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Grassroots Transnationalism(s): Franco-German Opposition to Nuclear Energy in the 1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2016

ANDREW TOMPKINS*
Affiliation:
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, Lehrstuhl für die Geschichte Westeuropas und der transatlantischen Beziehungen, Unter den Linden 6, D-10099Berlin; andrew.tompkins@geschichte.hu-berlin.de

Abstract

During the 1970s opposition to nuclear energy was present in countries around the world and thus eminently ‘transnational’. But what did it mean to participate at the grassroots of such a transnational movement and (how) did cross-border connections change protest? This article answers these questions by differentiating three categories of transnational engagement that were accessible to grassroots activists. ‘Thinking transnationally’ involved extrapolating from, decontextualising and recontextualising limited information in order to rethink one's own situation. ‘Acting transnationally’ entailed accessing transnational spaces; it therefore required more mobility, but could be useful as a means of challenging and deconstructing state power. Intermediaries at the grassroots engaged in ‘being transnational’, which affected their personal and political identities as well as life histories. These examples of transnational agency illustrate how grassroots activists, including some without vast wealth or institutional resources, participated in transnational processes in ways that enriched, but also complicated protest.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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References

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15 The motivations of – and tensions between – anti-nuclear protesters are discussed in further detail in Tompkins, Andrew, Better Active than Radioactive! Anti-Nuclear Protest in 1970s France and West Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016 forthcoming)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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18 Many of the processes described below were as much translocal as they were transnational, but gained greatly in symbolic significance when they crossed state boundaries. Transnational communication across dramatic cultural differences could also take place within a shared language, as it did for Gandhian pacifists in India and the United States. See Chabot, Sean, ‘Framing, Transnational Diffusion, and African-American Intellectuals in the Land of Gandhi’, International Review of Social History, 49, Supplement (2004), 1940, here 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 More often, European institutions were targets of protest, sometimes by nuclear opponents within their ranks, such as Petra Kelly. However, the ‘Europe from below’ to which many grassroots activists referred was defined in explicit opposition to such institutions, which funded nuclear projects and fostered police cooperation. French and German activists often referred to ‘Europe’ primarily in the narrower sense of post-war reconciliation. The early anti-nuclear movement's transnationalism and (lack of) engagement with ‘Europe’ thus differed considerably from those of subsequent Green parties. See Milder, Stephen, ‘Between Grassroots Activism and Transnational Aspirations: Anti-Nuclear Protest from the Rhine Valley to the Bundestag, 1974–1983’, Historical Social Research, 39, 1 (2014), 191211Google Scholar; Meyer, Jan-Henrik, ‘“Where do we go from Wyhl?” Transnational Anti-Nuclear Protest targeting European and International Organizations in the 1970s’, Historical Social Research, 39, 1 (2014), 212–35Google Scholar. See also the denunciations of ‘the Europe of Schmidt and Giscard’ and calls to create, ‘after the Europe of parliamentarians,. . .the Europe of struggles and the Europe of peoples’ in Arbeiterkampf/l’étincelle, 29 April 1977 and ‘Larzac en RFA’ (folder), Joseph Pineau private archives, Millau.

20 This is not to say that ‘European’ or ‘global’ anti-nuclear movements can be reduced to the experiences of activists in France and West Germany, where protest was in many ways more intense than elsewhere. However, I do argue that the insights gained from studying transnational relationships between activists in these two countries are more broadly applicable, even well beyond Western Europe. For a systematic sociological comparison of anti-nuclear movements in eighteen countries, see Kolb, Felix, Protest and Opportunities: The Political Outcomes of Social Movements (Frankfurt: Campus, 2007), 193237Google Scholar.

21 See, for example, the newspaper articles, informal studies and scientific reports from France, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands brought together in Esther Peter-Davis, Annique Albrecht and Françoise Bucher, Fessenheim: vie ou mort de l’Alsace (Saales: schmitt-lucos, 1971). On counter-expertise, see Topçu, Sezin, ‘Nucléaire : de l’engagement « savant » aux contre-expertises associatives’, Natures Sciences Sociétés, 14, 3 (2006), 249–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 ‘Contre-campagne antinucléaire’, 1 Oct. 1976, 1391 W 18, Archives départementales (AD) du Haut-Rhin, Colmar.

23 AG Katastrophenplan, Fessenheim Katastrophenplan (1977); écologie et survie, Plan ORSEC allemand (1977).

24 See, for example, Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg, ‘Kritischer Reisebericht. . .zu den Wiederaufarbeitungsanlagen Karlsruhe und Cap de la Hague’, 16–18 May 1977, SBe 730 (box 1), Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Hamburg.

25 Sociologists usually explain this sort of transnational thinking in terms of ‘diffusion’, while historians prefer to speak of ‘transfer’ or ‘influence’. However, these terms poorly describe long-term, recurring, multi-directional exchanges among shifting sets of actors in disparate national spaces. I thus refer below instead to a ‘transnational learning process’. On diffusion within protest movements, see Chabot, ‘Transnational Diffusion’; Kenney, Padraic, ‘Opposition Networks and Transnational Diffusion in the Revolutions of 1989’, in Horn, Gerd-Rainer and Kenney, Padraic, eds., Transnational Moments of Change: Europe 1945, 1968, 1989 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 207–23Google Scholar; McAdam, Doug and Rucht, Dieter, ‘The Cross-National Diffusion of Movement Ideas’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 528, July (1993), 5674CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On more long-term learning processes, see Scalmer, Gandhi in the West.

26 The same was true of squatters’ movements. See Müller-Münch, Ingrid, Prosinger, Wolfgang, Rosenbladt, Sabine and Stibler, Linda, Besetzung – weil das Wünschen nicht geholfen hat (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1981)Google Scholar.

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29 Regional identities contributed to the particular strength of anti-nuclear and environmental protest across France, most notably in Alsace, Brittany and Occitanie. They were also a factor in protest mobilisation in parts of West Germany, such as South Baden and Wendland.

30 Marie-Reine Haug and Raymond Schirmer, Interview, 17 Apr. 2010; ‘Le Larzac rencontre l’Alsace à Marckolsheim’, 1974, 24416, Archiv Soziale Bewegungen, Freiburg.

31 On ‘legend’ in transnational protest, see Kenney, ‘Opposition Networks’, 210–11.

32 Joanne Sheehan and Eric Bachman, ‘Seabrook – Wyhl – Marckolsheim: Transnational Links in a Chain of Campaigns’, War Resisters’ International, available at http://www.wri-irg.org/node/5182 (last visited 20 Febuary 2015). Within social movements, information usually flows through multiple channels, so these contacts are likely not the only relevant ones, and they may or may not have been the most important.

33 Bedford, Henry F., Seabrook Station: Citizen Politics and Nuclear Power (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 77Google Scholar.

34 Gorleben-Handbuch für Trainings zur Besetzung der Bohrstelle 1004, new edn (1980).

35 See Günter Zint, ed., Republik Freies Wendland. Eine Dokumentation (1980).

36 Protests against the expansion of Frankfurt airport (Startbahn West), for example, continued to develop these ideas.

37 This arguably still holds true today, in spite of sometimes euphoric assessments of the internet's role in the so-called ‘Arab spring’ of 2011.

38 One non-violent activist in Wyhl conceded that ‘we might not have reoccupied the site if some among us hadn't shown themselves to be aggressive, but I’m certain we could largely have avoided the violence that did occur’. ‘Wyhl – l’enjeu nucléaire’, Ionix 10, Mar. 1975, 28.

39 ‘Brokdorf’, Super-Pholix 12, [June] 1977, 18; ‘Brokdorf: c’était pas mal hein!’, Super-Pholix 13, [July] 1977, 4.

40 Jean Moalic, Interview, 29 Sept. 2010. See also Porhel, Vincent, Ouvriers bretons. Conflits d’usines, conflits identitaires en Bretagne dans les années 1968 (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 232–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simon, Gilles, Plogoff: l’apprentissage de la mobilisation sociale (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2010), 262–80Google Scholar; Conan, Renée and Laurent, Annie, Femmes de Plogoff, 2010 republished edn (Baye: La Digitale, 1981), 2831Google Scholar.

41 Plogoff: Eine Einführung in die Guerillataktik des bretonischen Dorfes Plogoff im Widerstand gegen den Atomwahn (Hamburg, 1981); Le Diournon, Théo, Cabon, André, de Lignières, Guy, Perazzi, Jean-Charles, Thefaine, Jean and Yonnet, Daniel, Plogoff-la-Révolte (Plonéor Lanvern: le signor, 1980)Google Scholar.

42 Gildea, Robert and Tompkins, Andrew, ‘The Transnational in the Local: The Larzac plateau as a site of transnational activism since 1970’, Journal of Contemporary History, 50, 3 (2015), 581606CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 596–98. See also Kenney, ‘Opposition Networks’, 210.

43 If, as Luhmann argues, communication can be instructively regarded as ‘improbable’, this is all the more true for transnational communication. See Nehring, ‘National Internationalists’, 561.

44 ‘Wer Malville vergisst macht Mist!!’ (unidentified clipping), 1977, Ordner ‘AKW+Widerstand’, ‘Malville 77’, Archiv Aktiv, Hamburg.

45 ‘Compte-rendu de la réunion du 27.10.74’, Le ‘Que Voulons Nous’! 1, 1974, 2–3; ‘Bericht über die Versammlung am 27.10.1974’, Was Wir Wollen 1, 1974, 2–3.

46 Robert Joachim, Interview, 23 Apr. 2010.

47 See for example Gildea, Robert, Mark, James and Pas, Niek, ‘European Radicals and the ‘Third World’: Imagined Solidarities and Radical Networks, 1958–1973’, Cultural and Social History, 8, 4 (2011), 449–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fink, Carole, Gassert, Philipp and Junker, Detlef, eds., 1968: A World Transformed (Washington, DC: German Historical Institute, 1998), 3, 1415, 21–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ehrenreich, Barbara and Ehrenreich, John, Long March, Short Spring: The Student Uprising at Home and Abroad (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969)Google Scholar.

48 These are but a few of the factors traditionally identified by social scientists to explain differences in protest and its outcomes. See Kitschelt, Herbert, ‘Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest: Anti-Nuclear Movements in Four Democracies’, British Journal of Political Science, 16, 1 (1986), 5785CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kolb, Protest and Opportunities.

49 Unterelbe, Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz, Brokdorf: Der Bauplatz muß wieder zur Wiese werden! (Hamburg: Association, 1977), 135Google Scholar. This follows the pattern by which identification ‘precipitates locals to transform what had been a highly localised battle into one particular front in the general struggle.’ Nicholls, ‘Place, Networks, Space’, 87.

50 Padraic Kenney, drawing on Vacláv Havel's concept of ‘living in truth’, argues that Polish protesters took an important step towards overthrowing communism by imagining themselves ‘as if in Europe’. See Kenney, Carnival of Revolution, 93–94.

51 Like liminality, transnational thinking ‘breaks, as it were, the cake of custom and enfranchises speculation’. Turner, Victor, ‘Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage’, in The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), 93111Google Scholar, here 106.

52 In this sense, it differs considerably from translocal action within one country.

53 As the numbers for Malville indicate, police and organiser estimates often differed greatly. Gilbert Roy, ‘Rapport’, 5 Aug. 1977, 6857 W 36, AD Isère, Grenoble; ‘60 000 sous la pluie’, Super-Pholix 14, Aug. 1977, 1; Kommunistischer Bund, Kalkar am 24.9. (1977), 2.

54 On ‘pilgrimage’, see Kenney, ‘Opposition Networks’, 211–14. The focus on being concerné or betroffen was central to the anti-nuclear movement's pattern of organisation, which depended on place-based solidarities to anchor the broader cause and structure activists’ relationship to it in space. See Nicholls, ‘Place, Networks, Space’, 79–83. Protest actions by the later movement against nuclear weapons in the 1980s shared a similar goal but went largely in the opposite direction, trying to make the broad, abstract threat of nuclear war relevant within local spaces. See Schregel, Susanne, Der Atomkrieg vor der Wohnungstür: eine Politikgeschichte der neuen Friedensbewegung in der Bundesrepublik 1970–1985 (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2011), 920Google Scholar.

55 Gildea, Mark and Pas, ‘European Radicals’, 453–4. My use of this term is not pejorative, as Jobs argues it was to contemporaries in the late 1960s. See Jobs, Richard I., ‘Youth Movements: Travel, Protest, and Europe in 1968’, American Historical Review, 114, 2 (2009), 376404CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 403. For a related example with more positive connotations, see ‘malville, naussac, larzac: le tourisme social marque des points’, GO/CNV 171, 18 Aug. 1977, 1.

56 Activists claimed that, after trying several other methods, they managed to smuggle illegal conscientious objectors across the border by hiding them within a ‘carrousel’ of other participants walking back and forth (legally, with passports displayed) between the French and German checkpoints in order to confuse border guards. ‘Donnez-nous notre flicaille quotidienne’, GO/CNV 167, 21 July 1977, 2–3.

57 ‘Arthur’ (pseud. Henri Montant), ‘Haguenau-Larzac, via Malville: la racaille écologique est en marche’, GO/CNV 160, 2 June 1977, 7.

58 René Jannin, prefect of Isère at the time, stated at a press conference the night before the demonstration that ‘for the second time, Morestel is occupied by the Germans’. Quoted in Le Monde, 2 August 1977, 1.

59 Eleven Germans, two Swiss and six French citizens were arrested. Of these, five Germans and one French citizen were ultimately sentenced to prison terms of three to six months.

60 See Aujourd’hui Malville, demain la France, (Claix: La Pensée sauvage, 1978), 167; ‘Die Eiferer’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 Aug. 1977.

61 CRS (riot police) units reported that they used 295 GLI (exploding tear gas) and 885 CB (Chlorobenzalmalononitrile, also known as CS gas) grenades as well as 116 ‘grenades’ (i.e. grenades offensives, or stun grenades). Gendarmerie Mobile units were also present, but their separate report does not include munitions statistics. Roger Roustang [Commandant CRS de Lyon], ‘Rapport technique de fin de service’, 1977, 19850718 art. 25, Archives nationales, Fontainebleau.

62 Bernard Dréano, Interview, 20 Jan. 2010.

63 See Tompkins, Andrew, ‘Transnationality as a Liability? The Anti-Nuclear Movement at Malville’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire/Belgisch Tijdschrift voor Filologie en Geschiedenis, 89, 3–4 (2011), 1365–80Google Scholar, here 1377–78.

64 This is most often described in terms of a ‘boomerang effect’, whereby NGOs in more powerful countries help ‘less developed’ allies by lobbying their own governments to pressure the original offending state. (The assumed hierarchy is analogous to that between ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’ in some models of transfer history.) However, this model does not fit well for 1970s grassroots anti-nuclear activists, many of whom eschewed lobbying in favour of confrontational protest, and who, in France and West Germany, faced pro-nuclear states of similar stature that collaborated in developing nuclear technology. Keck, Margaret E. and Sikkink, Kathryn, ‘Transnational advocacy networks in international and regional politics’, International Social Science Journal, 51, 159 (1999), 89101CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lässig, ‘Übersetzungen in der Geschichte’, 193; Tauer, Sandra, Störfall für die gute Nachbarschaft? Deutsche und Franzosen auf der Suche nach einer gemeinsamen Energiepolitik (1973–1980) (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2012)Google Scholar.

65 Sheehan, James J., ‘The Problem of Sovereignty in European History’, American Historical Review, 111, 1 (2006), 115, here 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Mireille Caselli, Interview, 12 Apr. 2010; Mireille Caselli, ‘Radio Grün Fessenheim’, in Christoph Büchele, Irmgard Schneider and Bernd Nössler, eds., Wyhl – Der Widerstand geht weiter (Freiburg: Dreisam-Verlag, 1982), 53–6.

67 Collin, Claude, Écoutez la vraie différence! Radio verte Fessenheim, radio S.O.S. emploi-Longwy et les autres (Claix: La Pensée sauvage, 1979), 48–9Google Scholar.

68 « Jean », Elsass. Kolonie in Europa, 2nd edn (Berlin: Wagenbach, 1976), 6–8.

69 ‘Manifestation à Fessenheim. . .’, 7 Apr. 1971, 1391 W 17, Marche sur Fessenheim, AD Haut-Rhin, Colmar.

70 Though no reliable numbers are available, several separate incidents involving French and Dutch activists are noted in ‘Wir, das Volk. . .’ Eine Dokumentation (Köln: Graphischer Betrieb Henke, 1977), 34–6; Kommunistischer Bund, Kalkar am 24.9., 28–32.

71 See the map in Rucht, Von Wyhl nach Gorleben, 294.

72 The ‘passports’ declared that bearers did not regard as theirs ‘a state which does not guarantee the inviolability of its people in body, mind, and soul, which cannot retain the natural equilibrium between humans, plants, animals and minerals; which clings to the deadly misunderstanding that domestic and international security can be produced by weapons and uniforms. . .’. Quoted in Müller-Münch, Prosinger, Rosenbladt and Stibler, Besetzung, 162.

73 See Hertle, Wolfgang, ‘Hart an der Grenze’, in Buro, Andreas, Geschichten aus der Friedensbewegung (Köln: hbo-druck, 2005), 93–5Google Scholar; ‘Aktion an der Grenze beendet’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 9 July 1983; Ehmke, Wolfgang, Zwischenschritte. Die Anti-Atomkraft-Bewegung zwischen Gorleben und Wackersdorf (Köln: Kölner Volksblatt-Verlag, 1987), 100Google Scholar.

74 ‘Handlungen der “Demonstranten”’, 27 Jan. 1982, no. 23–31, DVH 48/138758, BArch, Freiburg.

75 ‘Beendigung der Besetzung. . .’, (telex), 8 July 1983, no. 60, DVH 48/139083, BArch, Freiburg. When the Gorleben site was planned in 1977, the East German state publicly kept quiet so as not to jeopardise its own site for radioactive waste along the border in Morsleben (in spite of concern that 81 per cent of the population within 50 kilometres of Gorleben lived on GDR territory). ‘Vorgehen gegenüber der BRD. . .’, 16 Jan. 1978, no. 201–209, DY 30/3128, BArch, Berlin.

76 ‘Castor so lang wie noch nie unterwegs’, tageszeitung, 28 Nov. 2011.

77 This was a slogan of both the French and West German movements: ‘ni ici, ni ailleurs’ and ‘nicht hier und auch nicht anderswo!’

78 In May 1978 Didier invited artists Iri and Toshi Maruki to display their paintings about Hiroshima in Cherbourg and speak to local anti-nuclear groups.

79 Didier Anger, Interview, 22 Sept. 2010.

80 On multi-sited protest by sailors in the eighteenth century, see Featherstone, David, ‘Towards the Relational Construction of Militant Particularisms: Or Why the Geographies of Past Struggles Matter for Resistance to Neoliberal Globalisation’, Antipode, 37, 2 (2005), 250–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 255.

81 See, for example, Gilcher-Holtey, Ingrid, ‘Der Transfer zwischen den Studentenbewegungen von 1968 und die Entstehung einer transnationalen Gegenöffentlichkeit’, in Kaelble, Hartmut, Kirsch, Martin and Schmidt-Gernig, Alexander, eds., Transnationale Öffentlichkeiten im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt: Campus, 2002), 303–25Google Scholar, here 313–15; Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, Le grand bazar (Paris: P. Belfond, 1975), 5162Google Scholar; Milder, Stephen, ‘Thinking Globally, Acting (Trans-)Locally: Petra Kelly and the Transnational Roots of West German Green Politics’, Contemporary European History, 43(2010), 301–26Google Scholar; Kirchhof, Astrid Mignon, ‘Spanning the Globe: West-German Support for the Australian Anti-Nuclear Movement’, Historical Social Research, 39, 1 (2014), 254–73Google Scholar.

82 See Kenney, Carnival of Revolution, 109.

83 On the potential of transnational connections to ‘unsettle’ identities, see Featherstone, ‘Relational Construction of Militant Particularisms’, 267–8.

84 See Zahra, Tara, ‘The “Minority Problem” and National Classification in the French and Czechoslovak Borderlands’, Contemporary European History, 17, 2 (2008), 137–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85 « Jean », Elsass, 95.

86 Jean-Jacques Rettig, ‘Elsass: Umweltgeschichte, Familiengeschichte und Regionalgeschichte’, available at http://www.bund-rvso.de/rettig-umweltgeschichte.html (last visited 2 May 2015).

87 s’ Weschpenäscht. Die Chronik von Wyhl (1972–1982), film, 111 mins (1982).

88 Jean-Jacques Rettig, Interview, 19 Apr. 2010.

89 Ginette Skandrani, Interview, 11 Jan. 2010.

90 Bernadette Ridard, Interview, 25 Aug. 2010.

91 Among those interviewed for this project, Günter Hopfenmüller of the Kommunistischer Bund and Bernard Dréano of the Organisation communiste des travailleurs had extensive transnational contacts through ‘Third World’ solidarity work that sometimes overlapped with their anti-nuclear activities.

92 Wolfgang Hertle, Interview, 22 July 2010.

93 Hertle, Wolfgang, Larzac, 1971–1981. Der gewaltfreie Widerstand gegen die Erweiterung eines Truppenübungsplatzes in Süd-Frankreich (Kassel-Bettenhausen: Weber Zucht & Co., 1982)Google Scholar.

94 Hervé Ott, Interview, 18 Sept. 2010.

95 Hertle, Interview.

96 See ‘Le Cun du Larzac’ (box), Archiv Aktiv, Hamburg.

97 On transcultural contact in post-war West Germany, see especially Davis, ‘A Whole World Opening Up’.

98 Conny Baade, Interview, 19 Sept. 2010.

99 Something analogous can be seen in some East Germans’ memories of Poland as a ‘window to the West’ or as a place representative of the wider world. See Logemann, Daniel, Das polnische Fenster: Deutsch-polnische Kontakte im staatssozialistischen Alltag Leipzigs 1972–1989 (München: Oldenbourg, 2012), 2530Google Scholar.

100 In a similar manner, West German opponents of the Vietnam War had established ties with American activists through official student exchanges. See Klimke, Martin, The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

101 Caselli, Interview.

102 Kirchhof, Astrid Mignon and Meyer, Jan-Henrik, ‘Global Protest against Nuclear Power. Transfer and Transnational Exchange in the 1970s and 1980s’, Historical Social Research, 39, 1 (2014), 165–90Google Scholar. The same authors very rightly point out that more attention needs to be paid to the ‘scope and relevance of transnational exchange’ rather than merely to identifying and ‘emphasising the existence of transnational connections’.