Lesson Nine – Activism, Terrorism, and Social Change

Teaching Aims

Recognise an activist campaign

Understand what activism is and why people do it

Understand non-violent approaches

Understand violent approaches

Disclaimers

Just because something is referred to in this course does not mean that 3P Training (however constituted) or the author endorse or agree with it. This is an educational course for the purpose of understanding society. This course does not encourage or condone illegal activity.

Any views expressed are the author’s and do not represent any church, the author’s employer, or any organisation.

Key concepts

Disappointment with civic action leads to activism. Disappointment with activism can lead to violence. A systemic strategy of violence is called “terrorism”.

Society is never static. If you don’t make change, someone else will.

Every human society is the outcome of the values and beliefs of its members.

There are long-term agendas to determine the underlying values of any society.

All conflicts that are not purely economic are values based.

There are hard limits to pluralism.

What is activism?

Black Lives Matter protestor confronts riot police.

“An activist is someone who refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer…”

“…in regard to a matter of public policy”

Activism happens when there are two visions, one held by those in power, and an opposing one held by you. Where there are two visions you have division. Where you have division you have conflict. That conflict can covert in the sense that opposition is muted, or it can be overt.

Activists are people who make the conflict overt. Typically, they have accessed the normal channels of decision making and received a ‘no’ from those in authority. They have refused to accept that answer and set about to bring their vision to pass.

People often become activists by accident. Something happens to them, or they happen upon something, a light goes on, and the rest is history. Perhaps the most striking example of this was Paul of Tarsus who had a spiritual encounter and changed from being a violent member of the establishment who persecuted Christians, to being a Christian evangelist. For others activism grows organically out of a world view or value system which finds itself in conflict with some issue of significance.

Not all issues are significant and not all issues are worthy of activism. For example, activism should not be confused with NIMBYism. NMBY means ‘Not in My Back Yard’ and refers to people objecting to some local development for reasons of self-interest. They may for example have no general objection of private marinas, wind turbines, third runways or nuclear waste dumps, they just don’t want them in their back yard.

Sometimes people’s involvement in local concerns can lead to a wider concern with public policy, and this can cause people to become activists. The ‘Lock the Gate’ movement against fracking is a good example. However usually people involved in NIMBY campaigns are not activists in the true sense.

Part II the Activist Spectrum

The Activist Journey – civic action to civil disobedience

The following case study is provided from the author’s own experience. In so doing the author acknowledges that countless other case studies could be made.

Tasmania is an island State at the bottom of Australia in the Southern ocean. It is sparsely populated and includes some of the greatest temperate wilderness areas on planet earth. The conflict between hydro-industrialisation and wilderness in Tasmania,  provides a case study in two conflicting visions. This conflict was initially muted, became overt, and led ultimately to the formation of a social movement.

Hydro-industrialisation was a grand vision. The damming of Tasmania’s abundant river resources would provide cheap electricity that would attract heavy industry. This in turn would bring jobs and economic development. It was a masculine vision of man conquering nature to provide a brighter economic future. In practical terms it entailed great cost, extensive borrowing, and economic risk. Not considered at all in this vision was the inherent value of Tasmania’s large temperate wilderness which was seen as irrelevant by then Tasmanian Premier (electric) Eric Reece. See further: http://www.abc.net.au/science/kelvin/files/s18.htm

In contrast to this vision was another vision of wild remote untrammelled wilderness existing for its own sake; an economy in harmony with its environment. The following quote from wilderness photographer Olegas Truhanas has defined the environmental mission in Tasmania for four decades:

We must try to retain as much as possible of what still remains of the unique, rare and beautiful. It is terribly important that we take interest in the future of our remaining wilderness, and in the future of our National Parks. Is there any reason why, given this interest, and given enlightened leadership, the ideal of beauty could not become an accepted goal of national policy? Is there any reason why Tasmania should not be more beautiful on the day we leave it, than on the day we came? We don’t know what the requirements of those who come after us will be. Tasmania is slowly evolving towards goals we cannot see. If we can revise our attitudes towards the land under our feet; if we can accept a role of steward and depart from the role of conqueror; if we can accept the view that man and nature are inseparable parts of the unified whole-then Tasmania can be a shining beacon in a dull, uniform and largely artificial world.[1]

The former view represented the establishment and was held by the politically powerful Hydro Electric Commission and both political parties. The latter view was the radical view but gained traction quickly as the public became more aware of the environmental treasures at risk. The singular point of conflict was the proposal to flood an iconic glacial lake in the heart of the South West Wilderness – Lake Pedder.

A photograph of Lake Pedder taken in the 1970’s before it was flooded. The lake came to represent the conflict between competing visions.

Those who held the pro conservation view were regular conservative people who considered themselves responsible citizens. They gathered evidence, wrote reports, lobbied decision makers, held some peaceful protests, and argued forcefully against the flooding of lake Pedder. They provided alternative economic modelling and questioned the costs and benefits of the project. They lost. One of the key campaigners Brenda Hean died in suspicious circumstances. Pedder was flooded. In their view reasoned argument had failed and “Pedder was flooded for the pride of old men”.[2]

The loss of Pedder marked a turning point in the movement. It changed the way the movement saw itself, its strategy and the establishment. In short, it radicalised the movement. The Wilderness Society was established as a single focus organisation to facilitate mass protest. The movement borrowed the tactics and ethics of non-violent civil disobedience from the American civil rights movement and anti-war movement. People from the political left and with non-conformist life styles joined. The Wilderness Society moved to blockade dam construction resulting in mass arrests. This marked the beginning of thirty years of non-violent civil disobedience in defence of Tasmania’s wilderness. Much has been written about this elsewhere. This history illustrates a fairly normal progression from concerned citizen to activist.

Activism happens across the political spectrum and across a whole range of issues. Often activist groups oppose one-another on social issues, for example the women’s rights movement promotes abortion as a moral right, whereas others oppose abortion as taking life. Both sides adopt similar political and legal tactics. However, the pro-abortion movement has been by far the most successful in advancing its goals. In response the right to life movement provides free counselling and adoption options to vulnerable women considering an abortion. This provides a coal face alternative and undermines the pro-abortion narrative by making alternative information available. Other elements of the movement have resorted to arson and murder though there appears to be no strategy and these actions are not endorsed by the wider movement.

Legal activism is an oft overlooked aspect of the craft. Mass arrests on the Hydro Electric Commission works site on the Franklin river garnered support for the cause, generated publicity and put political pressure on the government of the day. However, despite the support of the Federal government, the river was ultimately saved by legal action in the High Court. The combination of mass protest, political lobbying and legal action is a powerful mix. However, all three activities are necessary because legal action alone is insufficient. There are several reasons for this. Litigation is time consuming, expensive, and unpredictable. Cases can take from one to seven years and cost from $20,000 to a quarter of a million dollars. But most importantly, without strong political and financial support the authorities can simply change the law or bankrupt litigants. Two local examples:

• In the case of Erik Barratt-Peacock v the State of Tasmania the plaintiff challenged the legality of a road through the Tarkine Wilderness.[3] The case was lodged with the Supreme Court. The plaintiff’s team won two interlocutory hearings which established Erik’s right to sue as a citizen with a special interest. The case was very strong but the Crown delayed hearing through procedural rules until we ran out of financial support.
• In the case of Brown v Forestry Tasmania [2006] FCA 1729 December 2006 Bob Brown successfully sued Forestry Tasmania in the Federal Court for breach of the Regional Forest Agreement. Brown was able to establish that logging was harming endangering threatened species. The Regional Forest Agreement is an agreement between the Commonwealth and State Governments for forest conservation. These Governments altered the text of the agreement so that logging could continue despite the proven harm to threatened species. [4] The case nearly bankrupted Brown.

In the United States public policy matters tend to be resolved through litigation and the social left litigate vigorously in support of a raft of social agendas. The peak legal body that undertakes this activity is the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU is currently campaigning against religious exemptions allowing churches to refuse to ordain homosexual marriages. This is a multifaceted campaign that includes legal activism.

The ultimate purpose of activism is to re-shape the values and perceptions of a matter in the public mind in such a way that:

• your preferences are the obvious and natural thing to do – anything else would be aberrant; and
• it would be unthinkable for someone to do the things you currently oppose.

In the abortion example above, the women’s rights movement has been largely successful in doing this. We noted this previously in our lecture on mass social movements.

Part III What Activists Do

 Let’s consider then the activist journey from concerned citizen to hard core activist, and the types of activities that may be undertaken along the way.

The Good Citizen

Wilderness photographer and explorer Olegas Truchanas was perhaps the archetypal ‘good citizen’ activist. He is pictured here with his daughter.

We begin with the good citizen. These were the proto activists prior to the flooding of lake Pedder. They are the yet to be disillusioned. They were like some Christians of today who still think society cares about their values or what they think.

The good citizen:

• lobbies their political representatives
• signs or perhaps organises a petition
• engages in research and reason
• makes submissions to relevant bodies
• may establish a website, organisation or foundation to influence thinking on the issue
• engages in public debate in various forums – letter to the editor, radio talkback etc
• takes personal responsibility e.g. investing in ethical superfunds, becoming a more informed consumer, boycotts
• donates to advocacy organisation(s)
• nominates for public office
• supports parties/candidates that support their cause

Anyone remember Pam Clarke?

Cultural Resistance

The Good Citizen may also engage in cultural resistance. This may take the form of creating an alternative subculture or undertaking counter-cultural activities.

Cultural resistance occurs through art, literature, blogs, music, celebrity endorsement, and public events. Banksy is perhaps the most famous counter cultural artist of our time. David Bowie’s culture club is a good example of cultural resistance to gender norms. The anti-consumer movement seeks to confront and make explicit the value assumptions that human worth and happiness are found in production and consumption, and that nature only has value as a product. This is done by advocating alternative lifestyles and by using a variety of memes usually satirical.

Home education, and choosing to remain out of the workforce in order to parent children, are now counter cultural forms of resistance to the outsourcing of the family and the commodification of relationships. Similarly, engaging in religious community and giving financially to causes in preference to accumulating personal wealth are counter cultural activities in a secular and commodified world.

Other examples of cultural resistance include:

• ‘Slut marches’ challenging certain beliefs about women and consent
• ‘Mardi Gras’ making public the existence of queer society
• ‘Emily’s Voice’, providing counselling and healing retreats to women considering an abortion or who have been traumatised by abortion
• ‘Buy nothing day’ to challenge the consumer ethos
• Public prayer

The internet now allows for the dissemination of alternative news media and reporting and the creation of on-line communities of interest. These are counter cultural in that they present an alternative but evidence based world view based on facts and human experience that is censored in the main stream media. An example of one of these is included in your materials.

The Good Protestor

A youthful Bob Brown leads a giant model platypus in a street march in Hobart against the daming of the Franklin river. Photograph early eightees.

The Good Citizen may then progress to explicit but legal protest. At this point they become the Good Protestor. The scope of protest is limited only by imagination.

Some examples include:

• Makes legal challenges
• Encourages primary and secondary boycotts, divestment and corporate campaigns. Examples include:
  •  Markets for Change which encourages paper companies not to source fibre from high conservation value forests; and
  • Divestment from Israeli firms or the State of Israel
• makes a presence for the issue e.g. runs a stall, wears the T-shirt, teach-ins, organises social clubs and events around the issue.
• Engages in many forms of legal protest e.g. placards outside target businesses/embassies/churches/ abortion clinics – whatever…
• Engages in public meetings and street marches.
• Does role-play, humour and theatre. For example:
  • David Hick’s Dad spent a lot of time in the street in a cage the size of his son’s cage at Guantanamo Bay
  • Twenty defendants sued by forest company Gunns Ltd for saying truthful things about it held a protest in which they taped their mouths
  • The Wilderness Society put Christmas lights in a giant Eucalyptus in the Styx forest area threatened by logging making a giant Christmas tree

Non-violent direct action/civil disobedience

In parallel the Good Protestor or her more radical friends may engage in illegal forms of non-violent protest. Historically helping slaves escape the south on the underground rail road was a serious act of civil disobedience. So was Gandhi’s salt protest against British rule.

Tasmanian forest protestor in the Florentine State Forests. She is handcuffed and on the ground. All protestors were arrested that day. The bulldozers are moving in. Her face is not resigned.

Examples of civil disobedience include:

• Hanging banners in hard to get to public places.
• Withdrawal of labour and lockouts at work sites.
• Sit-ins – for example at politicians’ offices, company headquarters, and to block traffic.
• Blockades. Famous examples include the Bloomfield Road in the Daintree, the Franklin dam site, and the Burnie paper mill. Less famous examples include numerous blockades of logging operations in Western Australia, Victoria and Tasmania over decades two of which I took part in.
• Mass arrests, sit in, lie down, lock on! Example: the anti-corporate protests that took place in Seattle in 1999.
• Acts of solidarity; for example, delivering aid to civilians strapped in the Gaza strip by Israeli forces. One of the most famous examples of solidarity occurred during the Olympics when Australian athlete [name] stood with black American athletes and raised raised his fist and bowed his head in solidarity with the segregationist struggle in the US.
• Leaking secret information relevant to public policy. Wikileaks is the most famous example and we looked at them previously. The Panama papers, and revelations by Edward Snowden are examples of globally significant disclosures. In reality leaks have happened forever. In the 1980’s The Wilderness Society ran a ‘leak of the week’ competition to encourage disclosure of State documents before Freedom of Information became law.
• Encouraging draft resistance and desertion in time of war. This was widely practices in the Unites States in the 1970s during the war against North Vietnam.
• Break-ins to expose malpractice. This tactic has been used extensively by animal liberationists to expose how animals in battery farms are treated. On one occasion activists broke into the UK Royal College of Surgeons and filmed the harm then being done to animals at a prestigious institution.
• Hacktivism. This is a growing clandestine activity made famous and prominent by Anonymous. It includes accessing and unlawfully disclosing information, and destroying data, databases, and websites. Anonymous famously declared war in ISIS following the Paris shootings and closed down over a thousand ISIS recruitment web pages in a matter of days.

The anti-apartheid struggle saw the use of and numerous non-violent activities that are summarised at the end of this article. These activities at times occurred in parallel with more violent activity. This brings is to the next incarnation of the Good Protestor – the saboteur.

Sabotage

While acts of sabotage cause economic damage their main purpose is symbolic. They demand serious attention to a cause because a serious act of disobedience has occurred. Sabotage was used extensively by the suffragettes. Some acts of sabotage are less serious than others. Australia’s own is BUGAUP – Bill Board Utilising Graffiti Artists Against Unhealthy Promotions. This group of climbers vandalised and re-designed big expensive bill board cigarette advertisements across the country in the 1980’s until forced out of action by extreme penalties, and I suspect, changes in life circumstances. Nothing kills an activist career quite like marriage and children.

However, there have been a handful of occasions where sabotage has happened on a scale that has seriously harmed enterprises. On one occasion the Sea Shepherd organisation sank the entire Icelandic whaling fleet. An attack in the UK on military aircraft destined for Indonesia caused significant damage. More on this later.

Conservation and peace organisations specifically oppose and discourage sabotage for both moral and tactical reasons. Captain Paul Watson is a notable exception to this rule. Watson was a founding member of Greenpeace but broke with the organisation to found Sea Shepherd which made a name for itself by ramming pirate whaling vessels. The organisation has committed numerous acts of sabotage and its vessels have been sabotaged. It remains very active in the Southern Ocean opposing Japanese whalers.

We noted arson attacks on abortion facilities earlier. Plough Shares is a radical pacifist Catholic organisation that opposes war. On one occasion they put a B-52 bomber out of action for the duration of the first US invasion of Iraq.[5]

Activism and violence

The establishment likes to equate activism with anarchy, violence and terrorism. These charges are usually vacuous if not hypocritical, but they are worth exploring because political violence has shaped our history and institutions since Magna Carter.

1913 A woman peers through a shattered window in Holloway prison after an explosion caused by suffragettes trying to blow the jail up.

As we have seen, when confronted with some injustice people imagine that truth and reason will prevail. They begin to agitate and demand change. If change begins to happen things will usually move along relatively peacefully. However, if their efforts are met with repression or indifference some people will give up, but a core group will adopt more confrontational tactics. If these are met with disproportionate violence, then the more radical wings of a movement are likely to adopt violent tactics in response. This occurred for example in the case of the Suffragettes’ struggle for women’s emancipation in which some women resorted to bombings and arson. Violent state responses triggered terrorist campaigns by the African National Congress in South Africa, and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland and Britain.

There are two important things to distinguish here. The first is that sabotage to property is morally and qualitatively different to violence towards persons. The second is that random spontaneous acts of violence are qualitatively different to a strategy of political violence. The last point to note is that most political violence and most acts of terrorism are sponsored by the State or State aligned interest. Relatively few acts of terrorism are by social movements or individuals. See further the books: On Western Terrorism and International Terrorism: Image and Reality, by Noam Chomsky.

A sign warns of snipers in Northern Ireland

Random and spontaneous acts of violence seldom achieve anything. Consider how many riots you have seen on TV in which protestors and riot police square off. What was achieved? When did throwing petrol bombs at people change government policy? This sort of violence is counter-productive because it re-directs energy away from useful political action towards mindless violence. It also legitimises violent State repression and surveillance of dissident groups or of the population as a whole.

However, mass civil unrest when directed against property and government institutions can bring about change. Segregation in the US only changed after mass rioting and arson in numerous American cities proved to the establishment that there was much to lose from discrimination and more to gain from enfranchisement. Similarly, in Indonesia mass blockades of key infrastructure and government offices eventually forced the removal of President Suharto and ushered in a democratic government. Similar activity in the ‘Arab Spring’ has had mixed results.

Historic photograph of an IRA patrol

Terrorism on the other hand is a very difficult thing to do. It requires certain skills. It is expensive. A campaign of political violence can only be sustained with the material support of a mass movement or a significant part of the population. External sponsors are often involved. Violence only succeeds where there is a movement with skilled leaders who have a clear political strategy. For that reason, accusing Western NGOs of terrorism is absurd. Not only do they have no desire to engage in terrorism, they have no capacity to engage in it.

Two relevant historical examples of successful political violence are the IRA in Northern Ireland and the ANC in South Africa. Both faced racially based discriminatory policies. Both engaged in the political protest and both were met with extreme State violence. Both had mass support from within the population, and both had external sponsors. Both ran largely unsuccessful terrorist campaigns in concert with a political strategy. Both were outgunned by their enemies. Both engaged in assassination, bombings and torture, and both were victims of assassination and torture.[6] What tipped the balance for both movements was a capacity for economic sabotage. The IRA blew up a large area of dockland on mainland Britain carefully avoiding civilian casualties then left a large bomb under a the M-1 motor way.[7] The message was clear: our leadership is in control of our organisation and can be negotiated with. Therefore negotiate or face serious economic sabotage. The British negotiated and the Northern Ireland peace process succeeded. In South Africa the ANC blew up part of a nuclear power plant. The message was clear: we can and will destroy the country’s critical infrastructure if you do not negotiate. The government did negotiate and apartheid ended.[8]

Israel on the other hand has been able to impose a security response on the Palestinian people that prevents them from doing significant property damage or injury to the Israeli State. On a cost benefit analysis, the cost of security operations in occupied Palestine and the cost of anti-Israeli violence is outweighed by the economic and political benefits of appropriating Palestinian land and water resources. Unless and until the Palestinians and their supporters can change that calculus, there is no hope for a negotiated settlement.

One movement that cannot be negotiated with is the Wahabist movement in Islam better known by its various franchises such as Al Qaida, Boko Haram, Al Nusra and ISIS. Ultimately you cannot negotiate with a force whose sole purpose is to kill or enslave you. These guys are therefore qualitatively different to groups like the ANC or the IRA.

I hope you can see from this, that when we talk about terrorism and political violence we are talking about a very different category of action from our peaceful protestors seeking to preserve a lake. We should be certain not to confuse them; and we should be very cautious that the kind of security responses appropriate to dealing with hard core terrorists are not applied more widely.

Moral Perspectives

The ‘Forest Angel’ blockading a logging road in Tasmanian State Forest

There are a number of moral objections to activism which we should briefly consider.

The first is that activism sometimes crosses legal boundaries and this is wrong because we should obey the law. Why we should obey the law is not always explored, and that is unfortunate, because there are many reasons why we should obey the law and occasional reasons why we should not.

The argument that we should obey the law because it is the law is called ‘legal positivism’.[9] It is concerned with procedure not justice, and is the unconscious mental template of many public servants. The extension of this argument is that if people stop obeying the law society will soon dissolve into a dystopian anarchy. The other extension is that the law in democratic societies represents the collective will or agreed social compromise and this should only be changed through the appropriate channels. In this context the law is seen as a social good, and activism seen as essentially anti-social because it undermines social cohesion.

Legal positivism has roots in the notion of the divine right of kings which finds modern expression in the theology that God has put those in authority in charge and therefore we must do what they say. Rebellion against authority is rebellion against God, even if the authority is secular.

We do not have time here to explore these ideas in depth but we should briefly hold them up to analysis.

As I said previously, not all issues are worthy of activism. The fact is that a degree of compromise and obedience to laws and social norms is necessary for the functioning of an advanced society. There are many benefits to living in an advanced society and there are also costs. One of the costs is that it requires a degree of conformity and sometimes we have to accept things that do not seem to us to be fair. However, this becomes untenable where conformity conflicts with more universal or deeply held values. It is this internal dissonance that has created mass social movements.

Legal theory is fine but it is a poor substitute for social analysis. To put it bluntly, nothing Hitler did was illegal because the Nazi’s were the government. Following this logic, in the 1930’s some German churches argued against resisting the Nazi’s because the Nazi’s were seen as the legitimate authority. This positivist view was rejected at the Nuremburg trials in favour of an appeal to universal human values. Of course, those values are not universally held; and from a secular evolutionary perspective, any appeal to values beyond individual or group survival is absurd. Never-the-less, having hung the Nazi’s, the establishment went on to demand mindless obedience for its future wars.

The great irony of the positivist view is that our political and legal structures have come about through a process of rebellion, protest, terrorism, and war. The reason why the Westminster system of government exists today to make our laws is because in the 17^th century a group of angry Presbyterians got tired of being bossed around by the Catholic King of England and cut off his head. Whose side God was on is a matter of conjecture.

Furthermore, the moral consensus that our laws supposedly represent, in part reflects the social changes that have come about through activist struggle. Ultimately, the purpose of activism is not anarchy or revolution, but a change in the social consensus. It is thus social progress rather than legal philosophy that validates activism.

Concluding Comments

Our world has been shaped by power struggles between competing visions. From ballot box to bomb, from Magna Carter to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, people have sought to change the existing order. Since in practical terms all power and all sovereignty ultimately come from us, activism is the process of taking back our power from the State and re-asserting sovereignty in matters of public policy. (NB: in saying this the author is not seeking to contradict persons of faith or dismiss the intervention of other powers, but in real politic prayer is not sufficient).

Mahatma Ghandi believed that love was the ultimate power and moral persuasion the ultimate weapon. Moa Tzu Tung believed that power came from the barrel of a gun. Activism usually sits somewhere between these two extremes.

People often become activists seemingly by accident following an ‘aha moment’ or sudden realisation. Where that journey takes them varies wildly but the basic motivation is the same: people become activists because they find the alternative intolerable. I have included by way of example the following quotes:

 “Activism is the best antidote to depression” Joan Baez

 “Give me Liberty or give me death” Thomas Jefferson

 “You Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” Jesus Christ

“I love the country I just can’t stand the scene” Leonard Cohen

“You can’t have a peace movement with a gentleman’s agreement …’You can have your protest as long as we can have our war’. That’s the gentlemen’s agreement we didn’t stick to”. Ciaron O’Reilly (Ploughshares)

I have attached in your materials a case study of an act of sabotage and civil disobedience by a mentor of one of my activist friends. It includes an analysis of why the action was successful and poses some questions on how these lessons might be applied in other contexts. Also included is an account of the arrest record Rosa Parks and what happened after. Fortunately Mrs Parkes did not hold to the positivist legal view.

Materials

Analysis 1 – Successful Sabotage

“LONDON, Jul 31 1996 (IPS) – A British jury has acquitted three women who broke into an aircraft plant and wrecked a Hawk jet destined for the Indonesian air force.

The Liverpool Crown Court jury accepted their plea that the sabotage was justified to prevent the fighter from being used against East Timorese rebels.

Joanna Wilson, Lotta Kronlid and Andrea Needham broke into a British Aerospace plant at Warton, north-west England in January and did 1.5 million pounds (2.25 million dollars) worth of damage to the jet, breaking high-tech display screens in the cockpit and punching holes in the fuselage.

They videoed themselves, garlanded the wrecked jet with banners and then called the police to come and arrest them, singing peace songs while they waited for them to arrive.

In court they pleaded not guilty to charges of criminal damage, arguing that they had prevented a crime — the bombing of East Timor — by their act.

In their defence they cited the Nuremberg prosecution of Nazi war criminals, the 1969 Genocide Act and provisions against aiding and abetting murder in the 1861 Offences Against the Persons Act. They were using reasonable force to prevent a crime, they told the court.

In the video, later seen by the jury, the women filmed themselves signing a declaration saying “they were acting to prevent genocide in a country where a third of the population has been murdered.”

During the two month trial hearings, thousands of people in the north of England signed petitions and protested outside the court and BAe plants in the region. Church leaders from Britain’s main Christian denominations denounced the arms sales to Indonesia.

Defence witnesses included human rights activists and East Timorese exiled leader Jose Ramos Horta. Horta told the court that news of the women’s “hammering” had reached East Timor. People in East Timor “feared the supply” of Hawk jets to the Indonesian air force, he claimed.

The damaged jet was due to enter service with the Indonesian air force’s Bandung squadron, a ground-attack anti-insurgent unit, Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University, told the court during the trial.

British Aerospace (BAe) has taken out High Court injunctions against the members of the acquitted women’s group, dubbed the ‘Ploughshares’ after the Christian biblical pacifist proverb about beating ‘swords into ploughshares’. The injunction bans the women from approaching BAe premises.

The verdict came as Indonesia was restoring calm after a weekend of anti-government protests in the capital Jakarta. The official Antara news agency quoted Jakarta military commander Major-General Sutiyoso as saying the military would not tolerate any more disturbances and that he had ordered his troops to open fire on anyone trying to disturb law and order.

The same day, in London, the international human rights group Amnesty International strongly condemned the Indonesian security forces for detaining opposition members during the riots and demanded a halt to arbitrary arrests.

The detentions followed a July 27 police raid on the Indonesian Democratic Party (PDI) in Jakarta, occupied by supporters of the ousted opposition leader Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesia’s late founding president Sukarno.

Up to 241 people were known to have been arrested, says Amnesty, and 90 were injured in the weekend clashes between police and demonstrators.

Indonesian rebel labour leader Mukhtar Pakpahan was reportedly detained by the country’s attorney-general’s office late Tuesday. Other Indonesian left-wing political activists have gone underground.

Since Indonesia occupied the former Portugese colony in 1975, 200,000 East Timorese, one third of the island’s population, have died in military assaults or forced settlement programmes.

Human rights activists say the Hawk jets that were subject of the Ploughshares protest are being used to attack Timorese communities. Both BAe and the British Government insist that the Indonesians use the Hawks only for training.”

Questions for Discussion

What did the action achieve?

• Brought global publicity to:
  • The human rights situation in East Timor
  • The human rights situation in Indonesia
  • The involvement of British Aerospace in supplying arms used to attack Timorese
• Led to restrictions on military exports to Suharto dictatorship
• Embarrassed the British Government
• Exposed the Indonesian Government
• Empowered the peace movement
• Empowered the Timorese resistance

How was it done?

• Very carefully planned and professionally executed.
• Big enough to get global coverage
• Activists accepted consequences hence not terrorists
• Timed for maximum impact – Indonesia approaching revolutionary state

Why was it so successful?

• Thoroughly researched
• Used the media and the legal system
• Appealed to universal/popular values NB: Europeans know about bombing
• Thoroughly networked
• Credible individuals – educated articulate people
• Credible supporters
  • Ramos Horta
  • Paul Rogers, professor of peace studies at Bradford University
  • Church leaders came out in support

Key Points

• Action created a platform for the message
• Activists created and controlled the narrative

Question 1: what was the narrative?

Question 2: what was more important, the sabotage or the publicity?

Question 3: how could this approach be used in other contexts e.g. against a mining development?

Analysis 2 – Civil Disobedience

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/rosa-parks/

An Act of Courage, The Arrest Records of Rosa Parks

On December 1, 1955, during a typical evening rush hour in Montgomery, Alabama, a 42-year-old woman took a seat on the bus on her way home from the Montgomery Fair department store where she worked as a seamstress. Before she reached her destination, she quietly set off a social revolution when the bus driver instructed her to move back, and she refused. Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested that day for violating a city law requiring racial segregation of public buses.

On the city buses of Montgomery, Alabama, the front 10 seats were permanently reserved for white passengers. The diagram shows that Mrs. Parks was seated in the first row behind those 10 seats. When the bus became crowded, the bus driver instructed Mrs. Parks and the other three passengers seated in that row, all African Americans, to vacate their seats for the white passengers boarding. Eventually, three of the passengers moved, while Mrs. Parks remained seated, arguing that she was not in a seat reserved for whites. Joseph Blake, the driver, believed he had the discretion to move the line separating black and white passengers. The law was actually somewhat murky on that point, but when Mrs. Parks defied his order, he called the police. Officers Day and Mixon came and promptly arrested her.

In police custody, Mrs. Parks was booked, fingerprinted, and briefly incarcerated. The police report shows that she was charged with “refusing to obey orders of bus driver.” For openly challenging the racial laws of her city, she remained at great physical risk while held by the police, and her family was terrified for her. When she called home, she spoke to her mother, whose first question was “Did they beat you?”

Mrs. Parks was not the first person to be prosecuted for violating the segregation laws on the city buses in Montgomery. She was, however, a woman of unchallenged character who was held in high esteem by all those who knew her. At the time of her arrest, Mrs. Parks was active in the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), serving as secretary to E.D. Nixon, president of the Montgomery chapter. Her arrest became a rallying point around which the African American community organized a bus boycott in protest of the discrimination they had endured for years. Martin Luther King, Jr., the 26-year-old minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, emerged as a leader during the well-coordinated, peaceful boycott that lasted 381 days and captured the world’s attention. It was during the boycott that Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., first achieved national fame as the public became acquainted with his powerful oratory.

After Mrs. Parks was convicted under city law, her lawyer filed a notice of appeal. While her appeal was tied up in the state court of appeals, a panel of three judges in the U.S. District Court for the region ruled in another case that racial segregation of public buses was unconstitutional. That case, called Browder v. Gayle, was decided on June 4, 1956. The ruling was made by a three-judge panel that included Frank M. Johnson, Jr., and upheld by the United States Supreme court on November 13, 1956.

For a quiet act of defiance that resonated throughout the world, Rosa Parks is known and revered as the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.”

The documents shown here relating to Mrs. Parks’s arrest are copies that were submitted as evidence in the Browder v. Gayle case. They are preserved by the National Archives at Atlanta in Morrow, Georgia, in Record Group 21, Records District Courts of the United States, U.S. District Court for Middle District of Alabama, Northern (Montgomery) Division. Civil Case 1147, Browder, et al v. Gayle, et al.

Suggested Reading

Bass, Jack. Taming the Storm? The Life and Times of Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. and the South’s Fight over Civil Rights. NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1993.

Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

Parks, Rosa. Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue with Today’s Youth.

Parks, Rosa and Jim Haskins (contributor). Rosa Parks: My Story.

Stevenson, Janet. “Rosa Parks Wouldn’t Budge.” American Heritage, Vol. XXIII, No. 2, February 1972.

Williams, Juan. Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1987.

Questions for Discussion

1. What widely held values were being appealed to?
2. Was the appeal credible?
3. What did the action achieve?
4. Would it have been successful if a less connected person had engaged in civil disobedience?
5. What personal risks did Mrs Parks face?

[1] Quoted from Max Angus The World of Olegas Truchanas Hobart: Olegas Truchanas Publication Committee, 1975, p.51

[2] Kevin Kiernan, Pedder activist and founding member of the Wilderness Society

[3] Erik John Barratt-Peacock v Tasmania [1995] TASSC 157 (22 December 1995)

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/tas/TASSC/1995/157.html

See also Erik Barratt-Peacock Tasmania’s State Planning System and the Tarkine Link Road, Local Government Law Journal, Vol 4, No. 3, June 1998

[4] See further: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wielangta_forest

[5] See interview here: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jan/07/anti-war-activist-ciaron-oreilly-explains-why-conventional-protests-are-pointless

See further here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciaron_O%27Reilly

[6] See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Street_bombing

[7] See further: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/ira-bombs-cause-motorway-gridlock-1264995.html

[8] See further: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/03/17/16895/south-african-who-attacked-nuclear-plant-hero-his-government-and-fellow-citizens

[9] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-positivism/