[advabHixavoip]

try to dispossess the Irish...go ahead you filthy banksters...


Ireland invented the boycott during the land wars, and perhaps it is time to take this effective weapon of resistance down from the thatch to deal with repossessions and resales Despite the spiralling economic crisis we are in, there was, last week, an epiphany at a small auction in Co Meath.

A 67-acre farm in Crossakiel, which had been repossessed by ACC bank, was up for sale. Despite a reasonable attendance by local farmers at the auction, there was only one derisory bid of €1.

There was, according to some present, ‘‘an atmosphere’’ in the room, and the auctioneer later told the Irish Times that ‘‘there was no question but that people weren’t bidding because it was being sold by the bank’’.

At one stage, one person present questioned whether the land was being sold with the goodwill of the owner - and was told that the bank had the authority to sell the land.

The owner of the land had reached this financial crisis after using the land to raise funds for a property development which then crashed. The farm remains unsold.

It is not difficult to imagine the historical ghosts which haunted that Meath auction room, and I make no excuse for returning yet again to the personal debt crisis that I have been writing about for some weeks now.

One result of this issue has been the emergence of the New Beginning organisation, a group of some 50 barristers, businesspeople and citizens who are prepared to give free legal support to those facing repossession. And three cheers for them.

The failed land sale in Meath is yet another sign that, if the banks think they can regain the high financial ground over the thousands to whom they over-loaned in a reckless fashion by repossessing land, they may have to think again.

This applies equally to the government, which scooped up so many million euro in stamp duty.

Given Ireland’s history, those silent farmers in the auction room in Co Meath last week would have had a far better sense of where all of this will lead than the men running our banks. If the banks and the political and financial establishment think that our current bank repossession methods and laws on debt and bankruptcy are adequate for the forthcoming crisis, they had better think again. Parallels with the land and eviction crisis of the 19th century are beginning to look pertinent, particularly when one considers that, by late next year, almost 20 per cent of Irish home ownership may be in negative equity.

At the outset of this crisis, most people didn’t really understand what had happened and were prepared to let the government get on with saving the banks since they were essential - so the government argued - to safeguarding our economic future. Well, we did that, but the economy is still in crisis.


........It seems that, in this crisis, everyone except the taxpayers and homeowners of Ireland were allowed to make up the rules as they went along.

Now is the time for the citizens of the Republic to take back control of their lives and their finances and, like the Meath farmers, bond together in an unbreakable moral crusade for justice.

Our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers did this before, and we can do it again.



Time to reclaim the land that is rightfully ours | The Post