Chapter 14

Greenpeace grows/directorship/dumping

McTaggart had been busy. Greenpeace France was up and running, headed by Remi, a self-confessed ‘nasty little agitator’ and an aspiring opera singer, if Greenpeace folklore is to be believed. Greenpeace Holland followed under the tutelage of a young Hans Guyt, a former seaman. Greenpeace UK, which for the present was the limit of my horizon, was growing steadily and we were rapidly outgrowing our cramped offices in Columbo Street.

My old mate from FoE days, Reg Boorer, was helping us out with publicity material and was around the offices regularly. Tony Marriner was plying between the Warrior in KGV Docks and the office. Janie Read, Denise Bell and Susi Newborn, Allan Thornton and I, plus a growing body of volunteers, drawn to Greenpeace’s bombastic and extrovert style, were busy researching and plotting campaigns and actions.

Tony Marriner found a bigger office in Crucifix Lane – highly appropriate for us band of martyrs – which we lost because we began carrying out major structural alterations to the office before we had signed the lease, so for a period of three months we were forced to operate out of peoples’ flats, from park benches and from public telephone boxes. We finally found an office opposite Charing Cross station, in Chandos Place.

Allan Thornton, who could legitimately lay claim to having been the founder of Greenpeace in the UK since it was his determination which had forced the BBC to show the documentary on the Greenpeace campaigns to stop the killing of 250,000 harp seal pups on the ice floes of Newfoundland, was beginning to flex his muscles in the office a little too much for my liking. I felt he was taking on too much responsibility and saw himself as the ‘leader’. He had begun, quietly and unobtrusively to begin with, to require that all decisions were made only with his approval. While he was perfectly affable most of the time, he could quickly turn into a fiery adversary. I agreed with many of his views, but I didn’t like having them foisted upon me in what I considered to be a patronising way.

During this time, and over the coming months, I perceived him as becoming increasingly bullish and secretive – not on a major scale – and I watched him gather a group of confidantes around him, seemingly at my expense, as the contact between us lessened and became more strained. Gradually, I was being squeezed out of his coterie of intimates and I began to feel the chill wind of change – or at least the portents of an impending clash – in my day-to-day work at Greenpeace.

McTaggart had cajoled us into forming Greenpeace Europe, comprised of the UK, France and Holland and each office appointed a representative (later to be dubbed trustee) to this body. Greenpeace Europe met infrequently but was vital in order to commit the different offices to a common campaigning agenda.

I recall Allan going abroad for a period of time, during which I was to become the trustee in his absence. We had increased our number in the office with the addition of Maureen Falloon, a very able, dedicated and enthusiastic woman, who had held an executive position in her profession and who now wished to dedicate her considerable skills to saving the world with Greenpeace. We also acquired the services of Elaine Lawrence whose background was not something I was made privy to. She was entirely affable and became my campaign assistant and did the job admirably. She and Maureen seemed to have fallen into Allan’s sphere of influence, perhaps due to the perception of me as sexist and classist – not that I was either – but I think my outspokenness on social issues did not suit the ‘new age’ image and atmosphere that some in the office were keen to foster.

As Allan was about to leave the office for his sojourn, leaving the fragile creature of Greenpeace in what I can only assume he considered to be the insensitive hands of an ex-lorry driver, he was forced to have his say. In essence, he said that when I took over for the coming few weeks, I would be required to consult those people in whom he had confidence – namely Elaine Lawrence and Maureen Falloon. Denise and Susi had by this time moved on for pastures greener, unsure of the ‘organised’ direction in which Greenpeace was moving.

The politics of an evolving organisation were already beginning to surface with more regularity than I cared for. Feeling increasingly isolated, I knew that I had to rely more and more on the support of David McTaggart. He and I were growing closer (well, as close as anyone could get to him, outside of being family), and I knew that in me he saw a kindred spirit. At Greenpeace meetings he would generally seek me out, and towards the end of an evening while others talked environment and campaigns, he and I would watch football or snooker on TV and indulge in the talk of ordinary, if far from normal, geezers.

The demands made on me – indeed, on everyone associated with the organisation – were increasing. I was at home less and less. Incredibly, we had no telephone at home in Haughley Green, hardly ideal for the press liaison role I performed. So the more I was in the office, the more I was able to do my job with a semblance of efficiency. While being in the office was good for Greenpeace and me, it was just the opposite for Annette and my increasingly awkward marriage.

Meanwhile, in Iceland, the Warrior was inevitably arrested by the coastguard for interfering in a legitimate national activity – killing whales – and was asked to return to Reykjavik after days of harassing the catcher vessels out in the North Atlantic. I must admit I was amazed when David McTaggart willingly turned the boat around and went quietly back to Reykjavik under the ship’s own power It didn’t seem very rock ‘n’ roll to me, but I thought perhaps there was something to his actions that I didn’t understand. That hunch turned out to be correct and was to lead to the first of many bust-ups between David and me a few months later.

McTaggart negotiated the Warrior out of Icelandic incarceration and she was making her way to Spain where plans to continue anti-whaling activities, against whaling vessels operating out of the north west coast of Spain, had been laid. Sitting in the office, I idly plotted her intended route on an old chart that was lying around. The line I traced traversed an area of sea around which a neat box was printed with the words, ‘Dumping Zone’ written in its boundary. It lay some six hundred miles southwest of Land’s End and the Warrior would be sailing within a few miles of the spot.

I made a few calls and quickly established that it this zone was a region into which the British, Dutch and Belgians had been dumping radioactive waste since the mid 70s. Typically, the UK would dump 2,000 tonnes of low to intermediate level waste into the ocean at this spot every year. Further digging revealed that the UK, cursed with an insoluble problem, largely generated by its nuclear weapons aspirations, had been dumping radioactive waste in all manner of locations since the 50s.

One location was the Hurd Deep, just north of the Channel Islands, which had also been used for the marine disposal of WWII ordnance, but sailors we talked to would relay tales of cavalier dumping as soon as the ship had cleared port, no matter where the vessel might be. Now, at least, the dump was taking place in a deep trench, according to the charts, but that hardly justified the practice in my mind. As the Warrior made her way slowly south, I talked the radioactive waste issue through with friends. It seemed to us that this was the Achilles Heel of the nuclear industry as it was – and remains – the most intractable problem the industry had to deal with. Sweeping waste under the carpet of the Atlantic was not a solution, however, and represented the worst of all attitudes to dealing with this lethal poison. I called the Warrior. McTaggart bade me dig deeper and find out when the next dump was taking place, saying that it would be highly serendipitous if a dump was in progress while the Warrior was in the area. I did and it was.