End the War on Tara

Kama

'Please ensure all animals are well behaved' - sign at entrance to Rath Lugh


Tara and Irish identity are entwined, through history and pre-history; seat of the High Kings, site of the conversion of pagan Ireland by St. Patrick, a pre-Celtic sacral zone. Tara predates our recent nationalisms, sectarian or otherwise, as a unificatory centre. If the land of Ireland serves in constituting our selves, in a continuity of the inhabitation of this isle, the destruction and dismembering of this space constitutes a co-ordinated attack on this mythic space, an attack on memory, on culture, on identity, on heritage, on thought itself.

The defence of Tara constitutes a microcosmic replay of struggle throughout the world: of the enclosure of common land for private profit; of government collusion with wealthy interests against the majority*, right down to the balaclava-wearing private irregulars assaulting protestors with the acquiescence of State security; of memory, rootedness and place, against a voracious conjunction of ideology and opportunism.

Welcome to the War on Tara, aka the M3.

The eviction of the protestors at Rath Lugh, defensive fort in the Tara complex, stands as symptom for trends in our culture, economy and psyche. As a promontary fort, Rath Lugh allowed clear view of the surrounding territory, and a redoubt to defend from; serving as both vision and defence.

The inhabitants of Rath Lugh, the evicted, sought to defend this vital heart of the lands soul, against not just diggers and a motorway, but against the destruction of memory, a cultural amnesia that refuses remembering, that destroys what might force recollection. The ravage of the complex has been likened by Lisa Feeney to the sack of the Library of Baghdad, an assault on material memory. In China, the wreckage of the Summer Palace is kept as a preserved scar, an ever-present reminder of shame. In contrast, we destroy wantonly, willingly, to prevent the ever-present threat of thought.

The M3 development takes place at a pivotal moment in time, amid the the economic context of global economic uncertainty and contraction, coupled with the long-deferred consequence of resource drawdown, now visible in oil-price inflation, and a contra-Keynesian attempt to prolong the boom, heavily dependent on the construction industry. A 'Perfect Storm', of a small country dependent on foreign trade, in conditions of world-economic contraction, coupled with energy supply constriction, casts doubt on the viability of the assumptions about lifestyle, transport, and infrastructure manifesting in the M3. While even in a business-as-usual scenario, the motorway will merely displace congestion onto a different bottleneck, in conditions of energy scarcity the M3 may stand as a monumental boondoggle, a shameful waste of scarce resources.

A key irony in the eviction by An Coillte, with the nod of the Minister for the Environment, is that the camp of Rath Lugh envisioned and embodied a far more sustainable mode of life than the societal expectations embodied by the motorway; one of low-impact green housing, reduced energy consumption and carbon emission, in a mixed woodland, rooted in place, in contradistinction to one based on the ideology of growth and waste.

While the debate on Peak Oil remains undecided, if the pessimist position is accurate, the M3 will stand as a monument to ignorance, to arrogance, to hubris: 'Look upon my works ye mighty and despair'. Undeterred by its own obsolescence, the development seeks to strangle not just memory and the legacy of the past that we are duty-bound to pass on, but also hope in the future as yet unborn. We cover our shame in ignorance, and attempt to allay our anxieties by annihilation, as we sell our nations birthright for a mess of pottage.