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Tapping a Power for Peace

Interview with Angie Zelter
Angie Zelter (center), Ulla Roder (left) and Ellen Moxley celebrate their acquittal outside Greenock Court, Scotland, 1999  [David Mackenzie]

Angie Zelter is a peace activist based in the U.K. She has led several awareness-raising and nonviolent direct action campaigns including the Trident Ploughshares antinuclear weapons movement. In 1999 she was arrested for causing damage to equipment on board a research vessel at Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland, U.K. She was acquitted in a subsequent trial after arguing that the use or preparation of the Trident nuclear weapons system was a war crime, and that the protesters were authorized by international law to prevent this war crime from happening. She now heads up Faslane 365, a year-round peaceful protest at the Faslane naval base organized by autonomous citizens groups from the U.K. and around the world. Her book Trident on Trial describes one woman's dedication to preventing the use of nuclear weapons.

SGI Quarterly: In your book you talk about "the longing for peace and creativity which is in each of us and that is a real and vital power that just needs to be tapped to spring forward." Can you explain that?

Angie Zelter: We have deep feelings of alienation about the world as it is at present. We know that we can live in such a different way and that there is a great potential in every single being to allow that creativity and love to come out. But the basic structures of our society are preventing us from being fully human. That makes us all uneasy, and causes both disease and dis-ease in our society. We are also frustrated that we don't know how to bring that other society to fruition. With climate change, pollution, poverty, environmental destruction, refugees, wars, we know that we can't continue to abuse our planet in this way for very much longer, or we might not have a home left here.

SGIQ: How have you seen society changing?

AZ: The thing that I have seen change in the 35 years that I have been struggling is that so many more people are now aware. I don't feel alone. I think, because of the possibilities for information sharing, lots of people are aware, and awareness is the first step. That is the main change.

SGIQ: Have you changed local attitudes in Britain toward nuclear weapons?

AZ: It is not that people don't know about nuclear weapons, but our actions have reawakened the real discussion about it. We are getting a lot of students involved, but generally, if you just went out into the street, I think you'd be quite surprised about the number of people who don't know that our nuclear weapons program is called Trident or that it's based up in Faslane.

It can be quite overwhelming. People don't want to know about things that they feel they can't do anything about, but it's up to each and every person to work out what the priority issues are at any one time. It is also up to our educational system which is incredibly biased by state agendas.

SGIQ: Did you ever imagine you would stand alone in court, defending yourself for challenging the U.K. government's nuclear deterrence policy?

AZ: In our society I think when we are not experts and we haven't got a degree in a certain subject, we are scared to contribute properly. But in a democracy we all have a duty and a right to engage in the issues of our time and to understand them and try to influence our leaders as far as possible.

I was not alone in court either for the 1999 trial or for the Lord Advocate's reference deliberation in 2000. I did the disarmament action with two other women, it was a joint effort, and there was a crowd of supporters backing us up all along the way, like most of these things in the peace movement. At the beginning of a campaign I trust to my own instinct and am often alone at that stage. I often find a gap with what I am feeling and what is actually being done.

Protesting at the Faslane naval base  [David Mackenzie]

I started the "Snowball Disobedience Campaign" in the 1980s. I envisaged it as a snowball--if I could get two others, then the three of us would go and cut the wire around a U.S. base, and then the three of us would try to find two or three others. Then it would be nine the next time and 27 the next time--but I found it very difficult to find the first three. My mother-in-law did it with me. I think it is that initial start that is difficult, and then it took off and several thousand people took part and were arrested, and then it spread to other U.S. bases. The fact that each person would only cut one wire, and they would write a letter to the government asking for disarmament, meant it was structured to make civil disobedience very easy. The idea was if you get enough people cutting strands, the fence will come down. But it was an act of faith to start it, that the vision would catch on. The same with Faslane 365; people were saying, "You can't do a blockade every day," but I need that initial vision, even though it transforms into another reality as each person that joins it brings their own vision and energy.

SGIQ: The idea of turning weapons into ploughshares is taken from the Bible. How can the negative aspects of our nature actually be transformed?

AZ: Environmental and human issues have to come before profit. We don't have that in our present structure, and quite a lot of single issues come up against that barrier. You don't find many political parties or people talking about how we could structure our economy in different ways. For instance, one of the things that is not being talked about enough in the climate change debate is that the military and the arms trade are probably using more than 50 percent of the resources of our planet and thus have a huge carbon footprint. The impact of the military-industrial complex on climate change is immense, but you very rarely hear anybody talking about it.

SGIQ: How can we spread the basic awareness about nuclear weapons?

AZ: I think there is a lack of imagination. I think our feelings and thoughts are influenced by what we see and who we see. Thus Japanese hibakusha are coming to Faslane this summer to meet ordinary people who haven't had the opportunity of going to Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The fact that we are willing to use weapons of mass destruction distorts us in so many different ways and has a huge negative impact on us as a society.

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