I started out with Greenpeace nearly nine years ago as a press officer – and on arrival dived straight in at the deep end by heading off to Norwich to deal with media for the trial of 28 activists (including our then Director, Peter Melchett) who were charged with pulling up genetically modified (GM) crops from an experimental field in nearby Lyng. The atmosphere was charged, as our people were potentially facing jail, and the media interest was intense.
I found myself dealing with a Newsnight crew who'd been allowed special access to the defendants, and organising daily walk-ins to the court (when defendants had to run a gauntlet of TV crews and photographers setting off flashes in their faces). Fortunately for us every day in court brought new revelations about the failings of the GM industry and its essential lack of knowledge about the technology it was releasing into the environment. In the end the court found the activists not guilty – and the case became a landmark in the campaign against GM.
Since then it's hardly slowed down. My focus switched to our Oceans and Peace campaigns, so I've handled media for international whaling conferences and opposition to nuclear weapons. In 2001 I spent over four months in the US supporting 17 activists who faced up to 12 years in jail following a direct action against the Star Wars anti-ballistic missile system.
I've also done a number of ship tours on all three Greenpeace vessels - the Rainbow Warrior, Esperanza and Arctic Sunrise – as both media officer and campaigner. The first tour was a protest against pair trawling in the English Channel (the 'dead dolphin tour' as we called it internally, for obvious reasons). Our team tracked French pair trawlers fishing for sea bass and took action to prevent them catching dolphins in their nets. Sometimes we arrived too late, and all we could do was to pick up the dead dolphins, who were then examined by onboard biologists and the cause of their death (being caught in trawl nets) added to official survey data.
Next up was a stint as a campaigner onboard Esperanza, tracking shipments of weapons-grade plutonium from the US to France. This one I found out about rather late – I was given the assignment in the office one day, went off to pick up my passport and was on the ship in the middle of the campaign the next. Arriving at Cherbourg harbour early in the morning and being surrounded by French secret service in their black inflatable boats felt very surreal...
What else have I done? Well, I've helped to organise Greenpeace's anti-war protests against the invasion of Iraq, and done communications for the Star Wars campaign. My peak experience here was our mass trespass a few years back into the US spy base (and home to part of the 'Star Wars' system) at Menwith Hill, Yorkshire – planning to break into a spy base and succeeding! I'll never forget watching the coaches creep down the hill and the activists dressed as rockets flood out and past the startled security guards.
More recently I ran the 'Trident: we don't buy it' campaign to stop the UK upgrading its Trident nuclear deterent system – working with a fantastic UK and international team to run a political campaign in Scotland. We named and shamed Labour MPs who were bowing to their party whips and backing Trident replacement even though they didn’t believe in it and their constituents didn’t support it. Amazingly we were able to use the Arctic Sunrise to blockade the Trident submarine base at Faslane, and prevent the MoD taking MPs out on a 'jolly' on one of the subs. Eventually the ship was boarded, and all aboard were arrested and held for three days before racing back to London to hold a protest gig (featuring key supporters Brian Eno and Damon Albarn) on the Thames, and shortly afterwards organising a banner hang off a crane outside Parliament.
Today my job has changed again: I've been tasked with reaching out to creative people to engage them with our campaigns – so I'm involved in organising events onboard the ships when they are 'in town'; recruiting the likes of Alastair McGowan and Emma Thompson to head up Airplot; talking to artists about how we can work together; and working at various festivals around the country (the most important for Greenpeace, of course, being Glastonbury). But I'm still deeply engaged with the Peace campaign, and indeed have spent the last few days furiously editing and cross-referencing some research I've commissioned on the real costs of replacing trident with another nuclear weapons system (the government estimates the cost at £20 billion, I've gone over the figures in detail and I can't make them add up to less than £76 billion, no matter how hard I try (Boy does our government know how to conceal costs)!
Looking back like this reminds me that the constant variety of the work is one of the main reasons nine years on that I'm still at Greenpeace. The others are working on issues I feel passionate about and, of course, the many brilliant people from around the world I am lucky enough to get to work with. At least it's never dull...
