Chapter 12

Sealing a victory

Back at the ranch, the energetic and animal-loving Allan Thornton was becoming increasingly agitated about the planned government cull of grey seals in the Orkneys. With typical absence of consultation, DAFFS had issued licences to Norwegian sharp-shooters to halve the population of grey seals which haul out around the islands during the breeding season in order, so it argued, to protect the fish stocks from avaricious predation by a growing number of seals which had hitherto benefited from protection.

At face value, the cull seemed to be entirely unjustified since while the females were whelping, they didn’t eat at all. Greenpeace asked DAFFS for a copy of the grandly titled ‘Grey Seal Management Policy’ to which ministers would loftily allude when questioned on the issue. After weeks of ignoring our request, they finally sent us the minutes of a meeting at which the decision to cull the seals was taken. There was no such thing as a management policy: the government was reacting to pressure from the salmon fishermen in Scotland, and the Scottish fishing fraternity at large, in the time-honoured manner of taking the line of least resistance. This time, the seals were to take the hit.

Our early research demonstrated that the figures used by DAFFS to demonstrate the quantity of fish being taken out of human mouths by the seals bore no resemblance to the truth whatsoever and had, in fact, been based on what captive grey seals eat. When it was pointed out to government ‘scientists’ that captive seals, bored and anxious by their lives of incarceration, would eat and eat and eat for want of something better to do and that wild breeding females actually fasted during gestation, the response was an embarrassed silence. When we pointed out that the real reason for a decline in catches for the Scots was perhaps linked to the lack of a sustainable yield fishing policy which Soviet fishing fleets were exploiting by hoovering up fish by the shoal just north of Orkney, the response was typically pathetic and unconvincing.

We decided to act. The Warrior was despatched, fresh from her exploits in Iceland where she had been involved in anti-whaling activities. Our pledge was to physically protect the seals; to prevent the cull until the government had satisfactorily addressed our arguments and demonstrated beyond all doubt that halving the grey seal population would result in the return of the fish stocks around the islands. I was left back in the office Cinderella-like while the action guys – including Allan who had returned for the whaling actions in Iceland – travelled to Orkney.

McTaggart came through the office as the Warrior was making her way north to tell me with typical foresight, ‘This seal thing will be big. I want you up there to co-ordinate the press. You’re a goddam limey. It’s your country and I want you – not a Canadian (Thornton) – talking to your press.’

I made the call to Annette and grabbed my bag, a constant companion these days, and set off for the isles of Orkney. I arrived in a wind-swept Kirkwall, the capital, and checked into the deserted Kirkwall Hotel in time for a late tea. Three whiskered locals sipped whisky in the bar. I set up my ‘office’ in my room and made a call to the ship. She was 24 hours away and had received information that the Norwegian vessel, the Kvitungen, carrying the marksmen, was a day behind her. They would arrive in 48 hours. I phoned the office and dictated a press release, giving my number as the contact point. I had a beer and went to bed.

In the morning I was woken by the phone ringing. The BBC wanted more background, questioning me about the likelihood of a confrontation. I hyped it to the point where they decided to send a crew. Their reporter was to be Michael Beurk. Then the Daily Mail rang, then the Daily Mirror, ITN and a stream of others. They were all coming. Christ, I thought, I hope we can deliver.

Over the next 48 hours, Kirkwall became a hive of activity as reporter after reporter arrived and film crew after film crew. I arranged a press conference in the bar and outlined our campaign. I explained that Greenpeace volunteers would be posted on every outlying island known to support a colony of seals and that they would physically protect the seals with their bodies to prevent a kill. I also explained that the Warrior would dog every move made by the Kvitungen, intending to out-manoeuvre any attempts to land marksmen on the islands. I assumed this was what we were going to do. I was making tactical decisions on the hoof, but it seemed to create the right sort of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral atmosphere and journalists began filing background pieces.

The following morning, the Kvitungen sailed into Kirkwall where its skipper had a meeting scheduled with DAFFS’ officials. She was followed into port by the Warrior. The quayside was lined with local well-wishers who appeared from nowhere, as well as the assembled world’s press. McTaggart, having been collected from the Warrior by dinghy en route, stepped off the ship in full maritime gear – galoshes, woollen hat and flak jacket, to confer with me. The press moved en masse to the DAFFS office to get a reaction from the officials there and David and I sunk a few beers and discussed tactics. Things were pretty straightforward in actual fact. Dinghies from the Warrior, and those borrowed from local people, began ferrying activists carrying tents and provisions to the outlying islands in preparation for the arrival of the marksmen. I pinned a piece of paper to the notice board in the lobby of the hotel announcing a regular Greenpeace briefing every evening at 6.30 and McTaggart made his way back to the ship to await the Kvitungen’s departure. Night fell before the Kvitungen left, shadowed by the Warrior. I was left in the hotel, along with the majority of the press who could not be squeezed on board the Warrior. In the event, the Kvitungen merely steamed around the islands by way of keeping Greenpeace on their toes: no killing took place that first night and we claimed a victory – of sorts.

The next ten days developed into a kind of circus. McTaggart’s prediction came true. The longer the campaign went on, the more interested became the media. On the third day, a German and a Japanese TV crew arrived to take up the last remaining rooms in the hotel. Those that followed would have to resort to taking digs with any locals willing to put them up or, in one case, to sleeping in tents in the hotel grounds. The place was awash with press and media. It was my first large scale interaction with the media and I loved it. I was the only conduit for news they had available and I was constantly being sought out, interviewed and grilled by Italian, German, Japanese, Australian and British press and media.

The Guardian’s correspondent, the Mail’s, Joe Palin of Radio 4, Michael Beurk and I formed a tight little team which pumped out the news on the impending death of 6000 seals daily. The story began to be covered on the front pages of every daily newspaper in the UK and across Europe. Will they kill the seals? Will Greenpeace change government policy? Can Prime Minister Callaghan afford to back down? Why slaughter these innocent creatures just when they are whelping? Why kill them at all? Why isn’t the government addressing the central issue of fish management policy?

The RSPCA decided to send an inspector, Frank Milner, to investigate DAFFS’ claims that the activities of the Greenpeace protestors was disturbing the seals to the point of panicking the females into leaving their offspring to starve. During a day of truce called by DAFFS to ‘prove’ this story and thus deflect criticism back onto Greenpeace, the Warrior came to collect Frank and cart him off to one of the islands to carry out his inspection. Realising Frank’s and the RSPCA’s impartiality in the matter, we held our breath as he walked towards the waiting press core at the Kirkwall hotel to deliver his findings at the 6.30 regular press briefing we had established.

I kept pace with him as he strode from the ship and asked him under my breath, ‘Well, Frank? Good, bad or ugly?’ He replied, without breaking step and with skills a ventriloquist would have envied, ‘Disturbance factor negligible. Colony in the peak of health with mortality rates entirely normal.’ Frank destroyed DAFFS at the press conference, calling their accusations divisive and a weak attempt to divert attention away from the central issue which was that 6000 seals were about to die for the crime of eating fish – something they were not even doing at this time of year.

On day ten, another 24 hours of endless radio interviews and liaison between the press and the ship stretched ahead. The story had grown out of all proportion to its importance – unless you were a grey seal, of course. Ten-year-old boys were leaving home to hitchhike to the Orkneys to help us. In and around the Kirkwall hotel, a veritable city of tents had been erected. Mums, dads, animal welfare organisations, well-meaning enthusiasts as well as a collection of cranks from all over the UK had gravitated to this spot to save the seals. It had become a cause celebre of unimaginable proportions.

The day wore on and the time for the press conference arrived. DAFFS had asked if they could make the running at this particular briefing and asked me if I would kindly allow them to brief the press without interruptions from me. I sat in the bar sipping a pint. At 6.05, the doors to the conference room burst open and an avalanche of journalists and TV crews spilled out. I was surrounded by a forest of microphones.

‘DAFFS have called the cull off, Pete. You’ve won! What’s your reaction?’

I was gobsmacked. I fired off a stream of comments about the ability of ordinary people to call government to heel over environmental abuse, how this was a victory for common sense, for environmentalism everywhere, and made my hasty excuses to leave. I had to phone the ship at once. Of course, every line out of Orkney was jammed by 200 journalists filing their story and it was only an hour later that I managed to get through to the Warrior. The crew, of course, knew nothing about the victory and were dutifully dogging the Kvitungen out into the North Sea on her way back to Norway. The Norwegians hadn’t had the courtesy to call the Warrior to save them a wasted journey. It was midnight before the Warrior’s lights were visible as she steamed into Kirkwall Harbour.

The quayside was lined with TV cameras, floodlights, well-wishers and locals. The atmosphere was carnival and most – including me – had celebrated in the traditional manner. The Warrior’s lines came snaking ashore. Pete Bouquet, the skipper, long hair trailing in the stiff breeze, one elbow crooked over the lip of the bridge wing window, was calling instructions to the helmsperson as he manoeuvred the vessel against the quay.

A press man asked me, ‘What’s that man’s name?’

‘Bouquet,’ I replied.

‘Captain Bouquet!’ he called. ‘Can you give us your reaction to the government’s decision to call off the cull please?’

Pete looked up with a scowl. ‘Would you mind if you stopped asking me questions, please? You might have noticed that I’m trying to park a ship!’ A fine and appropriate final statement on a quite extraordinary ten days, delivered with all the panache, directness and conviction of a true warrior.

Media coverage of the victory was knocked off the front pages by news of the Pope’s death, but we had won our first campaign in the UK. It took ten days of campaigning and a few thousand pounds. We had set our feet on the path which would, decades later, see Greenpeace employing hundreds of people around the world, having a presence in between 35 to 50 countries, securing incomes of millions of dollars a year and, arguably, presiding over a decline in effectiveness in inverse proportion to their income.

*

I took stock of the events of the last few months. I had been plucked from the living hell of the Post Office and catapulted into an organisation which had to work hard to qualify for such a label: we were more disorganised than organised. Somehow, the Orkney seal cull had captured the imagination of the press and the public. More importantly, we had won the campaign hands down. Prime Minister Callaghan had apparently received more than 8,000 letters of complaint about its grey seal management policy in just one day’s post. 8,000 letters from people who felt moved to write represented a further 800,000 who felt the same but couldn’t be bothered to write. That was a lot of votes to risk. The climb down was very significant in Greenpeace’s history. To launch on a successful and high profile campaign introduced and endeared the organisation to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, through the media. In ten short days it had planted Greenpeace firmly in the political firmament as a force to be reckoned with.

The fact that I had something to do with it was largely incidental but hugely relevant to me as an individual. Apart from being involved in forcing the government to abandon a manifestly ridiculous and unjustified policy, it had given me a lot of air time and had established me as a capable and reasonably articulate campaigner. I had been all over the media, I had dealt with the demands of my Greenpeace role with some aplomb, we’d won a campaign hands down and I had emerged as a half-decent tactician and strategist. How I hoped Friends of the Earth were wringing their hands in frustration. As I made my way back home to Suffolk, I felt that even if my marriage was under pressure, Annette would be pleased with the way the campaign had turned out and the effect of my extended absence would be assuaged by the fact that her husband had been in charge of such a slick and effective campaign. On getting home, I found that was only partially true.