02 June 2009 - International
— The six Greenpeace activists who shut
down a coal power station last year made
history when a UK jury agreed that they
were acting to safeguard property from the
impacts of climate change. A new documentary
takes you behind the scenes of that action,
and into the heart of what Greenpeace and
non-violent direct action is all about.
The Kingsnorth Six were
accused of causing £30,000 of criminal
damage to Kingsnorth power station. Their
defence of "lawful excuse" was
accepted by the jury, which supported the
right to take direct action to protect the
climate from the burning of coal.
The New York Times listed
the defence as one of the ideas that defined
2008.
Inspired by their story,
internationally acclaimed director Nick
Broomfield has just completed a 20 minute
film about the action and the court case,
celebrating the spirit of direct action.
See the full movie of
our Kingsnorth Six victory
Non-violent direct action:
what makes us Greenpeace
The Kingsnorth Six case
is but the latest chapter in the Greenpeace
story.
Greenpeace has stood
at the forefront of the environmental movement
as a catalyst for positive and durable change
for nearly four decades. In 1971 we lived
in a world where atmospheric nuclear weapons
tests were routine, where whales were being
hunted to extinction for profit, where toxic
and radioactive waste were poured freely
into the seas, where forests and wilderness
were destroyed with barely a murmur of protest,
and where the morality of environmental
destruction was rarely raised.
Greenpeace activists
made a difference to each of those issues
in the same way the Kingsnorth Six did:
by taking calculated personal risks to stand
up for what they believed was right, even
if the law told them they were wrong.
Journeys into the bomb
The Greenpeace founders
were the first. They hired an old fishing
boat with the intention to sail directly
into a nuclear testing exclusion zone to
stop the detonation of a nuclear weapon
at Amchitka Island in the Aleutians. Although
the ship was turned back by the US military
and the bomb went off, the Greenpeace act
of defiance catalyzed a movement, and subsequent
nuclear testing that was planned at Amchitka
was cancelled five months later.
A year later David McTaggart
took his 38-foot ketch, Vega, into the forbidden
zone outside Moruroa, the Pacific atoll
where the French government tested nuclear
weapons in the atmosphere. Having been given
an order to leave, McTaggart and his crew
were expecting to be boarded and physically
removed from the area.
But when the test device
was raised over Moruroa on a helium balloon,
it appeared that a decision had been made
to simply detonate the bomb - protesters
be damned. McTaggart recorded an audio message
for his friends and family and after the
crew secured the ship as best they could
against the expected nuclear fallout, they
sent the following radio telegram to their
Vancouver base:
"BALLOON RAISED
OVER MORUROA LAST NIGHT STOP GREENPEACE
THREE SIXTEEN MILES NORTHEAST STOP SITUATION
FRIGHTENING PLEASE PRAY AND ACT."
The following day, McTaggart's
ship was rammed by French commandos who
then boarded the Vega and detained all of
the crew. But McTaggart was relentless and
returned to Moruroa in 1973, infuriating
the French military so much that he and
his crew were brutally beaten by commandos.
McTaggart was hospitalized and almost lost
the sight in one eye.
McTaggart and his crew
had achieved exactly what they had set out
to do. They had brought worldwide attention,
and further embarrassment, to the French
government. McTaggart pursued the French
government in their own courts, eventually
winning his own landmark case. With the
entire Pacific united in outrage and opposition,
the French finally relented by moving its
weapons testing programme underground. Continued
protest eventually led to the end of the
programme.
The story continues
in Japan
Two other Greenpeace
activists still await the conclusion of
their story, and their court case. Junichi
Sato and Toru Suzuki face ten years in prison
for the crime of exposing corruption in
the Japanese whaling industry. The two turned
over to police a box of whale meat, which
had been disguised as "cardboard"
and removed from a whaling ship, as evidence
of widespread embezzlement. But instead
of an investigation of the scandal and the
contradictory statements made by the bureaucrats
that oversee the taxpayer-funded programme,
police arrested Junichi and Toru and raided
the Greenpeace offices. Amnesty International
expressed grave concern about the case,
and 250,000 people have demanded the release
of Junichi and Toru and investigation of
the real criminals. In a country with little
sympathy for civil disobedience, Junichi
and Toru have braved the condemnation of
society in the name of their beliefs. The
trial is expected to conclude later this
year.
Imperative to act
You can add to the stories of these individuals
the scores of people who took action with
Greenpeace: who manoeuvred boats beneath
platforms to keep radioactive waste barrels
from being dumped in the sea; who overwintered
in Antarctica to keep oil companies out;
who put their bodies between a harpoon and
a whale to demand a moratorium on commercial
whaling; who waded into outflows to demand
an end to trade in toxic waste; who occupied
the Brent Spar oil rig to keep it from being
scuttled; who chained themselves to bulldozers
to protect the Great Bear Rainforest; and
who whooped and hollered and celebrated
when the world eventually came to its senses
and agreed that they were right.
Yet while we have clocked
up an extensive list of victories - the
threat of runaway climate change threatens
all of them.
There are more reasons
to act now than ever before.
The story of Greenpeace
is the story of individuals. People like
the Kingsnorth Six, like David McTaggart,
like Junichi and Toru, and people like you.
Change in this world
is made up of a cascading series of individual
choices.
A time comes when each of us has to choose.
