GALWAY CANVASS:IT COULD have been a postcard - a pucán taking advantage of a light northwesterly breeze, and the iconic swans basking in evening sunshine at Nimmo's Pier. Yet the John Hinde image belied a slightly charged political atmosphere just up the street in Galway's Claddagh quarter.
"Tell me why?" Independent city councillor Catherine Connolly was asking a resident. "Why are you voting this way?"
Goodness - had she come across a heretical pro-treatyite in her own neighbourhood? This is An Cladach after all. Although the thatched fishing cottages may be long gone, there's still a lingering spirit of that independent fiefdom which once marked election of its own mayor with bonfires every St John's Day.
In fact, the resident was decidedly against the Lisbon Treaty, as were most of the occupants living in the medley of streets which Cllr Connolly and crew navigated. Or so it seemed.
"Irish people are very polite - they will tell you what you want to hear," one of the group, development education worker Sarah Clancy, observed. "But still you get the sense that voters don't like being bullied, and feel the treaty hasn't been adequately explained," she said.
"I've come across five Yes voters in the last two weeks," AJ Cahill, a Salthill-born electronic engineer, said as he clutched three separate bunches of flyers distributed by the canvassers.
Cahill, founder of a group called Galway for a Democratic Europe, is planning a "race to the bottom" in Galway city tomorrow to highlight his opposition to the document.
Associated with Patricia McKenna's People's Movement, he is also part of an eclectic group of "no canvassers", who have been out almost every night over the past fortnight in various parts.
Westside and Shantalla were "very anti", he and his colleagues noted, while the middle-classes of Knocknacarra seemed to be far more in favour. Taylor's Hill, a hotbed of middle-class conservatism, was "predominately No".
The eclectics represent a broad political church, including Cllr Connolly, her sister and Labour Party councillor Colette, members of the Galway Alliance Against War, Treasa Ní Cheannabháin of the Irish Palestine Solidarity Campaign's Galway branch, several local trade union representatives and a college lecturer.
Former Sinn Féin and now Independent councillor Daniel Callanan is an affiliate. He is one of five Galway city and county councillors - including Labour's Cllr Colette Connolly - who issued a joint statement appealing for a No vote last month. "Why, we've even Fianna Fáil connections!" one of its co-ordinators, Niall Farrell, boasted.
"But where's our neo-cons, Trotskyites and Spuccers?" a fellow canvasser quipped, referring to this week's criticism of the No campaign by Green Party TD Ciaran Cuffe.
A young girl sitting at the window took several leaflets, as the group moved through at a brisk pace. Cllr Catherine Connolly was armed with a large manual - the Consolidated Version of the Treaties, edited by Peadar Ó Broin. "Here we are, 19 pages on militarisation," she told several residents. "By contrast, look at this . . . less than two pages for the environment," she continued. "And then there's the solidarity clause, on page 136. That's particularly frightening," she said.
"By enhanced co-operation, it means enhanced military involvement and we won't have any choice," she explained to a woman living on the corner of Fairhill Road.
Gary Larkin, one of the younger canvassers, was keen to stress he was a minority within the grouping. He had no history, no previous connections. "I haven't been a member of any political party before, and I was initially in favour of this treaty," he told The Irish Times. "It was when I started to read up more, because I was interested and supportive of it, that I began to get very concerned."
"It's just not transparent, and the way our Government is handling it is totally undemocratic. You know, I haven't even met any of the political parties while we've been out. And I've been out every night for the past three weeks. The Yes side just don't seem to have any passion," he added.
