Ireland - Eoin Ó Broin

Interview Details

• Region: Europe - Ireland
• Language: English
• Interviewee: Eoin Ó Broin
• Interviewer: Mags Liddy
• Date: April 8 2017
• PGA Affiliation: University of Limerick EnviroSoc
• Transcript: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/88aes9jao4naf8ghfp798/PGA-Ireland-1-Eoin-Broin.docx?dl=0&rlkey=buijqfy7dzrqmbyqy3zz0uv4i

Transcript

[Note from interviewer: this interview was completed via Skype, and I did not have the recording set-up correctly in the beginning as I was using a headset. Initial 3 minutes are lost, but I did stop EOB from speaking for some time.]

Mags Liddy: No you are not, you’re not being video recorded. You don’t need to worry about how your hair looks or your lipstick and or what’s the background to it. Being recorded. So I presume that means, if this is agreeable to you, that the audio files would go up to the PGA History Project Web site. Now that obviously means that your voice would be identifiable. Do you mind that, or do you want to remain anonymous or do you prefer…?

[Eoin speaking… not recorded]

Mags Liddy: Yes. So yeah as you say if there’s something during the video – no not the video, during the interview that you want to keep. Yes. OK. Now what was the other thing I going to say. It’s not going to be video recorded. It’s just going to be your audio voice. You agree OK with you’re ok with your name being used, your full name.

Yes.

Now hang on one second… This isn’t recording- I’ve just realised that’s because I’m using the headset, the recorder is only recording me. So do you mind if I try something- try plugging you in here. Can you still hear me?

Eoin Ó Broin: Yeah.

Mags Liddy: And could you just talk away. Just say something for a moment and I’ll check the sound.

Eoin Ó Broin: yeah I hear you…

Mags Liddy: I think I have it figured out, what way the audio is. Hopefully this will work so we won’t have to do it again. So what…. well

We’ll just have to see how much you do have to say. The key thing for me is how UL EnviroSoc ended up on the PGA mailing list, and maybe you can provide some insight into that. So it is going back a few years in time…

Eoin Ó Broin: Are we recoding now? Have we started?

Mags Liddy: Yeah we are recoding now …

Interviewee:* Have we started?

Mags Liddy: Yes we started and fingers crossed it is all going ok.

Eoin Ó Broin: Where did I first hear about PGA? Hmmm…. Well it could have been vaguely… how about if I say that the first time I heard of the anti-globalisation movement was at the time of Seattle, the WTO protests in 1999.

And there was an American study abroad student called Eric Stein in UL, and he encouraged us to do a demo in solidarity with what was going on in Seattle. And I wonder if reading the literature around that, was there a mention of PGA? As far as I understood later, PGA had called for international financial summits to be blockaded, for direct action to be taken at them. So I may have some across it there, or I may have come across it at Ecotopia in Finland, where there was people that were organisers of the Prague meeting, World Bank summit protest later in 2000.

For certain where I heard about it- was believe it or not, in December 2000 at USI, Union of Students in Ireland conference and members of the Enviro Soc were coming together to form a thing called Gluaiseacht. And there was a talk there by a guy called Barry Finnegan, who was very I don’t know what his background was, but he knew all about the PGA, he may have been at one of the what do they call it, the global intergalactic meeting

Mags Liddy: the encuentro?

Eoin Ó Broin: he may even have been at one, a few years previous and he talked about it.. but you were wondering about the Enviro Soc email in particular, on a list. How do you know it was on the list?

Mags Liddy: Cos the mailing list is public, isn’t it? And there are very few Irish contact on it, the UL Enviro Soc is one

Eoin Ó Broin: You mean on a website?

Mags Liddy: yeah

Eoin Ó Broin: oh right- okay. So where might that have occurred? It could only have been… actually it must have been at the September summit, the World Bank summit in Prague. I was there, I had just finished my degree in UL and me and a class mate headed off there. Took a bus from Dublin to Prague, 36 hours, and we hung out there for a few days.

And somewhere there, in the different information and talks, at the counter-summit and the convergence centre, there was a .. may have come across and I may have put down the Enviro Soc email as contact…

Mags Liddy: Were you involved in the Enviro Soc? Were you President, or Treasurer?

Eoin Ó Broin: I wasn’t President.

Mags Liddy: I am going to pause for one second cos I want to check that everything is working. If that’s alright with you

Mags Liddy: you are recording again. You were just telling me there about where you first heard of PGA and the possibilities of where you heard of them. You mentioned the solidarity demo for Seattle- that was November 1999 yeah?

Eoin Ó Broin: yeah whenever Seattle was, it was exactly the same time.

Mags Liddy: On the same day - can you tell me about it? what happened? where was it?

Eoin Ó Broin: It was in Cruises St, just in Limerick and maybe there was 15 of us. A couple of the Environmental Society, one lad from Sinn Fein, one lad from… one anarchist actually. Then there would have been people from Mary I, the nuns that had come back from the missions who worked in Mary I who might of been into liberation theology, and who else? Maybe some other development NGO groups- but just about 15 people. And then this American guy who was in college in UL for the year and who told us about it and encouraged us to do the demo.

Mags Liddy: Right and was the Enviro Soc, did the Enviro Soc organise it? Or…

Eoin Ó Broin: Yeah

Mags Liddy: Was there any other in Ireland at the time?

Eoin Ó Broin: There was one in Dublin, the WSM would have organised that. There was 2 events in Ireland that were public, one in Limerick and one in Dublin.

Mags Liddy: Right, wow Ok

Eoin Ó Broin: I must really emphasise if it wasn’t for the American guy we wouldn’t have done it, like we had other maybe more environmental plans, campaigns going on. He was the one who emphasise you really really got to… be part of this.

Mags Liddy: Why? For what reason?

Eoin Ó Broin: Why did he say we had to be part of it…

Mags Liddy: Yeah

Eoin Ó Broin: He said that the American trade unions are involved, Its big, it’s important for development. I don’t know if the word anti-globalisation existed then, but it seems from what he was saying, that this was very important, a movement that is very important for humanity, that was the way he was putting it. In a sense we went along with him more out of his conviction than any super knowledge of the issues.

Mags Liddy: Right…

Eoin Ó Broin: Once we contacted people, like the nuns in Mary I and Sinn Fein, they didn’t need to be told. They were quite happy to get involved.

Mags Liddy: You said you were not aware of anti-globalisation but globalisation- were you aware of that? And was that term being used?

Eoin Ó Broin: Well I guess so, at the time it was quite vague? I mean what does it mean? Maybe it’s just me personally, but… I mean now I understand it as the free movement of capital in the sense that there is less tariffs, so there is very easy trade between China and the rest of the world. Yeah free movement of capital essentially, which means lots of investments at levels that is unprecedented. I guess it’s the opposite of localism, in the sense that goods are not just produced locally and distributed locally… It’s a global supply chain

Mags Liddy: But back then you reckon, that it wasn’t something that you understood… or heard so much about…

Eoin Ó Broin: Yeah well it was part of the buzzwords- we were all part of the globalisation era. Having Erasmus students in UL was as much as part as having goods from China- it was definitely more than just goods, but maybe that made it a bit vague.

But I guess when though when you think about it, the main thing is trade. And then the anti-global which was criticised later for being naïve, or maybe not naïve but narrow-minded, in the sense who would be opposed to people being able to freely travel, or the exchange of cultures, I mean how could you be?

But I suppose the anti-globalisation was opposed to was the speed, or the impact of the speed of the process on communities, and livelihoods, and environment.

Mags Liddy: Yeah… and the impact on those communities- do you think that was an Irish impact? Or recognised more, an international one?

Eoin Ó Broin: I see it more in Europe, the deindustrialised areas, the north of France, Belgium, north of England. The areas that had lost- the rust belt in US which has lost out due to globalisation…

Ireland- I don’t know - maybe that’s why it was a bit vague in Ireland, because there hadn’t been a real industrialisation in Ireland and there was…

Mags Liddy: I am wondering as well because the US exchange student, it was travelling to Finland and participating in Ecotopia there and meeting the people organising for Prague, it was Barry attending PGA in Spain- it was a real international aspect to it - the nuns coming back from Latin America, rather than … I am just wondering how important all those international links were… and was there a feeling of being a part of something global?

Eoin Ó Broin: Absolutely there was feeling of being a part of something global, but you didn’t feel it till you went abroad I think and meet people from other countries who were part of it. You didn’t really feel it in Ireland in the same way- does that answer your question?

Mags Liddy: It does- but is it a sense of feeling part of something, like in the sense of solidarity and comradeship. Or is it a sense of … seeing the impact on communities and on areas abroad?

Eoin Ó Broin: Well actually, having said… I suppose because Ireland being an island out in the sea, and the population was relatively small, you didn’t have … millions living in what the French call quartier-populaire, working class areas, areas with lots of migrants, and societal tensions were not as high.

Maybe in 2001 when there was 100 of us on a bus to Genoa to protest, we absolutely we felt part of something. And in Genoa one morning I went to a press briefing, where different groups, different NGOs, activist groups, organisation, were coming together to write a press release. There was a woman from I don’t know, some sub-Saharan country there and she wanted to write in the press release that we were opposed to the violence of capitalism. And at the time I was looking at her saying but you can’t be saying that- sure capitalism isn’t violent? What are you talking about?

But she in turn said to me- well you sir, definitely don’t know what you are talking about… looking at the way I live, and the way people live where I live, I suppose the way people’s lives are turned upside-down because environmental destruction, or social bonds are broken down by, maybe, moving to cities, rural areas becoming depopulated and things like that.

So that sounded very real- I wouldn’t say and this is only my personal perspective, I didn’t feel that globalisation was having a negative impact in Ireland at all. I mean at the time in the 90s, Intel came and it seemed like we were part of something modern, modern jobs in computer processing. I studied electronic engineering myself so it meant that Ireland was benefiting from technical development, which was part of global economy in the 90s.

So I didn’t feel like a victim of globalisation- I suppose the global environment was being trashed, and still is. But I didn’t feel any effect in Ireland in any part of my life, but I felt part of a movement against the effects of globalisation, the negative effects of globalisation, when I was going abroad..

Mags Liddy: Okay- you mentioned lots of things there. Particularly the big anti-capitalist demos, the Prague, was Prague the IMF is that?

Eoin Ó Broin: Prague was World Bank I think.

Mags Liddy: World Bank and Genoa was the G8… How in terms of the organisation for those- Prague as you say was just you and a mate going off. But Genoa was big, it was buses, it was… there was a whole bunch of people from all over Ireland going. Did PGA have any.. did it ever come up in the organisation and in talking about it?

Eoin Ó Broin: Sorry Mags I didn’t catch what you said there [background noise]

Mags Liddy: I said PGA have any… did it ever come up in the organising. Would you say it had any kind of influence, or was it more…?

Eoin Ó Broin: I would say not really- it was in the background. Subsequently, I think it has been very influential. But I can’t say I remember anyone coming to a meeting and saying I’m PGA, I’m from PGA or you know…

Mags Liddy: Okay well how was… and I know it is looking back from what 15 years ago now, how … when you say PGA is influential, or was influential. In what way? Influential for you…

Eoin Ó Broin: as far as I know, PGA called for - lets have these global, lets have these these summit protests at the meetings of capital. And the PGA was sort of like an international network, with links to the Zapatista movement in Mexico.

Mags Liddy: And the Hallmarks- do you remember?

Eoin Ó Broin: Yeah for sure I remember people talking about them. I remember at Ecotopia people were talking about them.

Mags Liddy: Which Ecotopia was that then?

Eoin Ó Broin: That would have been Finland. 2000

Mags Liddy: Being discussed in what way- in terms of a good… in terms of organisation, in terms of adoption. Arguing about them.

Eoin Ó Broin: People were talking about them, people were talking about hand signals, people were talking about organising non-hierarchically, using hand signals. I had never heard of organising non-hierarchically. People may have said there is a set of hallmarks that we adhere to. But I don’t remember much discussion about them.

Mags Liddy: Okay yeah… If you were to look back at PGA now, what do you think it did well? In terms of the influence it had, the role it played?

Eoin Ó Broin: I suppose it created a real international movement which is… I am just trying to think does that exist today. Like you have Occupy- you had Drop the Debt coalitions mostly of NGOs. PGA would have been more to the Left of NGOs, more grassroots movement, maybe academics involved as well. And … I assume the protests at the international meetings would not have happened without PGA, that they were the spider in the web, as is says in a few different languages but not English.

Mags Liddy: at the centre of the web?

Eoin Ó Broin: Well yeah but weaving the web as well as directing…

Mags Liddy: I see what you mean- the centre of the web implies, that everything revolves around them. That is a good analogy, that they are weaving a web that built into something.

Eoin Ó Broin: I suppose the thing is I can’t say I was ever at a meeting of the PGA myself. Or I can’t say I meet anyone who was involved. Except there was one very charismatic guy called Sergio- he was… I came across him in, it would have been in 2002 at a meeting in the squat in Barcelona called Can Masdeu. He and his colleagues set up an eco-village in the mountains in north of Spain. As far as I know he was involved in PGA.

And now that I think about it, at the protests against the World Bank in Prague, there was a couple of different blocs. There was a black bloc, which would have been the Federation of European Anarchist organisations. There was a red bloc, which would been the federation of socialist and communist organisations. And there was a pink and silver bloc which would have been more environmental and eco, let’s say eco-anarchist groups who were more hippie, maybe you could say, more into the environment, the environment would be really important to them, organic food, and green transition, and living off, more closer to nature. And he seemed to be one of the main coordinators.

And we went with that- me and my friend from Limerick. And then, the people I meet up with in Prague who I had met at Ecotopia in Finland- from different European countries, we all went with the pink-silver bloc. We didn’t see ourselves just anti- capitalist, anarchist… or we didn’t see ourselves, I guess we wouldn’t have called ourselves socialist either. Definitely environmentalist.

I was just getting accustomed to this idea that hierarchies were not too good, and that there was a downside to globalisation, that free movement of capital was causing. So the PGA, I assume the pink-silver bloc was the more PGA bloc than the other two. So check out the pink-silver…

And then actually in Genoa, all the heads that I was with, the Irish people that were there, the 100 Irish people that were there, divided into those 3 blocs.

Mags Liddy: okay- and did you stay with pink silver?

Eoin Ó Broin: yeah

Mags Liddy: … I am going to say something- it is the way I am reading and interpreting what you saying, don’t- just agree with me.

PGA was an international network, you heard of it, and you were introduced to many of their ideas but you never had any, like as you say you never attended a meeting. But PGA plus all these other international and European events, and links and connections, kinda introduced you to new ways of thinking and organising, and kinda politicised, or added to your political knowledge and how you came to understand the world.

Eoin Ó Broin: Absolutely new political ideas. Absolutely

Mags Liddy: And that all started from a strong environmental belief and philosophy- but grown into something bigger, or broader rather than bigger…

Eoin Ó Broin: absolutely it became more than campaigning for cycle lanes and more recycling bins. … You laughed first

Mags Liddy: yes- I laughed first.. so not PGA itself but all these international links and attending the counter-summits, and going to the big protests, they were all influential on you as a political actor?

Eoin Ó Broin: Sure - you could not… If you attended one of them things, you could not be influenced.

Mags Liddy: And where would you say, how would that influence in what you are doing now? Or who you are now? … If I am reading too much into this, just tell me if you disagree, just tell me.

Eoin Ó Broin: It’s a fair question- I am free to say there is no influence on me now. Oh there definitely was a turn, something changed for sure, when I got exposed to non-hierarchical and anarchism for sure, because before that my modus operandi was that we needed better environment, we need more cycle lanes, more recycling, we need more organic food. And we need to lobby politicians to do those things, maybe get the Green Party into government. That’s all we have to do- leave it at that. And something changed then- you know now that I am living in France, [loud background voices] if I had studied sociology and read…

Mags Liddy: sorry Eoin- hang on one sec- hold that thought…[loud background voices]… you were saying

Eoin Ó Broin: If you had grown up in France, and read the French political philosophers, from Sartre, Derrida and Bourdieu and if I had also come across the German, sorry the Frankfurt School with Marcuse and Althusser and these kind of thinkers, this probably have been Politics 101. In terms of the different forces at work in the world and the role of class, and the role of capital, and the role of hierarchies and how sociology analyses all of these things.

But I wasn’t coming from that background at all, so I suppose coming across anarchism, you are meeting people who are saying to you that voting is a waste of time, and if voting changed anything it would be outlawed. I don’t think that today certainly but I didn’t dismiss it out of hand, or think that is a load of rubbish. It definitely, I definitely spent some time contemplating what are they talking about.

And in the movement as well, I suppose being in Europe that the class cleavages are much bigger, maybe the wealth differences are bigger. Whereas in Ireland it is easy to say we are all the same. Whereas that is not obvious in continental Europe. Your Irish understanding of the world gets challenged when you go to other countries.

One just has to look, well up till the last election, at the recent American election, till recently people said there was little difference between American… between Republican and Democrats so you could wonder if voting serves any purpose there.

But so I think something did change, I was opened up to a lot. What is the role of capital in all of this? Maybe that is the simplest thing to say- What is the role of capital in the environment getting trashed? I mean I know the environment getting trashed and species being wiped out, and us ourselves being more and more full of chemicals. But I didn’t question, I didn’t think that capital or class, or equality was important in that perspective.

Mags Liddy: Okay

Eoin Ó Broin: That’s a long answer

Mags Liddy: Yeah but it’s a good answer, a great answer.

Eoin Ó Broin: I am in a political movement… Actually I want to say a little more- when I went to Sweden… I guess I became an anarchist then, in my political view. And I stayed one for a couple of years, and in Sweden after a couple of years, I said well there is power and why should we allow another bunch of chancers to have it? So why don’t we just take it and see what happens. So I joined the Green Party. And enjoyed that a lot.

Mags Liddy: the Green Party in Sweden?

Eoin Ó Broin: Yeah. And when I came to France, and I moved more to the Left. I joined a party here, a kinda of Green left Party and supporting Jean-Luc Mellanchon in the campaign here, And if you were to me now, what about hierarchy, what about anarchism. Anarchism is beautiful and I have experienced it first-hand in some… 50 people in meetings and living with on camp, anarchist camp of a couple of hundred people. Its fine, its beautiful. But do I think that society wants that now- no not now. Maybe in 2-300 years

Mags Liddy: 2-300 years- do we have that long?

Eoin Ó Broin: The environment does not- not at all.

Mags Liddy: Thanks for that- I didn’t quite mean to put you on the spot on your own political beliefs and philosophies. Thanks for sharing. Is there anything else you would like to say about PGA, about activism, about anti-globalisation?

Eoin Ó Broin: There was a couple of kinda celebrities in the movement. She had this sidekick- Lisa, she was American, they were both American. I just met Lisa- it feels like a few months ago now but it was last December last year at COP 21 here in Paris. And she started talking to me about PGA– so you should definitely try to talk to her.

Mags Liddy: Really? Eoin Ó Broin: Because there was a storm in a teacup, but I think the last day of the COP there was supposed to have been a large people’s march. But the French government may have not given permission, you know in light of the attacks. Some said that was an excuse. After the terror attacks in Paris, in November the French called a state of emergency- so months later the COP and the French government placed a number of environmental activists under house arrest. They were not allowed leave their house during the COP. And they were able to do this under the emergency legislation which had been brought in after a particular, ISIS terrorism attack.

So the French government were using legislation to stop ISIS on environmental activism, so plenty of people thought this was ridiculous, an abuse of power. So there was a demo, there was two demonstrations. One that was authorised, and one that wasn’t. And the one that was authorised was in a park which was surrounded by police and like a concert.

And the one that wasn’t authorised, got a few thousand people onto the streets near the Arc de Triomphe. And it was very colourful, everybody was in red. We marched from there to the Eiffel Tower, and there was an incident on a bridge. And if we had just stayed on the bridge, near the Eiffel Tower we could have held it for a few hours. But Lisa.. she was saying it reminded her of the anti-globalisation protests, she was probably the closest person to PGA that I know. And it was interesting that she was talking about it there…

Mags Liddy: So being in Paris, what was happening in Paris reminded her of the big anti-globalisation protests?… Okay- you emailed on her name before. So I am going to stop recoding now

Eoin Ó Broin: No problem…