There are gardai in yellow jackets, a fair share of them wielding cameras. There are students, and crustie types, and a smattering of all types, and a fair share of them are wielding cameras. Dr Jerry Cowley is there, wearing a suit and tie, but he hasn't got a camera.

The cops are filming the protesters. The protesters are filming the cops. RTE is filming everybody. This is home movie heaven. If the cameras were swapped for guns, you'd have the makings of a Tarantino production. One tall man in a red jacket is holding his camera 12 inches from the face of a garda, who is holding a camera on the end of a long rod.

"What's your name, garda?" the man demands in an educated Dublin accent. "What's your name, garda?" he keeps repeating. The garda ignores him. He is a large garda. He holds a small patterned woman's umbrella against the falling rain.

Welcome to the National Day of Action for Shell To Sea.

Life was so much simpler 12 months ago. Shell secured the jailing of five men for refusing to allow a high-pressure pipe through their lands. The pipe was to carry untreated gas from the Atlantic to a refinery. The men feared for the safety of their families, and went to jail for 94 days. The moral high ground was taken.

Noel Dempsey stepped in. The safety of the project was reviewed, and it was instructed that the pressure should be limited to about twothirds of its capacity. Peter Cassells agreed to mediate. He suggested that Shell reroute the pipe. Shell agreed. That should have been that.

Support Three weeks ago, Shell recommenced work on the refinery at Ballinaboy which will receive the gas.

(The facility is called a 'terminal' but its function is to refine gas. ) The Shell To Sea protesters mobilised. No work would be tolerated. The jailings, and subsequent surge in support, were concerned with a possibly unsafe pipe. That matter has been long-fingered, but the protesters don't even want preparatory work to continue on the refinery. Last week, Dempsey made an unfavourable comparison between intransigence in Mayo and the North. The phrase "not an inch" could be appended to the Shell To Sea mission statement.

"Which way will the workers come?" Thomas Clarke wanted to know. Tom is from Palleskenry in west Limerick. He is of late middle age and uses a stick to aid his walking. He came to Mayo the previous night to support the campaign, and stayed in a local hostel. Down home, his community is at loggerheads with the council over a water problem. "They came down to give us a hand so that's why I'm here, " Tom says. Two others from his community have also travelled.

A bus came from UCD. Another made the journey from NUIG. A few people came from England.

Ruth Franklin is involved in a protest to save trees at a quarry in Derbyshire. "We live in the trees, " she says. "It works." On most mornings over the last three weeks, the protesters numbered between 100 and 150. That strength has been swelled to 300 on this national day of action.

The workers Tom is referring to are on the way.

Headlights of a convoy finger through the dawn in the distance. They are regarded as scabs by the local protesters. There has been a lot of talk about intimidation on both sides, but little real evidence. Another line of spin is that Sinn Fein is running the protest, but that gives too much credit to the Shinners, and too little to local people. Cowley will be the only political winner out of the protest.

On Thursday evening, Shell To Sea held a meeting in the local community hall. It was decided that there would be no attempt to block the workers.

But the national day of action has attracted a lot of young, excitable protesters. They didn't come all this way to wave "scabs" into work.

It's difficult to discern the strength of opposition to Shell. Opinion polls point to a majority of Mayo people opposing the project. But few among them apparently feel strongly enough to vote with their feet. Should there be a plebiscite every time an infrastructural project is introduced to an area?

The project will bring over 600 construction jobs and 50 permanent positions. Right now, the company claims that restarting work on the refinery has generated 168 pay packets locally.

There are different agendas at work in the protest. PJ Moran, a local man, says he has to protect his children. He carries a large photograph of his brood at the protest. "We have no choice, " he says. "They want to force through the terminal and then lay the pipe where they want."

Others, from outside the area, openly cite the politics of environment and economy as their compass. They don't want Shell to profit from Ireland's natural resource. Some of the protesters carry posters of poor Charlie Haughey, culled from a caustic obituary in the Daily Mail, the masthead of which is also visible. These warriors obviously miss the irony of advertising a right-wing newspaper.

At 7.40am, the convoy approaches. The protest swarms across the road. A chant of "shame, shame" goes up. Superintendent Joe Gannon appeals for the public highway to be unblocked.

The 70 or so workers in the convoy of four-wheel drives keep eyes fixed front while insults are hurled at them.

Within 10 minutes, a platoon of gardai appears from behind, ready to charge. It becomes obvious that the daytrippers want a kerfuffle. Cowley beseeches them to get back. For 20 minutes, violence hovers with intent over the impasse.

Meanwhile, one protester plays a jaunty tune on his fiddle, as the dawn creeps up, and a traffic jam begins to snarl back along the road, out here, in the middle of nowhere.

Shell's entry to Mayo should be a textbook study in how not to do business. "They came in and thought they could throw a few pound at the peasants and they would lie down, " according to one source in Belmullet, who is in favour of the project.

Shell had the men jailed, uncapping a huge well of sympathy. The company carried out unauthorised works. And as trust plunged, so opposition hardened. Now the lack of trust is the largest obstacle to any resolution. The protesters don't believe the contentious pipe will be rerouted, or the pressure kept at the reduced level.

Philip McGrath, one of the Rossport five, summed up feeling. "A promise from Shell is like a promise from God, " he said and obviously he is not a man of faith.

The mistrust has informed their fears and bred intransigence. Shell are murderers. Dempsey and the cops are in cahoots with big business. Cassells is a government lackey. The safety report was restricted in its terms of reference. The media is bought off.

During Cassells's mediation, the five men refused to meet Shell face to face. There will be no compromise. Shell must go to sea or go to hell, and it ain't going to sea.

Back on Ballinaboy bridge, the convoy is moving. Cowley, and one of the five, Willie Corduff, defuse the tension. The daytrippers are disappointed. They wanted action. Scuffles break out on the remainder of the road to the site entrance, as some hardy souls attempt to block the convoy. Some of the cops are heavy-handed, but they are also subjected to provocation. One man attempts to grab the camera being wielded by the large garda with his woman's umbrella. The man is arrested, which he seems to regard as a victory of sorts.

By 9am, the crowd thins. "There is a lot of healing to be done in this community, " Superintendent Gannon says. He defends the filming, which might be regarded as inflammatory, on the basis of "evidence gathering." Is it standard procedure?

"It is when I'm in charge, " he says.

Meanwhile, back down the road, some of the daytrippers have blocked a truck. One man gets up on the roof to the sound of cheers. A young woman walks among the crowd, her fingers dancing on a tin whistle to the tune of 'The Lonesome Boatman', looking, for all the world, like the Pied Piper of Ballinaboy.