Nuclear weapons have a capacity to undermine our integrity as human beings. Because if we, as a society, have allowed and legitimized the threat to use nuclear weapons; because if our leaders are able to justify (to themselves at least) the threatened mass destruction of women, children and other civilians; then we, as a society, are unable to coherently, consistently or rationally disallow any lesser evil.
(509/10.5021) Angie Zelter - The inhumane and terroristic threat to use nuclear weapons in certain circumstances undermines our ethics and corrupts many of our good intentions on both a local and global level. My experiences in being involved in resistance against injustice, over 20 years, have been primarily in mixed, male and female, campaigns. However, I have noted that the vast majority of the people doing the hard work and sustaining the campaigning through long years have been women. And the best, most effective, satisfying and fun actions have been with all-women groups.
Greenham Common
My experiences of women-only actions began at the women's peace camp at Greenham Common (UK). Many
women lived together here at the gates of a military base as a permanent protest against the
nuclear missiles being kept there. I learned how effective and at the same time how much fun it
could be confronting the nuclear system with other women of all ages and backgrounds. The all-male
soldiers, in their uniforms, obeying awful orders and structured hierarchically on the other side
of the wire made the rather fluid, anarchic, all-women camp feel wonderful as well as very
appropriate--visual gender expression of deep differences of values. I also learned to appreciate
the strength of many different approaches to resistance and confrontation even if I did not feel
particularly comfortable with a specific style of working. But more importantly I found the
rounded, all-inclusive, interconnectedness of actions, with life, with other issues--the coming
together of social, political, philosophical, practical and spiritual aspects of life really
inspiring, and it has stayed with me ever since.
Greenham gave a message to all her women--to carry Greenham home. And I have been trying to do that ever since, trying to work on global issues locally but also carrying the local outwards to connect globally. As I had young children in the late seventies and early eighties, the campaigns I worked with most intensively were run by others locally or coordinated from my home, where I was rooted in growing organic fruit and vegetables for the table and making pottery to sell. My peace and environmental work were not a career but part of my whole way of life. This gives our political and social work a very different tenor to that of many men. It often makes us more adaptable, flexible and sustainable. Not being taken very seriously by society as a whole and having little status to start with, then if an initiative fails then it does not matter too much. We can start something new, try again. Not having many resources we were able to make a little do a lot and were also able to confront the legal system because we had few possessions for the State to take from us. We were able to transform negatives into positives.
Trident Ploughshares 2000
In the mid to late 1970s, the British government set up a secret committee to determine a
replacement for the Polaris fleet. That led to the decision to purchase from the United States a
fleet of four Trident submarines loaded with missiles leased from the US Trident submarines base at
Faslane in Scotland and their warheads are stored at Coulport. The nuclear reactors that power the
Trident submarines are built by Rolls Royce. The major nuclear elements in the warheads are
plutonium, tritium and highly enriched uranium. Plutonium has always been produced at Sellafield,
through the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from the reactors at Calderhall and Chapelcross.
Currently no plutonium for military use is produced here but large stocks are held at the site.
Uranium enrichment took place at the special military enrichment plant at Capenhurst. Owing to the
large stocks, this plant is no longer in use. Tritium production goes on at Chapelcross.
Initiative for actions against Trident are taken by the Ploughshares movement. Ploughshares is a non-violent direct disarmament movement. Trident Ploughshares 2000 is an organization of several hundred global citizens, who have pledged to prevent nuclear crime by openly, safely and peacefully disarming the British nuclear weapons system. They do this, not by talking about it and hoping someone else will do it, but by taking up their own hammers, boltcroppers and crowbars and cutting the fences down, dismantling equipment, and swimming on to submarines to dismantle them physically. Accepting full responsibility and struggling to improve the democracy of which we are a part, Ploughshares activists always peacefully await arrest following each act in order to participate in a public conversation about the particular issues which the actions raise. We explain that what we are doing is lawful and that the real criminals are the nuclear planners and implementors but allow ourselves to be arrested and go to court. We have no enemies and use every opportunity to carefully and peacefully explain why we have a humanitarian right and duty to try to prevent mass murder by nuclear weapons.
Women's actions
In March 1998, during the build-up to the first TP2000 disarmament camp I was at a women-only camp
at Coulport. We had just arrived and it was a beautiful moonlit night. Four of us spontaneously
decided to have a good look inside the base to prepare for the actions coming up later in the year.
We walked along the coast, cut through several fences, and surprisingly got right through to a
high-security area where there was a police boat tied up with the keys left in them. With a minimum
of fuss and bother, but a check that we were all willing and could all swim, we managed to start
the boat and drove right up to the explosives handling jetty and then 25 km around the lochs over
to Faslane where we landed one woman on to the boom right by two Trident submarines. It was a
joyous, whooping action, speeding over the water without lights, waving at police boats as they
passed and them waving back thinking, in the dark, that we were police like themselves. An
excellent War Crimes Inspection putting the police equipment to its proper use for once. Police are
meant to be preventing crime after all and that was just what we were attempting to do. The women
were charged--with theft of the police boat. All women defended themselves and the charge was
reduced to Òclandestinely taking and borrowing property belonging to anotherÓ. We
were found guilty but only admonished.
On February 1, 1999, two TP2000 Pledgers (part of the all-women ÒAldermaston Women Trash TridentÓ affinity group) swam up to the HMS Vengeance, climbed aboard and painted slogans and then disarmed testing equipment on the conning tower before entering right in to the submarine, passing several workers en route. They were able to walk off the submarine and into the security office to let them know what they had done! More such actions are planned for the coming months.
Launched on May 2, 1998, we now have 124 people from 11 different nationalities who have signed
the Pledge to Prevent Nuclear Crime. Interestingly, 62% of the Pledgers are women, mostly in mixed
groups but there are four women-only affinity groups and only one men-only group. After three open
actions of disarmament (consisting of blockading, fence cutting, swimming onto submarines,
dismantling equipment) at the Faslane and Coulport bases, we have had a total of 173 arrests, of
whom 64% were women. Their cases are slowly proceeding through the courts of Scotland and England.
Of the Core Group which facilitated the running of the project 78% are women.
Interestingly, women seem to have more staying power in the courts, able to conduct their defenses
themselves time and time again, tirelessly explaining why nuclear weapons are inhumane, immoral,
illegal, a waste of resources, or undermining international relations and each time finding yet
another reason why they should be found not guilty. Many men seem to get tired or find it a waste
of time after a while or believe they are getting nowhere. Somehow, women seem to have a staying
power that many men do not have, not expecting change overnight but willing to invest their
energies in the hope and faith of the long term. These are terrible generalities, some men are
extremely good at these things too but generally I have found women better and thus easier to work
with.
Angie Zelter is a life-long peace activist. In 1996 together with three other women, she disarmed a British Aerospace Hawk fighter jet destined for sale to Indonesia. At present she is involved in Trident Ploughshares 2000 against British nuclear submarines.
Contact: Angie Zelter at TP2000 (and how to join): 42-48 Bethel St., Norwich, Norfolk NR2
1NR, UK
Tel: +44-1603-611953
E-mail: tp2000@gn.apc.org
WWW: www.gn.apc.org/tp2000/
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