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UK: Greenpeace raid

01 May 1995

Ministry of Defence police raided the headquarters of the environmental group Greenpeace in May. About fifty policemen descended on the offices, in Islington north London, and seized computer records and documents belonging to the group. The raids followed two actions by Greenpeace in April when about 250 demonstrators stormed nuclear establishments in a protest against plutonium production. In one of the protests, at the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons establishment, in Berkshire, they cut off a 12-mile pipeline that carries effluent - contaminated with minute quantities of plutonium - into the River Thames. The protestors filled an inspection hatch with concrete and welded it shut. Sixty-one people were arrested for participating in the protests at Aldermaston and at the Sellafield processing plant in Cumbria. Following the incidents the MOD police dismissed them as a minor, but they now say they amounted to criminal damage. It is thought that the delay in taking any action against Greenpeace was to avoid publicity during the nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York. Other groups targeted recently include the Green Anarchist group which was raided in March by the Hampshire Special Branch and had their computer files confiscated, and the Freedom Network which lost a data base in mysterious circumstances. Guardian 18.4.95, 18 & 20.5.95.