Waves of Compassion

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The French finally backed down from their atmospheric nuclear tests in the South Pacific as the Americans had done at Amchitka. Japan and the Soviet Union were isolated at the IWC, and we eventually won a moratorium on pelagic whaling. The Canadian seal hunt was halted. We launched campaigns against supertankers and trophy hunting in BC, against nuclear power plants in Canada and the U.S., and against Trident nuclear submarines in Washington State. A fellow we'd never heard of, Joe Healy, climbed the Chicago Sears Tower and hung a 'Greenpeace' banner protesting the whale hunt. The Greenpeace office in London went after the Icelandic whalers with a boat named Rainbow Warrior, and we were working with the Lakota and Hopi Indians in the U.S. in their land claims struggles.

Greenpeace groups were forming everywhere, in England, France, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and throughout the U.S. and Canada. By 1979 the consolidated groups were raising over $12 million, and rivalries, splinter groups, and outright frauds were fracturing the loosely-knit organization. Gannon and our lawyers put together an affiliation contract, which some groups signed and some groups refused to sign. Internal tensions were high.

'In 1978 and early 1979 there were two meetings in Vancouver to try to develop a constitution for GP internationally,' recalls Patrick Moore, who was Greenpeace Foundation president at the time. 'The second meeting ended with the San Francisco group walking out. We had to file a lawsuit against them to protect the Greenpeace trademark.

McTaggart came to Vancouver in the summer of 1979 with a proposal to settle the turmoil. I spoke with him one night at my home in Kitsilano. 'Look,' he said, 'this thing can't be run out of Vancouver anymore. The headquarters should be in Europe. The European groups are well organized. There's a million dollars sitting in a bank account in Amsterdam. You know the scams that hucksters are perpetrating under the name. The U.S. wants autonomy from the Canadian group. The only solution is a Greenpeace International, with each country getting a vote.' There was some resistance in Vancouver, particularly with dividing Greenpeace along national boundaries, but in the end, Hunter backed the McTaggart plan, appealed to reason, and swung the vote.

'McTaggart was the only one who could pull all the groups together,' Hunter recalls, 'because he was just a smarter politician than anyone else, he had campaign credibility, and business savvy.' On October 14, 1979 we signed an agreement in lawyer Davie Gibbons' Vancouver office establishing Greenpeace International. In November we met in Amsterdam with Greenpeace representatives from Canada, the U.S., France, Germany, Denmark, U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. McTaggart was elected as the Executive Director. Throughout the meetings, The Rainbow Warrior sat majestically in Amsterdam Harbour, rainbow flags flying.

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