Fukuoka Lecture 10th July 2002
David Mackenzie, Trident Ploughshares
-> Japanese translationIt's an honour to be able to speak to you today on behalf of the campaign I am involved with, Trident Ploughshares. I shall not be dealing with much technical information but I hope to describe to you what is a human response to the United Kingdom's nuclear weapon system. First, an explanation of our name. It comes from the words of the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah who pictures a golden age of peace in which men would turn their swords into ploughshares (the metal blades on an ancient ploughs). The aim of Trident Ploughshares is to disarm Trident, the United Kingdoms nuclear weapon system, peacefully nonviolently and openly.
The United Kingdom is engaged in war crime.
Compared to the superpowers the UK's nuclear arsenal is relatively modest and yet the system is based on 4 submarines which carry between 12 and 16 missiles, each of which can deliver a number of 100 kiloton warheads to individual targets - mass destruction on an unimaginable level. These submarines are based at Faslane, near Glasgow in Scotland, and armed some ten miles away at Coulport. The warheads are made at the factories at Aldermaston and Burghfield in England and the missiles themselves are leased from the US.
The Trident system breaches international humanitarian law. In the last two millennia codes of conduct have been developed to deal with rights and wrongs in warfare. These codes have key principles, such as the insistence that non-combatants should not be harmed, that the suffering of combatants should be minimised and that no form of warfare should be employed which presents a permanent threat to the natural environment. In July 1996 the International Court of Justice considered the application of these principles to nuclear weapons and gave its (hardly surprising) Advisory Opinion that " the use of such weapons is scarcely reconcilable (with the rules of humanitarian law)." In its ruling the court did not consider individual nuclear weapon systems such as Trident but when the principles it endorsed are applied to Trident there can be no reasonable doubt that it is an illegal and indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction.
Moreover the UK uses these weapons as a threat. Recently our Defence Minister Geoff Hoon said "Let me make it clear the long-standing British government policy that if our forces, if our people were threatened by weapons of mass destruction we would reserve the right to use appropriate proportionate responses which might in extreme circumstances include the use of nuclear weapons."
Of course, it has been recognised for a long time that the UK's policy is not one based on Mutally Assured Destruction theory, the theory supposedly behind the nuclear stand-off in the days of the Cold War, the idea that nuclear weapon states would be deterred from using them in the knowledge that any use would lead to the annihilation of their nation, and perhaps the whole world. In fact UK policy has been what became known later as the Riffkind doctrine - the policy of deploying nuclear weapons as a threat to protect the UK's interests worldwide. This was true in the days that the Vulcan A-bombers were in the habit of being obviously present in trouble spots around the globe in the fifties and has been demonstrated again in more recent days by veiled threats during the Gulf War and the Iraq crisis in early 1999.
War crime and preparations for war crime cannot be tolerated.
There has been strong opposition to the UK's nuclear weapons right from the start but in spite of the scale of that opposition successive governments have continued with the policy. The Trident Ploughshares campaign, which is now four years old, arose out of the conviction that we cannot sit back and accept the failure to change government policy by conventional political means, by lobbying members of parliament or by holding demonstrations. Since what the UK government is engaged in is war crime, ordinary citizens have both a right and a duty to take nonviolent action to prevent that crime being carried out. Let me give you two examples of crime prevention in action. In February 1999 the UK Trident nuclear weapon submarine called "Vengeance" was being fitted out at a dock in the north of England. Two Trident Ploughshares activists, Rosie James and Rachel Wenham swam across the dock in the dark and boarded the submarine. They climbed on to the conning tower and there found some equipment which was being used to test the ship's radar systems. They took out their hammers and destroyed the equipment, causing many thousands of pounds worth of damage, and then walked off the ship to meet the security guards and be arrested. They had three trials. One of these trials was abandoned and in the other two the jury could not decide whether they were guilty or not, so they were set free. It was discovered later, during one of their trials, that their action had held up the submarine for at least four weeks. In February of this year hundreds of people spent three days blockading the naval base at Faslane and on the first day we stopped all vehicles coming and going for over three hours, causing considerable disruption.
It is well recognised that the Nuremberg trials and the trials of Japanese commanders at the end of World War 2, were hugely tainted by their one-sidedness, by their unwillingness to consider the war crimes of the victorious allies, as for instance in the deliberate fire bombing of refugees in Dresden and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the same time certain important principles were established by these trials, especially the accountability of the individual, and especially those in an official position, for the failure to refuse to carry out unlawful orders. It is a very reasonable extension of that principle to state that the same accountability rests on civilians who are aware of war crime being planned or carried out. It is the duty that rests on people who see trucks going to secret locations full of prisoners and returning empty or who hear the machine-gunning in the middle of the night. I can understand ordinary people who fail to act because they are paralysed by terror in such situations, but it is less easy to be sympathetic when the war crime being planned is fully in the open and generally known, and when the consequences of speaking out or taking preventative action are relatively trivial, as is the case at the moment in the UK.
It is hugely important to us how we carry out this work.
Our commitment to act without violence is based on three reasons. First, if we were able to get rid of the UK's nuclear weapon systems by violent means we would be giving support to the philosophy of violence of which nuclear weapons are the ultimate expression. We want instead to be part of a worldwide movement to replace the violent resolution of conflict with a sane and humane method, one based on the sharing of power and resources, on communication, and on equality.
The second reason is the effectiveness of nonviolence. As so many movements worldwide have discovered, we have found that carrying out our disarming work while wishing well to all we come across, respecting them and making sure that no-one comes to harm, is very powerful indeed. This is very difficult and it is so easy to be drawn back into "them and us" attitudes and to think of the people who oppose us as somehow different from ourselves, but when these attitudes are broken down with imagination the results can be surprising. A small example. Two years ago during our annual disarmament camp just outside the nuclear weapon store at Coulport in Scotland we decided we wanted to end Hiroshima day by floating candles on Loch Long. There was a problem - the wind was blowing towards the shore and we would not be able to float them without a boat and we had no boat. Then one of said "Why don't we ask the guards in their patrol boat to help us?"- these are the people who try to stop us getting near the base and who spy on us constantly when we are there. Most people laughed at this as crazy idea but one said" Why not?" and another said "I'll ask them!." So we went down to the shore with our candles and she waded out into the water in the dusk and signaled to the patrol boat to come closer. They were suspicious at first but then they came towards the shore. They loaded a few of us and our candles on to the boat and took us out to the middle of the loch where the candles were launched. The guards in the boat handled these candles with great respect and sensitivity and were obviously moved by the whole affair. At the Scottish bases in particular the police and the guards now know that they are safe with us and a great deal of mutual respect and understanding has developed between us.
The third reason is also important. Although we think we are right in what we do we should be humble enough to admit that we are possibly wrong. If it turns out that we have been wrong in our analysis of the situation and in our remedy, then that is a relatively minor problem so long as we have harmed no-one in the process.
We also work openly and accountably -the only time we act in secret is when we are preparing for an action that needs to be secret if it is going to be effective. We take responsibility for our actions and that means that we get arrested and taken to court - for a minor public order offence if it is a blockade or for more serious charges if we have damaged equipment -charges that could lead to quite long prison sentences. The names of our members -those who have signed a pledge to prevent nuclear crime -are available openly on our website, and we write regularly to the UK government explaining what we are doing and why, in the hope that one day we will get into real dialogue with them. This openness has a great advantage -we can avoid the stress that goes with having to cover up and hide and be secretive at all times. If we have carried out an action that might lead to a criminal prosecution we always admit that we have done it and are careful to explain why. All this has lead to a great deal of trouble with the authorities. Since the campaign began just four years ago there have been 1735 arrests, 1630 days have been spent in prison (not including time in police cells), there have been 298 trials and over 7 million yen worth of fines has been imposed on us.
It is clearly unwise to get into situations like this without adequate preparation and consideration. All our core members, 190 in number, have gone through a special training programme that deals with nonviolence and practical issues about actions and they then take a serious pledge to engage in peaceful disarmament. When people who are not pledgers join us for camps or big actions (we have over 3000 supporters) we ask them to undertake a short training course. All this is about making us as safe as possible from having the movement tainted by violence, and from being infiltrated by people who, for one reason or another are out to spoil it.
Although the focus of the campaign is the UK's Trident system the campaign is international and has pledgers in 12 different countries, mostly European. Non UK people see our problem as affecting the whole of Europe and threatening the wider world. This solidarity gives us considerable encouragement since it is less easy for the UK courts and media to dismiss us as a local irritation.
The incessant parade of people through the courts in the UK for taking part in disarmament action thereafter has been thrilling, with statement after diverse statement repeating the determination to continue to confront the planning of mass murder. Let me pick out a few examples from recent trials, in which the charge is usually (and ironically) "breaching the peace". In January Emily Apple told the judge that the case against Trident had already been heard hundreds of times in the court and there was nothing she could usefully add. " It is absurd," she said "that the charge is breach of the peace. If the state's notion of peace includes Trident and bombing civilians in Afghanistan, it is a peace I can have nothing to do with. I am willing to breach it again and again." In March Marlene Yeo told the court that what she had done at Faslane had been an action against terrorism. Tony Blair himself had admitted that weapons of mass destruction were a threat to the whole world and must be got rid of. During the Second World War her mother had broken the law of the land, Nazi Germany, by giving food to prisoners of war. Would the Helensburgh Court criticise her for her action? Concluding her evidence she pointed out that the Nuremberg trials had held German courts accountable for their support for the Nazi regime. She said: "I hope you do not wait for the verdict of history to make you complicit in the crime of mass murder." Also in March, while he was being led away to prison Marcus Armstrong told a supporter in the public benches: " If the judge thinks this will stop me he has another think coming!" Last week Pat Sanchez told the judge that the demonstrators at a blockade of Faslane had been "putting their bodies where their hearts are".
The way we work together is also important. We are not highly trained specialists, activists with highly developed techniques and physical abilities. Although we try to do our disarmament work as well as we can, we are a group of very ordinary people, of all ages and diverse social backgrounds and it is important to us that everyone who wants to and is willing to abide by our principles of openness and nonviolence can get involved. At the Faslane blockades we have eighty year-olds and wheelchair uses and teenagers, and company directors and mothers with babies and politicians and social workers and unemployed people, etc etc. We do not have leaders and followers in the campaign, we make decisions jointly and by consensus and everyone is expected to take responsibility for themselves. We organise ourselves into small affinity groups in which individuals communicate and with and support one another. I may say personally, having worked for many years as a teacher and an education officer I find this way of working very refreshing and enjoyable.
Then there are the support structures. Although the basic unit of the campaign is the affinity group we also have an infrastucture of support that everyone can use. There is the legal support which, for example at the big blockades tracks people risking arrest from the point of arrest to the point of release and then offers support in the prosecution that may follow. There is media support which does its best to make sure that the public is aware of what is going on, both as means of increasing support and of keeping activists as safe as possible. There is the patient work to sign up the support of parliamentarians and other prominent people to underline the legitimacy of the campaign and also to increase activist safety. And when parliamentarians stand alongside us and risk arrest it poses an even sharper question about what is going on.
There is also the question of the integrity of our aims. In November 1999 Sylvia Boyes and Keith Wright attempted to get on board and damage Trident Sub HMS Vengeance in Barrow. They were caught before they got very far and because of the tools they had with them were accused of conspiracy to cause criminal damage -a serious charge. Although they admitted all the facts the jury in Manchester acquitted them and Sylvia's story was told on the BBC Everyman programme. I asked Sylvia if she felt it was some compensation for what she said was a bungled action that the message had gone out very effectively to over 2 million people. Sylvia said " A little. But I really wanted to stop that submarine and I still do." The point here is that Sylvia was clear that she was not doing the action for publicity but as a genuine attempt to prevent the crime. The irony is that the stronger your integrity is about what you are doing the more likely it is that the other, benefits will appear, like increased support, publicity or a court case that puts the legal spotlight on Trident.
As I mentioned already our focus is very much on the illegality of Trident -the UK's nuclear weapons system. Of course, our fundamental objection to Trident is moral (we should not kill and maim millions of people or destroy the natural environment) and prudential (if we continue to make and threaten with nuclear weapons human life on this planet will end) we can present an effective legal challenge through international humanitarian law, which, after all, is more easily seen as derivative from morality than are national legal codes. So, when we are taken to court for our acts of disarmament we try to turn the legal focus on to Trident and its unlawfulness. This has been difficult, since judges are not used to thinking about international law - they feel on safe ground on local or national systems and more recently because the Scottish High Court delivered a very unfavourable judgment in one of our cases. This happened after three Trident Ploughshares women damaged a Trident-related research barge in 1999 and were then found not guilty of criminal damage in a lower court because the judge there accepted that their action was justified in view of Trident's unlawfulness. The Scottish legal establishment were alarmed at this and last year our High Court criticised this judge and said that the UK government was not breaking the law in deploying Trident. They argued that international law on weapons specifically related to warfare and times of armed conflict and since we were not at war (they said) you could not examine the legality of our weapon system. Further they claimed that the deployment of Trident by the UK was not a threat -it was a general deterrent. We take the view that their judgment was nonsensical and contrary to the findings of the International Court of Justice in 1996. By what they said you could not accuse Saddam Hussein of breaching international law by developing (as the US claims) weapons of mass destruction. You would have to wait until war broke out before you could use international law against him. Secondly the International Court of Justice clearly stated, without qualification, that the threat to use an unlawful weapon is in itself unlawful.
It is impossible to say just how much the High Court judgment was affected by political pressure but it is difficult to give another explanation of its failure to take full and honest account of the law. It was also noticeable that when they delivered their scandalous judgment, the chief judge of the panel of three, who made the announcement, refused to meet any one's eye and they shuffled out as if they were ashamed -as indeed they should have been. Whatever their motivation the legal struggle against Trident is by no means over. When we look at how many changes in the law and how it is interpreted have been forced by popular opinion on such matters as domestic abuse and rape we can hope that the sheer simplicity and power of the legal case against Trident will eventually be understood and accepted by the legal establishment, just as it is today by most ordinary people who spend ten minutes thinking about it.
The root problem in all this is the unwillingness of the leading western nations, the nuclear weapon states, to be judged by the standards they wish to impose on others. After all, that is what international law means, the willingness to be bound by common standards. This hypocrisy is of course particularly evident in the so-called war on terrorism, launched after September 11th last year.
Have we achieved anything? In one sense the answer has to be no. Trident is still there on 24-hour patrol and the incredible Neanderthal attitudes that created it are still in place. And yet in the four years of our existence the campaign against nuclear weapons has been transformed, not least in Scotland. Many more people now know about the existence of these horrid weapons and are familiar with the basic legal case against them. A system 3 opinion poll last year showed that most people in Scotland approve of civil resistance to Trident and the Church of Scotland, in reference to our campaign, has gone so far as to encourage it. There is also a huge measure of empowerment that comes to people who get involved in the campaign, as they discover and rediscover their status as individual human beings who have a right and a duty to be utterly intolerant of a status quo that supports nuclear madness. There is a huge distance to go before the impetus is taken right out of our hands by people in general and the tide against mass murder by the state becomes unstoppable, but we can see how that could happen, for instance by a blockade of the Faslane base being so big and so difficult for the police to deal with that it becomes permanent and puts enormous pressure on the government.
Although the focus of the campaign is the UK's Trident system the campaign is international and has pledgers in 12 different countries, mostly European. Non UK people see our problem as affecting the whole of Europe and threatening the wider world. This solidarity gives us considerable encouragement since it is less easy for the UK courts and media to dismiss us as a local irritation. We welcome interest and support from Japan also and recognise that you too have your own struggles on the nuclear materials and nuclear weapons front. If you wish to keep in touch with our campaign here are the key contacts:
Trident Ploughshares, 42-46 Bethel Street, Norwich, Norfolk, NR2 1NR Tel: 0845 45 88 366 , Fax: 0845 45 88 364