Greenpeace under attack

By Jennifer Thompson
In the last few weeks Greenpeace has been under fire from several fronts. While the French military and government have led the charge with attacks on Greenpeace ships in the vicinity of Moruroa atoll, the establishment media has gone on a campaign to try to discredit Greenpeace. The establishment media — not known for its support for the environment movement's clashes with the corporate world — has been chortling over the loss of the Greenpeace ships and internal divisions in the organisation. Recent articles in the Sydney Morning Herald — "Greenpeace campaign in disarray" and "Divided nuclear fighters try to regroup" — have been hammering a doomsday line.
However, Greenpeace and other anti-nuclear groups and activists are determined that the campaign will not only continue, but grow stronger.
Of all the groups campaigning against the testing, Greenpeace has the highest media profile. The organisation has concentrated on organising a small number of Greenpeace activists to carry out spectacular direct actions against the tests at Moruroa. Dramatic coverage of these have done a great deal to raise public consciousness and increase opposition to the tests.
Given this, there is no love lost between the environmental organisation and the French government, secret services and military. The French secret service bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 showed the lengths to which the French military and government were prepared to go to damage Greenpeace. The recent seizure of Greenpeace's three protest ships in and outside the Moruroa military exclusion zone is a continuation of the same policy. But is this a fatal blow for the campaign against the French nuclear tests?
Ben Pearson, Greenpeace Australia's anti-nuclear campaign co-ordinator told Green Left Weekly that "not having those three boats out there means that it's more difficult to campaign at Moruroa. We would have preferred to still have the Greenpeace [which was seized illegally by French commandos in international waters]. The other two ships were sent into the exclusion zone with the knowledge that they probably would be seized and held. The loss of the Greenpeace was not something that was planned and has been a problem.
"While we've had the ships out at Moruroa that is certainly not the only thing we've been doing. We've also been doing a lot of political work.
"The International Court of Justice case was something we helped get up. We've been doing a lot of work in the European Union and putting pressure on countries to raise the issue in the United Nations. We've also been getting petition signatures around the world; we've collected 7 million signatures".
Janet Parker, an activist in Sydney's Campaign Against Nuclear Testing (CANT) group and the Democratic Socialists' environment spokesperson, was also confident that the confiscation of the Greenpeace protest ships at Moruroa did not mean the end of the campaign.
"While public consciousness has been raised by the media coverage of Greenpeace's direct actions against the testing, the organisation's tactics only allow a limited involvement for those wanting to get active." According to Parker, the mass mobilisations in Australia and around the world against the tests — rather than high-profile stunts for the media — were the most important component of the anti-nuclear campaign.
"The only way we will stop the nuclear weapons states from testing is to empower the majority of people who oppose it. The only way to do this is for people to organise wherever they are. This is the only strategy which has ever forced governments to take notice of majority opinion.
"In Australia, this means peace, trade union and environment groups have to work together", said Parker. "It also means making alliances between these movements in different countries, particularly those with nuclear weapons. Campaigning in support of independence for colonies in the South Pacific is the best way of ending nuclear testing in the region forever."
Fuelling Greenpeace's recent bad press, was the removal of Stephanie Mills from the position of Pacific campaign co-ordinator and the reported non-renewal of her employment contract. Pearson explains: "At the moment there's an evaluation going on of that campaign. Stephanie has been stood down while that's going on and that's quite normal.

"The problem eventuated, not from a problem in management style, but that one manager, Ulrich [Jurgens, the London-based director of the anti-testing campaign] did choose to go to the press. That was ill-advised and he came into conflict with the other senior managers in the organisation about that."
Greenpeace Australia has a corporate structure. It is organised as a company, with 50 voting members able to attend the Annual General Meeting and vote for the seven-member Board of Directors. Greenpeace's roughly 90,000 paying supporters have the status of associate members but have no decision making powers and little activist role.
Pearson confirmed that Greenpeace International operates in a similar way with an international board elected by voting members at the Annual General Meeting. Greenpeace International makes the final decision about which campaigns Greenpeace Australia will run.
Commenting on Greenpeace's internal decision-making process, Pearson said the campaigners make decisions about campaigns. "With the French tests, decisions were being made by Ulrich [Jurgens] as the campaign director, Stephanie [Mills], Thomas [Schultz] who was the [international] nuclear campaign co-ordinator and the captains of the ships. They all made the decisions together." The boards, he said, don't run the organisation or its campaigns on a day-to-day level.