Greenpeace: an insider's account
Rex Weyler Rodale, 623pp, £18.99
ISBN 1405077352
This epic story maps the birth and early life of an idea that has transformed humanity's perception of its relationship with the planet. Rex Weyler, a co-founder of Greenpeace International, chronicles the disorganised yet relentlessly visionary progress of this idea, from its humble beginnings to its status today as a mass movement with nearly three million members worldwide and offices in 30 countries.
It all began, in fittingly spontaneous fashion, more than three decades ago. To stop US atmospheric nuclear testing in 1970, Canadian members of the Sierra Club, a US-based environmentalist group, let slip to the press that they intended "to sail a boat to Amchitka to confront the bomb". In fact, the club had approved no such plan, but some of its members, calling themselves the "Don't Make a Wave Committee", adopted the idea for themselves and came up with a name for their boat - Green Peace.
The waters off Amchitka Island in the Bering Sea, regularly buffeted by sudden, severe cyclonic storms, heavy rains and dense fog, are an extremely dangerous passage for any boat. The crew of the Greenpeace risked their lives in atrocious conditions, but failed to prevent the bomb being detonated in 1971. However, they launched a symbol of resistance to nuclear testing that sent ripples around the world.
The next target was the French thermonuclear tests at Moruroa Atoll in the South Pacific, in June 1972. The Canadian protest boat spent 26 days hove-to in a nuclear test zone, but again failed to prevent the detonation. A French minesweeper deliberately rammed what was then Greenpeace III, though the French later claimed it was an accident. In a subsequent foray into Polynesia, to prevent further French nuclear testing in 1973, the skipper of the Greenpeace was seized and savagely beaten with truncheons. The incident was recorded on camera, and a female crew member smuggled out the film in her vagina. Although the French claimed that their sailors had boarded the vessel "unarmed and without striking a single blow", the film, flashed across the world, showed them to be lying. The French government soon announced it would cease atmospheric nuclear testing from 1974: Greenpeace had driven its forces from the entire Pacific Ocean.
This success encouraged the movement to widen the focus of its campaigns. "The countermovement," proclaimed Bob Hunter, undisputed moral leader of the Greenpeace movement, "all over the planet, is ecology." With increased publicity and funding, the group split its activities between three aims - saving the whales against the ravages of Japanese-Russian-Norwegian factory ships and harpoon boats, demands for disarmament, and a long-running court case against France. At great risk to their lives, the Greenpeace anti-whalers harassed the whaling ships in their inflatables, and press coverage of these incidents began to swing opinion on the International Whaling Commission towards a ban.
Such publicity brought in more funds, though never in large enough quantities, but spirits were undaunted: "Do the project - money follows energy . . . We speak for those who can't," was the cry.
Following a disastrous chemical spill in Seveso, Italy in 1976, Greenpeace activists turned their attention to toxic chemicals; the burgeoning chemical waste disaster at Love Canal in New York State strengthened their resolve. Also in 1976, the campaign began to save baby harp seal pups from being slaughtered and skinned on the ice in northern Canada and Newfoundland. Swilers (as the seal-killers are called) were filmed manhandling the Greenpeace crew as they threw themselves over seal pups to try to protect them from the swinging ice picks. In a showdown with the sealing ship Arctic Endeavour, two protesters took up position directly in its path as it forced its way through the ice floes. The sealers were forced to halt the ship, for fear of harming or killing the protesters. Even so, the operation proved a greater struggle than previous campaigns: ecological consciousness found it hard to compete with the forces of nationalism, regional self-esteem and local jobs.
By 1977, Greenpeace had orchestrated seven campaigns and was recognised worldwide as a staunchly non-violent, creative, media-savvy and successful movement. The activists worked tirelessly, travelled on cheap night trains, slept on each other's sofas, drank beer, smoked joints and plotted ecological insurgencies. They were doers. Their aim was purposeful anarchy, existing outside established national politics. Eventually, however, personality struggles and ideological differences began to take their toll, and the rift between traditional conservationists and innovative activists widened.
At the end of the 1970s, the new Greenpeace began to emerge, launching other successful movements such as the German Green Party. Yet as this highly readable book charts so powerfully, what is special about Greenpeace is that it has never become another NGO, hawking statistics and special interests. It has never allowed itself to stray too far into the politics of ecology, away from the wilderness itself.
Michael Meacher is a former environment minister
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