want to rape the land.”

In any case, the inevitable public hearings that will follow Burmin’s filing of a development plan promise to be stormy.

“Our ancestors may have been pushed around,” anti-mining activist Carroll said. “But we aren’t going to be--either by mining companies or our own politicians.”