Campaigners for Peace
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peace & justice Campaigners for peace In a leafy Christchurch suburb Tui Motu recently visited the home of Kate Dewes and Rob Green, also the headquarters of the Peace Foundation’s Disarmament & Security Centre (DSC). Kate and Rob have a common passion for world peace and nuclear disarmament. This joint quest has brought them together personally. Rob’s story Buccaneer nuclear-strike jet n January 1991, at the height of squadron based on the aircraft Ithe first Gulf War, Rob Green was carrier HMS Eagle. Their invited to address an antiwar rally assigned cold war target was a of some 20,000 people in Trafalgar military airfield on the outskirts Square, London. Here was he, a retired of Leningrad, Russia, now Commander in the Royal Navy, at known by its original name, the foot of Admiral Nelson’s column St Petersburg. They had the speaking out against the validity of the capability of dropping a 100 nuclear deterrent. It was the climax of kiloton thermonuclear bomb a long journey of disillusion and the close to a civilian population discovery of a new faith. in one of the world’s most beautiful ancient capital cities. Five days later the futility of that “I accepted without question deterrent was amply displayed when an élite role with my pilot as Iraq launched its first SCUD ballistic ‘nuclear crew’”, Rob writes. missile attack against Israel. The missiles fell on Tel Aviv, Israel’s second Later he was switched to city. A nuclear state had been attacked antisubmarine helicopters. by a non-nuclear one. The Americans Their role was to defend the responded by ordering air attacks on aircraft carrier Ark Royal from the SCUD launch sites, but the United possible Soviet submarine States could do nothing to prevent attack. Because the latest Soviet Rob with photo of his aunt, Hilda Murrell Israel going on full-scale nuclear alert. submarines went too deep Israeli missile launchers, armed with and fast for the conventional deterrent and opted to replace the nuclear weapons, were pointed at Iraqi homing torpedoes, the helicopters were ageing US Polaris submarine-launched sites. In the event, the SCUD attacks armed with a nuclear depth bomb, ballistic missile system with Trident. caused only minor damage; America more powerful than the weapon which This was done despite misgivings and its allies quickly defeated Hussein devastated Hiroshima. It would have among the Naval Staff at the huge cost: using conventional weapons only. caused huge nuclear fallout (as did the Trident was dubbed ‘a cuckoo in the And Israel was praised for exercising experimental underwater explosions on Naval nest’. restraint. But what sort of escalation Bikini Atoll in 1946) and, incidentally, Britain’s possession of these horrendous might have occurred if the SCUD the helicopter could not have escaped. weapons, however, proved to be no missiles had caused massive loss of life Rob was cast in the role of a suicide deterrent to Argentina when the or had been carriers of germ warfare? bomber. “Because I was ambitious and Falklands War started in 1982. Rob was assured there would almost certainly was by that time a naval Staff Officer. Over his years serving as a Naval be no need to use it, I decided to obey.” Officer, Rob became progressively He comments: “I know what a close- disenchanted with the effectiveness of When Margaret Thatcher became run thing that war was. If Argentine the British nuclear deterrent. As a 25- Prime Minister, she was obsessed with aircraft had sunk one of the troopships year-old he had been a navigator in the the need to strengthen the nuclear before the landing force had got ashore, 18 Tui Motu InterIslands the British might have had to withdraw murdered in 1984 near her home in him to become active. Rob joined Ex- or risk defeat. What would Thatcher Shrewsbury in the West Midlands. Services CND, and also a think tank have done?... I later heard a rumour of The police inquiry concluded that it called ‘Just Defence’. a very secret contingency plan to move was a random act by a burglar whom a Polaris submarine south within range she surprised while he was ransacking In 1991 he became British Chair of of Buenos Aires.” her home; but other, more sinister the World Court Project. This was a explanations have been suggested. world-wide network of citizens’ groups After the Falklands War Rob left the lobbying the United Nations to bring Navy no longer believing in the validity Murrell was busy at the time of her the legal status of nuclear weapons of the deterrent strategy. Although death preparing a paper criticising the before the World Court. It was while he did not become an active peace building of a new nuclear power plant. working at this project that Rob met campaigner until 1991, his conversion She contended that it was wrong to Kate who was one of New Zealand’s journey had started a long time earlier. build such installations which not only leading peace campaigners. Later they He found his political affiliations were uneconomic, but for which there married, and Rob came to live in New changing gradually towards the left. was no safe disposal of their highly Zealand. “In the Navy”, he says, “even to vote radioactive waste. She was also opposed Liberal was considered radical. No one to nuclear weapons and supported the Kate’s story would ever have voted Labour! Greenham Common women’s protest. ate Dewes grew up in Hamilton Kwith a strong Christian back- “As a young man I felt I had a ‘vocation’ Under Thatcher’s government British ground, although most of her family to be a naval officer, so I became totally security services routinely put anti- supported New Zealand’s participation immersed in the naval ethos including nuclear activists under surveillance, and in World War II including the dropping Intelligence. I acquired the professional some UK media have suggested that of the atomic bombs. While she was at skills. But I also experienced the Hilda Murrell was the British ‘Karen University she became aware of the anti- corruption – the covering up of Silkwood’, the US nuclear technician Vietnam war protests. While teaching incompetence, the neglect of the who died mysteriously when she was in Auckland she helped organise the deleterious side-effects which weapons about to expose dangerous aspects of the Peace Squadron protesting against the use may have. There was blind loyalty US nuclear industry. The police inquiry visits of US nuclear armed ships. Kate to orders, pride in tradition. What I call indicated that Murrell’s house had been recalls that her very first involvement the Charge of the Light Brigade approach methodically searched in a manner was religious: communion at Bastion – as in Tennyson’s Crimean War poem unlikely from a random burglar. :‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to Point followed by a Maori blessing of do and die’ – was alive and well. Another sinister scenario involved Rob the water before the Peace Squadron himself, suggesting that the intruder held its first event in 1975. “At one time we were shown Peter was looking for documents belonging Watkins’ film The War Game, a black At the time she was teaching at Epsom to Rob concerning the notorious Girls’ Grammar School, which was and white documentary on the sinking of the Argentinean warship quite conservative. That involved some effects of nuclear bombing in Britain, Belgrano during the Falklands War. conflict. “I was undergoing quite a shift including live shots of the firestorms. It Rob denies that he was involved in within myself,” says Kate, “because made a lasting impression on me. any way with the famous leaking of I believed that it was God’s will that “The British Navy goes back to King secret intelligence to the Labour MP we didn’t kill people and that nuclear Alfred. It has very long traditions, Tam Dalyell about this; and his aunt weapons were not part of God’s plan.” and there is an ethical undercurrent. never raised such matters with him. Kate became interested in Hiroshima A noble image was a way of attracting Nevertheless, her violent death had and its aftermath and read up some top quality recruits. If you were no a profound influence and helped personal accounts of survivors. At High more than hired killers you would not motivate him to pick up Hilda’s torch School she had also seen The War Game, attract the right personnel! To change regarding nuclear issues. which had a profound effect on her. away from this was to break away from Chernobyl and the end of the Cold In 1977 she went with her first husband, the tribe, to lose most of my former John Boanas, to study Peace Studies at friends and colleagues.” War also influenced Rob’s thinking – to move from opposing the peaceful Bradford, in England. She discovered Rob was also greatly influenced by use of nuclear energy to the nuclear that there was a lot of ignorance in his Cambridge educated aunt, Hilda deterrent itself. When the first Gulf Britain about the protest activities in Murrell, who had been an early War started, he became afraid that New Zealand, and this made her all environmentalist and, in her retirement, nuclear weapons could be used, either the more eager to learn the historical an antinuclear activist. She was brutally by the US or Israel, and this moved base for the NZ peace movement. “In ss Tui Motu InterIslands 19 peace & justice ss 1979 I had my first child and began to In the 1990s when we run the Peace Foundation office from were taking the case to home in Christchurch.