When Australian high school students walked out against nuclear testing
US President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that the US might resume nuclear weapons testing should be a wake-up call. Only North Korea has tested nuclear weapons this century; no major imperial power has done so since France ended an atomic weapons testing program in the South Pacific in January 1996.
French President Jacques Chirac’s announcement, in June 1995, that his government planned to conduct eight nuclear tests at Mururoa, ending a four-year moratorium, provoked a storm of global protest. Mururoa and its sister atoll Fangataufa, both part of French Polynesia, were subject to a barrage of nearly 200 nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996. Up until 1974, these were atmospheric tests that dispersed radioactive fallout across the South Pacific, including in Fiji, the Cook Islands, Niue, New Zealand, Samoa, Tokelau, Tonga and Tuvalu, according to a 1998 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
French nuclear testing followed a secret program of British nuclear testing in Australia, at the Monte Bello Islands off Western Australia, and at Emu Field and Maralinga in South Australia, between 1952 and 1963. Concurrently, between 1946 and 1958, the United States conducted 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, exposing 52,000 Marshallese to unsafe levels of radiation.
The largest and most militant protests against the 1995 resumption of French nuclear testing took place in Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia in Tahiti, where indigenous Māʼohi have long demanded independence from France. In Australia, high school students were at the forefront of a wave of protests, including the largest high school walkout since the Vietnam War.
Soon after Chirac’s June 1995 announcement, Brisbane anti-nuclear campaigners resolved to organise a 5pm protest in King George Square on each day that the French exploded a nuclear bomb at Mururoa. The first protest occurred on 6 September, following the detonation of an 8-kiloton bomb under Mururoa Atoll.
Protesters condemned the hypocrisy of Paul Keating’s Labor federal government, which opposed the tests but refused to ban the export of uranium to France or to support Polynesian demands for independence. Among the participants were year 11 students from Aspley High School, Leela Cosgrove, Natalie Chapman and Erin Dunn. In an essay published at Medium, Cosgrove explains:
“The protest we attended made us believe that maybe there were other people who cared and wanted change. We thought this experience might be valuable for other students. So, when we returned to school, my friend Erin and I asked to share an update on local protests at our school assembly.”
Aspley High School principal Ian Isaacs not only rejected their request but also gave both students a stern lecture about how “inappropriate” it was for them as high school students to be involved in politics. Isaacs patronisingly demanded to know, “Who put you up to this?” Incensed by the accusation that they had been brainwashed, Cosgrove and Dunn decided to lead a mass student walkout.
The plan was to walk out of school on the following Friday, 8 September, at the beginning of the next whole-of-school assembly. Cosgrove recalls their intention was “to protest both the French nuclear weapons testing, but also to demonstrate to the administration that even though we were teenagers ... we were still political beings with an environmental and social conscience”.
The protest, however, did not go to plan. Instead of entering the school hall from the front door, Isaacs entered from the back, stood on a chair and yelled at students that they should have followed the “right channels”. When students attempted to walk out through the front doors of the hall, they found themselves locked in. In all, ten students defied school authorities and walked out that day. Isaacs promptly informed their parents that the students were suspended for a week. However, Brisbane’s daily newspaper, the Courier Mail, had sent journalists to the school looking for a story and the news soon broke. The students’ suspension became front page news.
When the second bomb was detonated at Fangataufa atoll on 2 October, the socialist youth organisation Resistance called for a mass walkout of state school students on 5 October. The call came in support of an initiative by students at St Rita’s College to hold a rally in King George Square that day. The message was amplified by a Courier Mail front-page headline: “Youth group calls for mass walkout at schools”.
In a vain attempt to divide the high school movement, Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley invited a select group of students from St Rita’s and several other elite private high schools to join him at a Brisbane City Hall meeting on 5 October to voice polite opposition to the nuclear weapons tests. The mayor’s office told the media that security guards would prevent Resistance members from “gatecrashing” the City Hall meeting.
Unperturbed by threats of suspension, thousands of students from 45 high schools heeded Resistance’s call and rallied in King George Square on 5 October. The square had been the site of many militant protests in the 1970s and 1980s, when Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen imposed a ban on marches. According to historian Glenn Davies:
“King George Square was the crucible for the city’s social disquiet and ferment, where thousands of protesters once risked the batons of Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s police force, over issues as diverse as the Vietnam War, the Springbok rugby tour, Aboriginal issues, nuclear disarmament and the right to protest. When the protesters went to walk out of the square, there would be hundreds and hundreds of police in military ranks to stop the marchers. As people tried to step out onto the roadway, they’d be strong-armed to the ground by police who would try to push them back into the square.”
In 1989, 32 years of National Party rule came to an end with the election of Wayne Goss’ Labor government. Mayor Jim Soorley, a key ally of Goss, was determined to return a semblance of order to Brisbane’s city streets. However, the high school protest was anything but “orderly”. One student, Jaay Taylor, captured the mood when he told the cheering crowd, “Pigs can fly, kids don’t have sex and nuclear testing is safe ... not!” Another exposed his bum on stage, declaring, “This is a message for Jacques Chirac!”
When reports were received that security guards at the entrance of the adjoining City Hall were confiscating Resistance placards, leaflets and badges from students trying to enter, the crowd marched towards City Hall chanting, “Join us, join us!” A few students managed to get inside and called on their peers to come outside and join the rally. Hundreds poured out of the building, joining 4,000 angry students in King George Square. The students marched defiantly on (or rather ran towards) the French consulate, chanting, “Burn the flag, burn the building!”, according to a Green Left Weekly report.
When they got there, one student told the crowd that she had smuggled a Resistance placard into City Hall and held it high every time they red-baited Resistance. “They did not mention independence for Tahiti in City Hall”, she said. “They did not mention uranium sales to France. They just kept chanting, ‘All we are saying is give peace a chance’. This is not all we are saying. I’m a member of Resistance and I am saying let’s fight nuclear testing.”
The Courier Mail, however, was not going to let Resistance gain any glory from the protests’ success. Five days later, after planning had begun for another student walkout, the Courier Mail ran an article claiming that six Aspley students had confessed to being “duped” by Resistance. All of the students had faced intense pressure to distance themselves from the socialist youth group, not only from their school administration, but also from the father of two of the students, who was a federal police officer.
The Courier Mail’s hit piece formed part of a hysterical red-scare campaign by Queensland politicians and the media. Reports filtered in that Resistance members were being hauled into the principal’s office for questioning, and Resistance badges were banned on school grounds. Among those leading the charge against Resistance was, shamefully, Ian Mackie, the president of the Queensland Teachers Union.
Nonetheless, the Brisbane protest spurred organising efforts by high school students across the country, with new coalitions being established. Working with these coalitions, Resistance called for a week of action leading up to the third nuclear test at Mururoa, on 28 October. According to Green Left Weekly, 2,000 students from more than 35 high schools took part in protests in Sydney on 25 October, with some students having to scale school gates to get to the rally. Twenty-seven Sydney students were suspended for their participation. In Canberra, 1,000 students reportedly walked out of school on the same day, with 250 rallying in Garema Place. Hundreds of students also took part in rallies in Melbourne and Perth.
The 1995 wave of student revolt had followed dedicated organising among high school students in the early 1990s under the umbrella of the Environmental Youth Alliance. The efforts led to sizeable World Environment Day rallies demanding action on climate change. Brisbane high school students were also at the forefront of another wave of student walkouts in 1998 to protest against Pauline Hanson after she formed the racist One Nation party to contest the coming federal election.
The French nuclear testing protests also drew on the legacy of a strong anti-nuclear campaign in Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s, which had opposed US bases in Australia, visits by nuclear-armed US ships to Australian ports and uranium mining. In 1983, the incoming Labor government had pledged to end uranium mining, but reneged on its promise, allowing three mines to operate.
Today, Australia remains among the top four exporters of uranium globally, principally exporting to Canada, the US and the European Union. The lion’s share of this uranium comes from the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia, which contains the world’s largest deposit of uranium ore. Although the Australian government claims that all exports are to countries that have signed bilateral safeguards agreements, “these [agreements] are self-regulated and the checks and balances are remarkably cursory”, according to Dave Sweeney, co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
The renewed threat of nuclear weapons testing, and the AUKUS plan to service US nuclear-powered submarines in Australian shipyards (and eventually to build them here), requires a new campaign to end the mining and export of Australian uranium once and for all, and to remove Australia from the nuclear fuel cycle.
The high school walkouts 30 years ago provide an inspiring example of young people taking a stand to safeguard their future.
