International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation

Bulletin 19 - News

People’s Disarmament

Right Livelyhood Award 2001 for Trident Ploughshares

Angie Zelter on behalf of Trident Ploughshares

Angie Zelter (right) and other award winners

On December 7, 2001, Angie Zelter gave the following Acceptance Speech for the Right Livelihood Award on behalf of Trident Ploughshares. The ceremony took place at the Swedish Parliament.

Dear Madame Speaker, and fellow Global Citizens,

It is a privilege and honour to be able to accept this prestigious Right Livelihood Award on behalf of Trident Ploughshares. We thank you most sincerely for this much needed support of our work.

It is often difficult for ordinary people and citizen's groups to organise themselves to resist the gross power abuses, terror and violence that their governments use to bolster their narrowly defined 'national interests'. This is why the recognition bestowed by the Right Livelihood Award is so important and encouraging to us.

Let me summarise our story of People's Disarmament.

Within a few miles of Glasgow, in Scotland, the UK has based, at Faslane, four Trident submarines, each of which have 48,100 kiloton nuclear warheads - that is 192 independently targetable nuclear bombs - each 8 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb - which alone killed 150,000 people. This is terrorism on an unimaginable scale.

In 1998, Trident Ploughshares issued a direct challenge to Prime Minister Tony Blair to implement international law by disarming all British nuclear weapons or the campaign's members would do it for him. We then organised people to make a personal pledge to disarm the nuclear weapon system themselves and have stated that we will continue with this task until the government takes over the disarmament work and fulfils its promise of complete nuclear disarmament that it made to the world community in the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Our dedication to peaceful acts of practical disarmament is based on international law and the basic human right to life. People from many different nations come together as 'global citizens' and begin the task of peacefully dismantling the nuclear system. This is not violent, or criminal damage, or vandalism, or a breach of the peace - the charges which we usually face - but practical and lawful 'people's disarmament'.

Of course, the UK Government and its institutions do not see it this way. Since Trident Ploughshares began in August 1998 - there have been over 1500 arrests, mainly at the blockades and disarmament camps at Faslane. There have been over 220 trials completed and over 1400 days have been spent in prison. And the vast bulk of the fines so far imposed remain unpaid as a matter of principle, leading to bailiffs confiscating property and to the threat of more prison sentences. Hundreds of cases have yet to come to court and the local judiciary is already buckling under the strain.

The people engaged in practical nuclear disarmament are bringing a breath of fresh air into the antiquated legal systems, bluntly naming nuclear weapons as terroristic murder machines and stating that the law is not worthy of any respect if it refuses to outlaw state-blackmail and mass-destruction. The district court at Helensburgh in Scotland is the scene of an inspiring people's confrontation with the evil of a nuclear weapon state.

Trident Ploughshares currently have 158 'global citizens' from 14 different countries who have Pledged to Prevent Nuclear Crime and have taken part in our training for nonviolence. Having citizens from other countries joining in our disarmament work with us, appearing in the courts and spending time in our prisons, has been much harder for the authorities to deal with. The Government and the Courts like to pretend that British nuclear weapons are purely a British affair but they find this position untenable when foreigners appear in court to explain why they feel threatened by Trident and why they have joined other 'global citizens' to peacefully disarm it.

At our last mass blockade at Faslane in October [2001], over a thousand people joined in, and Members of the Scottish, UK and European Parliaments were among the 170 people arrested for peacefully blockading the base. Many Church Ministers and a respected senior criminal lawyer have also sat with us and been arrested for 'breach of the peace'. This kind of support, along with that given by wellknown authors, actors, and several thousands of individuals, shows a wide spectrum of acceptance which prevents the Pledgers from being easily marginalised. This is essential as the British State cracks down on civil liberties and widens the definition of terrorism to include any group that damages property for political reasons. It is difficult for the government to accuse well respected people like the Archbishop of Wales, a Professor of Human Rights Law or a famous poet, amongst others who have publicly supported our practical acts of disarmament, of being terrorists.

We make sure our plans, motivations and organisational structures are open and accountable to the public, the government and military through our web-site which contains lists of Pledgers and supporters as well as our Tri-Denting It Handbook.

All Trident Ploughshares Pledgers must agree to our safety and nonviolence ground-rules but thereafter they work as autonomously as they wish. They have chosen various kinds of disarmament actions which have ranged from blockades, to fence-cutting, to swimming onto the submarines and destroying equipment, to dismantling a research lab, disabling military vehicles, 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'.

The majority of the disarmament actions caused minimal damage for maximum court-clogging disruption. But there have also been several attempts at substantial disarmament damage with three groups managing to complete their actions causing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage and delaying the operation of the Trident related equipment. We call all of this damage 'disarmament' and 'nuclear crime prevention'.

These actions lead to many hundreds of trials. Every trial is important because each one confronts the state where it is most vulnerable - on a major law and order issue. This is why our campaign is causing such political and legal ripples. Traditionally the law has been used against the 'people' rather than the 'state' - predominantly against the poor and disadvantaged. Yet now, the people have turned this around and have openly challenged the whole legal basis, and thus legitimacy, of the Armed Forces - one of the pillars of the state. They are demanding a people-centred law not a state or corporation-centred law.

There have been some spectacular actions. For instance, two women swam into the docks at Barrow, climbed aboard HMS Vengeance and dismantled testing equipment on the conning tower. This action delayed, by several months, the departure of Vengeance to the USA to collect its missiles. After three trials spaced over two years, the women had their charges dropped because successive juries could not make up their minds if they were guilty of a crime or not. In June of the same year the three of us disarmed a research barge called 'Maytime' that maintains the 'invisibility' of Trident under the oceans. We emptied the whole laboratory, by throwing everything into Loch Goil - the computers and monitoring and testing equipment - and then we smashed the control boxes for the model submarines and cut the electricity supplies to various other Trident research equipment. After five months in prison we explained that we were entitled to do this under international law.

Our acquittal at Greenock Sheriff 's Court, by direction of a brave Sheriff, caused a political and legal furore that led to the Lord Advocate asking the High Court to examine the issues around Trident in an attempt to prevent any other judges from acquitting in the future. This gave us an unprecedented opportunity to indict the UK government defence policy at the highest levels. The legal debate continues after an appalling opinion by the High Court that incorrectly stated international law only applies in a time of war and implied that the ongoing bombing of Iraq was not a 'war'. Nevertheless, the legal arguments are now in the public domain and even police and armed forces personnel are beginning to question the legality of their 'protection' of nuclear weapons.

While lawyers will no doubt continue to argue the rights and wrongs of the Scottish legal system which denies the very foundation of the humanitarian law that came out of the War Crime Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo, we continue to reclaim the law through the common sense and simple morality of ordinary people who have no difficulty in recognising that mass murder is a crime. We have filed an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights and continue with our disarmament actions.

Nuclear weapons have always been unlawful and the Shimoda case in Tokyo, in the sixties, showed very clearly that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were US war crimes. The core of our argument is very straightforward. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction and thus cannot be used with any precision or any pretence at righting any wrong. Their use 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 ethics 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. This legalised killing is meant to be carefully controlled by laws - the most important of which are international humanitarian laws, which outlaw indiscriminate mass murder.

The acquittals at Greenock and Manchester cleared us of criminal intent and at the same time clearly pointed out the criminal intent of the British nuclear forces. It has been deeply embarrassing for the UK that peaceful, unarmed citizens have argued so coherently that these weapons are illegal and immoral, do not protect them, and have shown how easily they can penetrate 'secure' bases and damage military equipment in such an open manner.

Trident Ploughshares is based on taking power back and transforming it into processes capable of enhancing fundamental human morality. It aims to empower ordinary citizens to join together to peacefully tear down the machinery of violence and to build up respect for fundamental human rights.

We are not ashamed but proud that our message can be understood by a five year old. This is our message - killing is wrong. Mass killing is wrong. Threatening mass destruction is a denial of our own humanity and is suicidal. When something is wrong we have to stop it. Nonviolently, openly and accountably dismantling the machinery of destruction is thus a practical act of love that we can all join in.

I am therefore honoured and delighted to be able to accept this Award on behalf of the many people supporting and involved in Trident Ploughshares.

Trident Ploughshares, 42-46 Bethel Street, Norwich, Norfolk, NR2 1NR, UK, Tel:+44-845-45 88 366; tp2000@gn.apc.org; www.gn.apc.org/tp2000/html/index2.htm.