“I'm feeling rather stalled out” a Greenpeace activist said to me recently, “I really want to dress up as a chicken and invade McDonalds”. As ever, I only remembered the response whilst travelling home. The first is that it is possible to dress up and do stalls. The second is that there's lots you can do for Greenpeace without doing the Non Violent Direct Action training. Not just stalls but demos, MP lobbying, film showings, public meetings and, perhaps most interesting of all, debates.
Battersea and Wandsworth TUC organised a debate on nuclear power as part of their program to build a Red / Green alliance. The speakers were Ben Ayliffe from Greenpeace arguing against, a spokesperson from the Nuclear Industry Association arguing for, and a trade unionist supporting both sides. About 60 people attended of whom, based on a straw poll, one quarter supported nuclear, one half opposed and the rest were undecided. Based on the floor speeches there seemed to be an equal mix of Red trade unionists and Green environmentalists, but red / green is not a distinction I like. After all, what happens if, like me you are a member both of Greenpeace and a trade union. Does that make you red, or green, or yellow?
And it was a very high quality debate with issues such as nuclear waste, safety, cost, reliability and nuclear weapons all raised, and all intelligently debated by both sides. What Greenpeace thinks about all these issues you can find out here, and what the Nuclear Industry Association thinks I'm sure you can find via your favourite search engine.
The issue that surfaced again and again, was that of an energy mix. The Nuclear Industry Association was arguing that nuclear was a valuable tool as part of an energy mix to help stop climate change. Greenpeace argues that far from being a valuable tool, nuclear was a spanner in the works. And, based on the straw poll taken at the end of the meeting, most people agreed with us.
But I think the most important issue was the one I made in my own speech (modesty, you understand, is a central attribute for all Greenpeace activists). It is important to have the debate on nuclear power, but it's also important to act on what we believe. So to everyone who came to that debate and thought what Greenpeace said made sense, please join our group. Then we get to not only debate a better world, we get to go out and build one. Come on, don't be a chicken.
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