Meetings with Mururoa: Australian opposition to nuclear testing in the Pacific

 Last week, the French parliament admitted for the first time that France had strong-armed its Pacific colonies into accepting close to 200 dangerous nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996.[1] The admission comes after more than sixty years of anti-nuclear activism and advocacy, in which Australian has played a major role. In this Omeka exhibit we will examine two very different archival sources to tell the story of the Australian campaign against French nuclear testing in the Pacific.   

 Background information

In 1962, France moved their nuclear testing program from the newly independent Algeria to French Polynesian islands Mururoa and Fangataufa, located off Tahiti. The move sparked a long oppositional campaign in Australia, where both government officials and grassroots environmental and pacifist groups argued strongly against the dangerous testing practices. Many of these groups continue their anti-nuclear activism today, including the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, the International Campaign To Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Australian Greens, Friends of the Earth Australia, and Greenpeace Australia Pacific.

 In 1974, under pressure from efforts by Australia and New Zealand in the International to curtail French nuclear development, France announced it would now conduct tests only underground, in what was considered a victory for the anti-nuclear movement in Australia.[2] Protests broke out again however in 1985, when French intelligence agents sunk Greenpeace protest boat the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, killing an onboard photographer.[3] After extensive international protest, France started a testing moratorium in 1991. When, in 1996, newly elected French President Jacques Chriac began nuclear testing once again, he sparked worldwide, especially in Australia where opinion polls indicated that 92% of people were opposed to the tests in their ‘backyard.’[4]

One side of the story: Rolf Heimann preparing his yacht La Flor to sail into anti-nuclear test site at Mururoa.

This photo, from printer, photographer and peace activist John Ellis’ collection in the University of Melbourne Archives, provides one valuable perspective on Australian opposition to French nuclear testing in the Pacific. Ellis’ photographs document the activism of progressive organisations like the Movement against Uranium Mining and the Campaign for International Cooperation and Disarmament. Here, Ellis has photographed fellow activist and writer Rolf Heimann, who in 1974 sailed the boat La Flor to Mururoa in protest of the French nuclear testing there. Although he arrived at Murumoa after the final atmospheric test had already occurred, Heimann spent two years sailing the Pacific, resulting in a book called Knocking on Heaven’s Door published by Friends of the Earth in 1978.[5]

Apart from documenting events at a basic level, photographs are rich in ‘layers of meaning’, often conveying how the subjects want to be portrayed or represented, as well as the photographer’s own understandings of the event, objects, or people being photographed.[6] So, for example, this photo of Rolf Heimann conveys not only the fact of his departure, but also the value placed on the moment by Heimann in posing for it, and by Ellis in his photographing, printing and archiving of it. Elisabeth Kaplan has written that ‘the archival record doesn’t just happen; it is created by individuals and organizations, and used...to support their values and missions.’[7] In this case, Ellis has archived his photographs in order to preserve and pass on his and his fellow activists’ mission of environmental protection.

[1] ‘France Finally Faces up to Polynesian Nuclear Legacy’, Newshub, 26 May 2019, sec. World, https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2019/05/france-finally-faces-up-to-polynesian-nuclear-legacy.html.

[2] Robert Milliken and Tony Barber, ‘Not in Our Back Yard, Jacques...’, The Independent, 8 August 1995, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/not-in-our-back-yard-jacques-1595257.html.

[3] ‘Opposition to French Nuclear Testing 1960s-90s · Nuclear Weapons in Australia & the Pacific · Australian Living Peace Museum’, accessed 25 May 2019, http://www.livingpeacemuseum.org.au/omeka/exhibits/show/nuclear-weapons-in-aus-pacific/opposition-french-testing.

[4] ‘Opposition to French Nuclear Testing 1960s-90s · Nuclear Weapons in Australia & the Pacific · Australian Living Peace Museum’; ‘Not in Our Back Yard, Jacques...’

[5] ‘Rolf Heimann (1940-) Biography - Personal, Career, Member, Honors Awards, Writings, Sidelights’, accessed 27 May 2019, https://biography.jrank.org/pages/1864/Heimann-Rolf-1940.html.

[6] Marianne Hirsch, The Familial Gaze (Hanover: Dartmouth College and University Press of New England, 1995), xvi.

[7] Elisabeth Kaplan, ‘We Are What We Collect, We Collect What We Are: Archives and the Construction of Identity,’ American Archivist 63(2000): 126, 147, cited in David Lowenthal, ‘Archives, Heritage, and History’, in Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar (University of Michigan Press, 2006), 200..

Another side of the story: Transcript of radio broadcast, ‘French nuclear testing in the Pacific...’

Figure 2 University of Melbourne Archives, Malcolm Fraser Collection, 2005.0072, 2005.0072.00043, Transcript of radio broadcast, 2 July 1972- 4 July 1972.

Photographic evidence from activist sources is one way we can read the story of Australian anti-nuclear resistance. Another point of access is via government and prime ministerial records, which can give insight into the interaction between grassroots campaigning and policy responses at an official level. In 2004, ex-Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser made the University of Melbourne Archives the official custodian of his personal papers, including much material relating to his political life.[1] This transcript of a radio broadcast by Fraser from 1972 sheds light on his government’s response to public outrage over French nuclear testing in the Pacific.  Speaking as the Minister for Education and Science under Liberal Prime Minister William McMahon, Fraser begins with an anecdote from his recent visit to Warrnambool High School, when ‘a group of students handed me a petition against the French nuclear tests in the Pacific.’ After praising the political awareness of these young people, Fraser spends the rest of this half of the speech defending the McMahon government’s record in regard to nuclear testing against what he calls ‘a misconception that the Australian Government has been slow to react to the French tests, as if we had only just discovered they were being held.’[2] The speech, propagandistic as it may be, goes some way to filling out the other side to the story of Australian anti-nuclear testing opposition, in which successive Australian governments were deeply engaged. For example, Fraser reminds listeners of the Australian government’s ratification of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, and also asserts that Prime Minister McMahon had been the ‘first country this year’ to protest against the escalating French tests in the Pacific.[3]

As a record of a public broadcast, we need to assess this source with an awareness of its purposes: Fraser clearly had an interest in reassuring voters of his government’s commitment to contesting unsafe nuclear tests in Australia’s region. However, the fact that the minister felt it was necessary to make such a public reassurance gives us an insight into the importance of such an issue to the Australian public and its leaders.

But is it true?

In recent decades, archives have lost their status as sites of unedited historical truth. [4] There is a growing awareness that, in the words of historian Antoinette Burton, ‘archives do not simply arrive or emerge fully formed.[5] Even in preparing this presentation of archival material I was highly aware of the subjective, selective way I chose from what David Lowenthal has called the ‘endless corridors’ of information available in the archives (the Malcolm Fraser collection is at least 100 metres long.)[6] The emotional pull of photos depicting Australians fighting for a cause I personally care about, as well as the interest inspired seeing the Malcolm Fraser collection in its entirety where the University of Melbourne Archives are stored, bring to mind the ‘unconscious work of history’ identified by Michael Roper, making it clear that my own limited selections here, much like the archives as a whole, cannot claim to convey a whole and true story.[7] 

These considerations do not, however, means we should abandon the project of archival history. Indeed, we need only look to the fact that it was the 2013 declassification of French Ministry of Defence documents that revealed the full extent of radioactive fallout in Polynesia and thus justified claims for apology and compensation, to see that that archived material, when accessible and shared, retains its capacity for impactful historical truth-telling.[8]

[1] Gavin Younger, ‘About’, University of Melbourne Archives, 17 May 2018, https://archives.unimelb.edu.au/explore/collections/malcolmfraser/about.

[2] The second half of the speech concerns

[3] ‘Nuclear Disarmament’, Museums Victoria Collections, accessed 27 May 2019, https://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/articles/2827.

[4] David Lowenthal, ‘Archives, Heritage, and History’, in Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory: Essays from the Sawyer Seminar (University of Michigan Press, 2006), 193.

[5] Antoinette Burton, ed. Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 6-7.

[6] Lowenthal, ‘Archives, Heritage, and History’, 196; Younger, ‘About’.

[7] Michael Roper, ‘The Unconscious Work of History’, Cultural and Social History 11, no. 2 (June 2014): 171.

[8] Angelique Chrisafis, ‘French Nuclear Tests “Showered Vast Area of Polynesia with Radioactivity”’, The Guardian, 3 July 2013, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/03/french-nuclear-tests-polynesia-declassified.