Naval Sit-Ins As Test Protest?

by Francis Batten

Just what can the individual do? What can New Zealanders do about the French nuclear tests in the South Pacific?

Supposing that people could induce their elected representatives to take action, what effective actions could they take? Protests? Economic sanctions? Even breaking off diplomatic relations?

Tried and Rusted

All these formalities have been played out before. They are tried and rusted. These "normal channels" are a time-honoured means of channelling off popular resentment. The individual should act, but the apparent ineffectuality of these means disheartens people and they give in to an unhappy apathy. Behind this hopelessness the small nations, and the individual citizens of all nations, harbour a dull but deep resentment towards those who have unwittingly blundered humanity into this terrible predicament.

The resentment of small nations, and of most of us as individuals, is often useless, because we are disunited, dispersed and dissonant. Something is needed to crystallise our opinion that is half-formed and unheard, so that all may stand at once and shout that they have had enough, and that mankind matters.

It has been suggested that if New Zealand threatened to declare war on any nation testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific a situation would be created that would be so astounding and extraordinary that it could achieve just this effect. Extreme as it seems at first, this suggestion does contain the kind of thing people are looking for.

The French tests concern us most at the moment because: They are next on the list; they are in the South Pacific; they are with "unclean" and unsafe bombs; there is the proximity of other Pacific peoples to consider; an indigenous population is being uprooted and its culture destroyed.

It is no argument at all to say we cannot act now because we did not when other nations held nuclear tests. We must wake up some time.

Now what would happen if the New Zealand Government sent naval ships into the test area as a passive protest; a Trafalgar Square sit-down where it matters?

What could the French possibly do? If a Government is involved, the action cannot be dismissed as the work of a few eccentrics (the stock dismissal). What conceivable means could be pursued to remove these ships, and how could they be carried out against an organised quarry determined to foil them? Any such means would have to be an act of aggression and war by France herself.

If this original action of sending ships failed to catch the imagination and support of the world, any such act of piracy by the French certainly would. The ships need not even be in territorial waters, and would not behave aggressively, but peacefully.

The French would be very eager to avoid a situation. We should strive to bring things to a head and so make the issues absolutely clear before it is too late.

Declaration

For two years the French nuclear tests in the Sahara have been one of the burning issues all over independent Africa. What have we heard about it?

Finally, it was only when action was taken by the new Algerian Government that the French decided not to test their bomb in the Sahara.

The Government should also demand that the South Pacific be a nuclear-free zone; but ultimately we want to create a situation that will lead to the end of all nuclear tests, and to disarmament. The idea could well catch the imagination of the New Zealander, who is very conscious of his own ineffectuality and his country's smallness and isolation. It would have the French, and anybody else, in a dilemma that would create a new situation and therefore force the opportunity for a new answer.

This is what we all want, and what we should struggle for.