Rossport Solidarity Camp was born in June of this year. It is the first protest camp around an ecological theme to take place in Ireland for several years.

It is located on the wild rugged coastline of north-west Mayo, in the far west of Ireland.

The camp began after local opponents of Shell's plan to build an unprecedented high pressure gas pipeline through the hamlet of Rossport invited us there to back up their struggle. Five of these local activists, aka The Rossport Five", were subsequently imprisoned for refusing to obey a court order forbidding them from preventing contractors hired by Shell access to their farms and those of their neighbours. After 3 months in prison, they were released when Shell asked that the court order be lifted. The struggle has won significant victories in securing their release, and in preventing Shell building the development this year, as they had planned to do, but the battle is far from over, as the Rossport Five said on the their release: "The campaign has now begun in earnest." Thus far Shell has faced continual picketing of all their construction sites, a threatened blockade by fishing boats of their off-shore pipeline construction, and a variety of solidarity actions across the island and beyond.

Rossport Solidarity Camp plans to re-launch in March 2006 as a much bigger operation. Two participants in Rossport Solidarity Camp will be on a speaking tour of Britain in November, one of them will also be speaking about Cork Harbour Action Group, a non-violent direct action group engaged with a community struggle against the construction of incineration facilities in Ringaskiddy, County Cork.