TRIDENT PLOUGHSHARES, PEOPLE'S DISARMAMENT

AND YOU AS GLOBAL CITIZENS.

Talk by Angie Zelter,

In Hamburg on 21/2/2000.

3,191 words.

"One wonders whether in the light of common sense, it can be doubted that to exterminate vast numbers of the enemy population, to poison their atmosphere, to induce in them cancers, keloids and leukemias, to cause congenital defects and mental retardation in large numbers of unborn children, to devastate their territory and render their food supply unfit for human consumption - whether such acts as these can conceivably be compatible with 'elementary considerations of humanity'. Unless one can in all conscience answer such questions in the affirmative, the argument is at an end as to whether nuclear weapons violate humanitarian law, and therefore violate international law."

Quoted from the Dissenting Opinion of Judge Weeramantry. Appended to the Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, International Court of Justice, p. 29, General List No. 95, July 8th 1996.

Trident Ploughshares is one of the latest in a long and honourable line of citizen's initiatives to try to rid the world of nuclear weapons. At a low point in the history of the UK peace movement, it aimed to revitalise our energies and focus attention on the possibilities of finally getting rid of nuclear weapons. The window of opportunity opened by the ending of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact would not be open for ever - indeed we can see it closing rapidly at the present time - and we aimed to help apply the citizen pressure necessary to persuade our governments to engage in total and complete nuclear disarmament instead of merely talking about it.

Ever since nuclear weapons were first used, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 54 years ago, the majority of nations have been trying to ban them - but with little success so far. The very first resolution passed by the United Nations outlawed nuclear weapons but the USA continued their research, testing and deployment and the nuclear arms race has never stopped.

We still remain under the ever-present danger of nuclear catastrophe by accident while our planet has been subjugated to the health and environmental consequences of the nuclear chain - from mining, production, and testing, to the deployment, threat to use and scrapping of old systems. Dr. Rosalie Bertell calculates that at least 13 million people have died or been injured as a result.

From the awareness of the '80's when the Cold War was at its height and fear drove millions of people around the world onto the streets to protest, many people now, have forgotten the danger that nuclear weapons still pose, forget that accidents are still happening that are contaminating our seas and land. Forget that we need to continue protesting about nuclear weapons and more importantly that we actually have the power to initiate nuclear disarmament ourselves, if our leaders refuse to do it for us.

How many people know that at least 5 submarines with their nuclear reactors and hundreds of nuclear missiles are corroding on the sea bed (one in the North Sea), slowly releasing fissile material that takes thousands of years to decay away to safe levels?

How many of us remember the ongoing tragedy of the Marshallese Islanders who continue to give birth to jelly-fish babies and whose lands will remain contaminated and uninhabitable for thousands of years?

How many of us think about the decomissioned old and rusting nuclear subs - there are at least 11 in the UK alone, with radioactive waste we haven't a clue how to dispose of safely?

How many of us are aware of the research going on for the next generation of nuclear weapons which will probably be placed in space, breaking the Outer Space Treaty, and further undermining mankind's attempts to foster international peace?

At a time when human rights are discussed on a daily basis, few care to point out that the threat to use nuclear weapons undermines the whole international legal order and makes a mockery of the hard-won international gains for children's rights, land rights, environmental protection and sustainable living.

Nuclear weapons moreover, have deeply undermined our morality and humanity. Any society that can justify to itself its threat to use a weapon of mass destruction is in deep trouble. As McSorley said, it is the 'taproot of evil in our society'.

Trident Ploughshares aimed to engage in citizen's disarmament in order to put these issues back at the top of the agenda and to encourage everyone to make one final push for global nuclear disarmament.

To some extent we are succeeding.

Let me tell you a little about the Trident Ploughshares disarmament action I was recently involved in. We were an international group of three women - from Denmark, England and Scotland. After planning our action, preparing our statements and learning how to start a dodgy boat engine, we set off across Loch Goil one Summer's evening in a leaky second-hand inflatable boat, as we could not afford better equipment. We safely reached the floating laboratory barge that researches ways to make the Trident submarine fleet invisible to acoustic, radar and sonar detectors. We climbed through a window and took all the research equipment we could find and threw it into the deep loch waters. We completely cleaned out the laboratory and also smashed up the electronic controls on the model submarine used in simulating tests. The cost of the equipment loss was originally estimated at a couple of thousand pounds worth of equipment.

After spending 4 months on remand in a Scottish prison we spent four weeks in court arguing our case. Ulla and Ellen instructed two lawyers and I defended myself. We argued, as do all Trident Ploughshares Pledgers, that our acts were not criminal but were acts of disarmament that were intended to stop ongoing criminal activity under well-recognised principles of international law. We had a fair Judge (called a Sheriff in Scotland) and were allowed our expert witnesses, one of whom was a Judge from Germany, Ulf Panzer. He was able to encourage her by telling his story of how he and fellow judges had taken part in a blockade at Mutlangen. I am sure this gave her the strength and solidarity needed to admit that official policies are not necessarily lawful. To the delight of the hundreds of people who had supported us throughout our imprisonment, we were acquitted.

Let me read you a few headlines from the Scottish newspapers of 22nd October last year:

'A Sheriff made legal history and caused a political storm after ruling that the Government's deployment of nuclear weapons was illegal under international law ... It is the first time a country's law courts have declared its nuclear defence system illegal and the political fall-out from Sheriff Gimblett's decision will be felt by other nuclear powers.' [The Herald - 22/10/99]

'Bombshell hits fortress UK ... Sheriff Bans the Bomb - Anti-nuke women were upholding the law.' [Scottish Mirror - 22/10/99]

'Outcry as Sheriff rules nuclear weapons illegal.' [The Scotsman - 22/10/99]

'How four middle-aged ladies sank UK defence.' [Daily Record - 22/10/99]

A week later the story was still running in the Scottish papers and on the 29th it was reported, 'Trident case set to test Holyrood' and then explained how the case is being used as 'a constitutional battering ram by the SNP over which Parliament, Holyrood or Westminster, has legal jurisdiction over the Trident nuclear missiles stored on the Clyde.' [Sunday Herald - 29/10/99]

The SNP is short for the Scottish Nationalist Party.

The Herald goes on to say, 'The SNP hopes to prove that it is Scots Law, and by implication the Scottish Parliament and not Westminster, that has the jurisdiction. ... The move is one of the far-reaching implications of the decision by Sheriff Margaret Gimblett which has shaken the military and political establishments on both sides of the Atlantic.' [Sunday Herald - 29/10/99]

The furore continues and I believe that if the peace movement can continue to build on this success there is a possibility that nuclear weapons will be removed from Scotland and thus from the UK as a whole.

It is up to all of us. And this includes Germans as well. Our campaign is intentionally international in character and we have a couple of Germans who have joined the Trident disarmament actions and signed the Pledge to Prevent Nuclear Crime. We need more of you. This is not purely a UK issue but effects the whole planet. Britain is probably the most vulnerable of all the nuclear weapons states and could most easily disarm its nuclear weapons. Having citizens from other countries joining in the disarmament actions and then appearing in court to explain why they feel threatened by British nuclear weapons is much harder for the courts to deal with.

The reason that the Greenock acquittal of Trident Ploughshares activists is causing such a debate is because the whole legal basis of the Armed Forces has been challenged and undermined. This was one of the aims of the Trident Ploughshares campaign.

Such a challenge has, of course, been mounted time and time again over the last 55 years of anti-nuclear campaigning but it is only recently that courts have begun to assert their independence and to ensure that the law is heard impartially - in other words to at least be willing to hear arguments against official Government defence policies, rather than assuming official government policies are beyond the reach of the law. The historic Opinion by the ICJ at The Hague in 1996 gave us all great heart and Trident Ploughshares uses this ICJ Advisory Opinion as a strong legal foundation. The whole campaign can be seen as a way to implement this Opinion and to pressurise our Governments to uphold international law.

Our argument is quite simple on one level. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction and thus cannot be used with any precision or any pretence at righting any wrong. It is basically mass murder on a catastrophic scale with the potential for escalation to the use of thousands of nuclear weapons, which could put an end to all life on earth. Law is based upon morality and is respected in so far, and only in so far, as it conforms to common human morality. Governments, Soldiers and Armed Forces gain their legitimacy and power from the law and thus the law is of immense importance to them. The only thing that distinguishes a soldier from a common murderer is that he has been given legal permission to do certain kinds of killing on behalf of society. His legalised killing is carefully controlled by laws - the most important of which are international humanitarian laws. Our acquittal at Greenock, cleared us of criminal intent but at the same time clearly pointed out the criminal intent of the British nuclear forces.

Let me read a few passages from Sheriff Gimblett's summing up. She said, 'in the absence of any expert contradicting the evidence, I have to conclude that the three accused, ... were justified in thinking that Great Britain in their use ... and deployment of Trident ... at times of great unrest, coupled with a first-strike policy and in the absence of any indication from any government official then or now that such use fell into any strict category suggested in the International Court of Justice opinion, the threat or use of Trident could be construed as a threat, has indeed been construed by others as a threat and as such is an infringement of customary international law. The three took the view if Trident is illegal, given the horrendous nature of nuclear weapons, they had the obligation in terms of international law to do whatever little they could to stop the deployment and use of nuclear weapons in situations which could be construed as a threat.'

She then directed the jury to acquit us saying, "I have heard nothing which would make it seem to me that the accused acted with ... criminal intent".

These words vindicated our campaign entirely. At last we had found a Judge who saw beyond the damage to property that we openly admitted to and who recognised we had a humane and justifiable reason for doing it, who put life before property, put morality fairly and squarely back into the law courts where it belongs in any just and fair legal system.

Since Trident Ploughshares began in August 1998 - there have been around four hundred arrests, mainly at the disarmament camps, held every three months, at Coulport and Faslane in Scotland. We now have around 150 'global citizens' from 13 different countries who have Pledged to Prevent Nuclear Crime and have taken part in a two-day workshop on nonviolence. The Pledge is based upon our right, under international law, to take nonviolent, accountable, and safe actions to disarm the British Trident nuclear weapons system.

I will not read out our Pledge but if you have not read it I would urge you to look at our Handbook, which not only contains the Pledge but also describes the details of the campaign and gives background information. Many of the police and service personnel have congratulated us on the contents of the Handbook, pointing out minor errors and saying they appreciate our nonviolence groundrules. We also have a website. We make sure all our plans, motivations and organisational structures are open to the public and to the government and military. We send updated lists of all Pledgers to the Government every three months, along with our continued requests for dialogue and negotiation.

We do this because we want our methods for opposing Trident to be consistent with our vision of what we would like to see in its place. Our careful reliance upon nonviolence and open accountability have led to very good relations with the civil police, who are enjoying the embarrassment experienced by the military police as we regularly breach their high security areas, gain access to their police boats to do citizens war crime inspections and swim onto supposedly secure nuclear submarines.

All Pledgers must be in affinity groups and agree to the safety and nonviolence groundrules but thereafter work as autonomously as they wish. They can chose their particular kind of disarmament action which have ranged from blockades, to fence-cutting, to swimming onto the submarines and destroying equipment, to dismantling a research lab, to painting War Crime Warnings on Military equipment and handing out leaflets to Military Base workers urging them to 'Refuse to be a War Criminal'. We encourage as much diverse and active disarmament work as possible as long as it is safe and peaceful.

Obviously, the more damage done the greater the possible penalty if found guilty - and most people are found guilty in the lower courts. The majority of the disarmament actions have caused minimal damage for maximum court-clogging disruption. There have also been at least six attempts at substantial disarmament damage in the last 15 months, with two groups managing to complete their actions causing thousands of pounds worth of damage and delaying the operation of the Trident related equipment. We call this damage - disarmament and nuclear crime prevention.

There are 37 Trident related sites scattered across the UK and there have been Trident Ploughshares actions at around 8 of them so far. But we have tended to concentrate on the major sites at Faslane (where the subs are based), at Barrow where they were being made, and at Aldermaston, where the warheads are manufactured and maintained.

There has been quite a difference in the way in which the English and Scottish judicial systems have chosen to deal with our international law enforcement actions. Generally, the Scottish courts have tried to ignore first offenders and some people have been arrested 4 or 5 times before being charged with minor offences of breach of the peace or vandalism. Whereas, in England, three groups so far have been charged with conspiracy to commit criminal damage when they have not managed to complete their disarmament action and have been caught en-route. Such conspiracy charges have enabled them to put our arguments before a jury but the Judges have not allowed expert witnesses, so there is a battle going on in the courts in the English system to even be allowed a fair trial.

With the European Convention on Human Rights getting more respect it is likely that experts will soon be allowed their full say, but meanwhile, juries are still open to what the activists can say in their pre-prepared statements, Pledges and from the witness box. The first Bread not Bombs Ploughshares trial ended in a hung jury and they only narrowly missed a second hung jury. Juries are much more able to see the whole truth and to realize the necessity for global citizens to engage in practical disarmament and nuclear crime prevention than Judges who think that 'the authorities' are the only ones who can engage in disarmament.

. . . . Add here some info on result of Rachel and Rosie's trial at Lancaster end of Jan and the February blockade which will include Parliamentarians and Church of Scotland Ministers getting arrested . . . .

Our disarmament actions continue and we hope to build a stronger international network and welcome any of you to join us at our next week-long disarmament camp at Aldermaston from 18th May. We also need individuals and organisations to sign our supporting petitions, copies of which I have with me.

Respect for international humanitarian law is paramount to the stability and peace of the global community. I hardly need remind a German audience that at the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals many people were condemned to death for breaking this body of law. This law is currently being applied in the ad hoc Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Britain has taken an active role in setting up and supporting these Tribunals and has agreed that the international legal principles contained in the Statutes of these Tribunals are part of customary international law. Britain has also consistently supported the definitions of international crimes contained in the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

However, if these same laws are applied impartially to Britain's present nuclear deterrence policy and to Britain's current deployment of 100 kiloton yield nuclear warheads, then it is evident that Britain is preparing to violate the cardinal principles of international humanitarian law and its leaders and policy makers may be legitimately suspected of committing war crimes and crimes against peace. It is the responsibility of the global community to enforce the law impartially and to apply it to all states regardless of their power and status. The time has come to take Britain to the International Court of Justice for breaking these laws and for undermining the international legal order. And more importantly, it is time for all of us who recognise the validity of the concept of global citizenship to work together on people's disarmament.

Thank-you for inviting me to speak.