Sargent Up In Arms

Asked to list key areas in which the environment is endangered and to name the main offenders, Trevor Sargent becomes clearly agitated. "Don’t you see that even by asking that question you are feeding into the notion that the Green Party is a single issue party" he says. "Yes we are, of course, deeply concerned about the environment but in a holistic sense, within the context of a political philosophy which covers all issues.

Point taken. And there is no doubt that the question of political identity is the core issue which will determine the future of the Green Party in Ireland. At a time when most political parties are lining up mirrors of leinster House, staring hard into them and asking themselves "who the hell are we and where do we go from here?", few are suffering the post-election-shift-to-Labour aftershock to quite the same degree as the Greens.

And yet while politicians engage themselves in this process of redefinition, environmental problems escalate by the day. This rate of escalation will clearly be accelerated if the Green Party, fearful of being perceived as nothing more than an environmental party, steps back, even a millimetre from their high-profile public commitment on issues such as Sellafield.

Indeed it was the issue of Sellafield, as well as the core belief that "growth economics must give way to sustainable economics" which led to the Green Party to declare in the Dail on the day of the Taoiseach’s election that it "would have an insurmountable problem in supporting Deputy Albert Reynolds for that post".

During his speech, the newly-elected North Dublin T.D., Trevor Sargent, clarified his party’s position on the subject. "Every day", he said "when I see Greeens standing out in the wintry weather, asking people to write to Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Pollution in an attempt to prevent THORP (Sellafield 2) coming into operation, I think of Mr. Reynolds and the way he gave the go-ahead for £3 billion of EC funds in 1990 to be made available for Nuclear Reprocessing plants, including THORP".

It was, it must be said, a fairly damning indictment.

Joe Jackson: Is Albert Reynolds evil incarnate to the Greens, the last person you want to see leading the Government.

Trevor Sargent: (laughs) He’s not evil incarnate! I’d say his decision, at the time, was taken as a result of him not being in possession of all the facts. He was operating at a pan-EC level, during the Irish presidency of the EC, presiding over a meeting of finance ministers. And a number of these documents would have being going through the process of being passed and sanctioned and rubber-stamped and the £3 billion for Nuclear Reprocessing Plants happened to be one of them.

JJ: Could Albert Reynolds have blocked that specific document?

TS: I believe so. And it would have saved us all an awful lot of trouble if it could have being blocked. Because then THORP would have being sent as an uneconomical I believe it is. But it wasn’t even thought through at that level, not to mention the level of environmental factors and health problems involved.

JJ: The Fianna Fail an Labour Programme for a Partnership Government contains the following promise: "We will the possibilities of using Community and International Law to hasten the winding down and closure of Sellafield, and particularly the new reprocessing facility, the opening of which is increasingly in doubt." Does that signify to you that they have seen the error of their ways and wakened up to the responsibilities in this area?

TS: They say that they are "considering" legal action but that position is no different from the position taken by the last government. They have now lodged an objection against the Reprocessing Plant and I’m delighted about that – but why wasn’t it lodged before now? I think they will only show whether they are really committed, or not, when they take on the recommendations given by Greenpeace to date and take a legal case against Sellafield. They talk about waiting to see about whether they have a case or not and if they keep stalling at that level there will never be an action against Sellafield. They do have a case.

JJ: Isn’t there a fear that such a case might be lost on the question of the difference between the effects of the low-level radiation and high-level

radiation?

TS: When it comes to radiation and its affects we know that low-level radiation is extremely damaging and probably more insidious than high-level radiation. But yes, to prove that, you have to get into that area of what causes depression, what causes flu, and those other ailments outside of leukaemia and cancer, which we know have connections with radiation. But the government has a very good case for highlighting the difficult position Ireland is placed in by the operation of Sellafield and by Britain’s nuclear policy. And I think we could win such a case. I’ve seen the effects of radiation and I know if the case was properly prosecuted in court BNFL would have to close Sellafield.

JJ: In 1989 Roger Garland suggested that the trade union in Sellafield colludes with the British government and could itself have closed down Sellafield. Do you agree with that view?

TS: The union in Sellafield have, on the back of their cards, stickers saying "Sellafield is safe" and from that point of view you could say they are colluding with the management. But they have a job to do and that is protecting the jobs of their workers.

JJ: To so that they don’t have to lie to workers saying "Sellafield Is Safe".

TS: Their yardstick of what ‘safe’ is, is not my yardstick. To them if somebody is living until they retire and then moves off the Trade Union books, that’s their concern. The fact that workers may have some genetic disorder, which they will pass on to their children, for example, they would argue, is circumstantial. As they do. So they’d say they are not lying.

JJ: Artists like U2 and Gabriel Byrne have publicly protested against Sellafield. Do you think the artistic community recognises its full responsibilities on this issue?

TS: I applaud those that have come out strong on the issue but I’d applaud, even more, those who have been there from the beginning, when it wasn’t a popular thing to do.

JJ: Are you suggesting some of the artists now publicly involved in the issue may be doing it to add a little political crred to their reputation, just because it may be fashionable to protest against Sellafield?

TS: Everybody who looks at the issue seriously will feel bound to protest and we need everybody seeking out against the issue who can speak out. And maybe someone like John Major is secretly a member of the REM fanclub and may listen to them! But, on the other hand, down in Coolaten Wood there were so many stars it almost turned into a planetarium, with people coming along to star-gaze. You had The Edge drinking his soup in the middle of a field and Liam O’ Maonlai talking about the native Americans from a stage and the actors from Glenroe looking over their shoulders to see what the rest of the cast were doing. And I was complimenting Emmet Bergin on Miley supporting John Gormley and the Greens and Bergin just threw his hands up in the air. It does seem a bit of one-up-manship amongst some media people, as if they’re trying to see who can support the next cause first. But even if it is fashionable at least they are helping to heighten public awareness in such issues and in that way they meet their social responsibilities anyway.

JJ: Such artists could prove that their commitment is true by writing songs or making movies about subjects such as Sellafield – though it’s likely such a move would damage their careers, in an industry which prefers to keep its customers blind to such realities.

TS: That’s undoubtedly true. But rock stars in particular do have a deep social responsibility because the point is that many young people take their politics and their value systems from music. So the music industry in particular, as well as the entertainment industry on a broader scale, has to meet its social obligations, though more often, as you say, it would rather keep people blind to these issues.

JJ: Luka Bloom has just released a single "The Fertile Ground", attacking what he perceives as the rape of the Burren. What is the Green Party position on the Interpretative Centres, such as the one being built in Mullaghmore?

TS: I think Luka Bloom deserves total praise for doing precisely what we were just talking about, using his art to open people’s eyes to the issue, irrespective of how it may affect his career. T he Green Party’s position is that we feel that Interpretative Centres like Mullaghmore, should be built in towns. Roger Garland was extremely outspoken about this in the 26th Dail and I will be the same in the 27th Dail. The problem is that we’ve got a shot-in-the arm of money from the EC and there’s been a lack of overall planning, taking into account the holistic effects of building interpretative centres where the government is planning to have them built.

JJ: One hears rumours about Fianna Fail politicians having vested interests in interpretative centres being built in specific areas.

TS: I haven’t heard enough on this level to substantiate such rumours. But I am not ruling out any such rumour and would say they are all worthy of investigation. And I would have full faith in Michael D. Higgins as a person who won’t leave stones unturned in terms of finding out how the building of interpretative centres has gotten to this crisis point, and why it was decided to build them in areas which, up till now, would have been wilderness areas.

JJ: What is your attitude to hare coursing?

TS: I am staunchly opposed to the barbarism involved in hare coursing. And irrespective of what parts of the community it alienates, it is looking as though hare-coursing will be banned during the 27th Dail, largely because more deputies have been elected who abhor hare-coursing. Having said that, however, I would stress that there still operates in the Dail the old-age device of the party whip and as long as there is a block on a free vote on hare-coursing it is going to be very difficult to push the ban through.

JJ: You’ve also publicly criticised the Government in relation to its distribution of EC Structural and Cohesion funds, comparing investment in major projects, such as the interpretative centres, with its unwillingness to meet local needs on a smaller scale such as finishing roads in Balbriggan, where you live.

TS: On the issue of roads, the Green Party would be much more supportive of road repair and road maintenance in the present network, which is falling apart, instead of money going into hugely extravagant schemes that are centred around areas that have good roads. They say there is no money available in the EC to finish a tiny ring road in Balbriggan, which would allow businesses to set up, because the Department of Environment insists it must follow a nonsensical rule which stipulates that such a road has to be built out of pothole money from Dublin County Council!

JJ: The Green Party also recently objected to the £500, 000 being given to Dublin Zoo.

TS: The day that was sanctioned was really a symbolic day for me because, on the same day, £1 million was given to St. Vincent de Paul. I can’t figure out whether that means that St.Vincent de Paul aren’t worth very much or that the Zoo has a hold over the Government without even publishing the Zoo Report, which was commissioned to give some kind of idea as to what was needed to be done with Dublin Zoo. To me it is very bad use of public money to give £500, 000 to an enterprise about which there is no plan, except this kind of elastoplast treatment to keep the show on the road-in spite of the cruelty and the conditions that large animals in particular are forced to live in there.

JJ: Would you rather see Dublin Zoo closed down and re-opened as some kind of wildlife centre?

TS: Yes. The Green Party certainly cannot condone the imprisonment of animals for entertainment value. Or for quasi-scientific value, as has happened in many laboratories.

JJ: Are you suggesting this is what has happened in Dublin Zoo; that animals are being used for ‘quasi-scientific’ experiments?

TS: There certainly are close contacts between, say, circuses and the Zoo. But it is not for me to say where the animals go, because I’m not privy to that information. Nobody is, apart from the people who are working there.

JJ: But there are no obvious links between laboratory abuse of animals and the Zoo.

TS: In other places there are. The trade in monkeys is a scandal. Right around the world they are being packed in crowded crates under the assumption that some will die during the journey, so they pack in as many as they can, alive, to begin with.

JJ: Have you any reason to believe that Dublin Zoo involves itself in that, or in similar practices?

TS: All I can say is that I am following up a number of reports of trade of an international nature.

JJ: Between Dublin Zoo and laboratories?

TS: I wouldn’t say where the animals are coming from, or going, at the moment. I can’t. But I can say there is definitely trade moving between circuses and zoos. And I can also say there are breeding programmes being undertaken when internationally they have not been permitted. There is an agreement between zoos that certain animals should not be bred because there aren’t places for them and they have been taking out of the wild so they won’t be able to be rehabilitated into the wild. And yes they’re being bred, partly because the print media in particular thinks it is catering to the needs of its reader when a picture of a cute young animal is shown on a front page. To my mind a horrendous act, in this area, is when businesses publicise themselves by having wild animals present.

JJ: Could you give me an example of this?

TS: I witnessed it myself in Grafton Street, where there was a camel bought from Dublin Zoo to publicise a local business. It created laughter among the crowds but although a camel can be made to look, to an unenlightened viewer, as if it is smiling, who can tell that it wasn’t in terror of what was going on? Unless we can categorically say what an animal is feeling was should show to it in the same respect we show to humans.

JJ: What was that business?

TS: A well-known café on Grafton Street.

JJ: It has been suggested that many Greens are, if not old hippies, then Christians longing to back to the Garden of Eden. How deeply does that Christian base shape your position, and the Green Party’s position on an issue abortion?

TS: As to your question about Greens being Christians longing to return to the Garden of Eden I would say that those of us who are Christians may indeed with for that form perfection in the relationship between humankind and the earth. I would be reluctant to talk, from a third party perspective, on other peoples’ dilemmas, like abortion. And I think it has strayed too far into the area of politics already, in terms of what is largely a medical question. I’ve spoken to many doctors who have said that politicians really are operating in the dark when they talk about medical questions that are tied into moral issues because if they know as much as the doctors know about what goes on in the interests, say, of saving the life of a mother, they would radically open their eyes to the complexity of the issue. So it’s not possible to come down as firmly as I would like on the subject. To me it is largely a medical problem.

JJ: It becomes a political problem if you as an elected representative refuse to state your position on, say a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. How, for example, did you interpret the results of the abortion referendum?

TS: It was unnecessarily divisive. And the issue should have been explained much more than it was. People were voting "yes" and "no" for probably the same reasons, which made a total farce of the result. But ultimately the decision was one I would support – at least in the sense that there should be legislation now to take into account all the complexities of abortion.

JJ: What is the Green Party’s position on abortion?

TS: The party’s position is not to make a party political issue out of issues that are of a personal or moral or religious nature to people.

JJ: A lot of people who would want to support the Green Party will see that as a total cop-out and say that they look to parties to help us articulate our positions on such key issues, or at least to give from to them in the political arena.

TS: If people look to us for leadership on those levels to me it is a cop-out from their point of view. We are not in the business of taking away people’s ability to think.

JJ: But other parties and other politicians will articulate their positions on these issues – such as whether or not a woman should have the right to choose to have an abortion.

TS: That is one criticism I have of other parties, in that they seem to be taking their line from some of the Churches who believe it is their duty to tell people how they ought to think or how they ought to vote. The Green Party is ideologically opposed to that kind of hierarchical structures and to any system which takes from people their ability to make up their minds for themselves.

JJ: Another perspective on all this might be suggested by claims that your own rise in the Green Party, and Roger Garland’s fall, began when, on an edition of Questions and Answers, he refused to clearly articulate his position on Divorce.

TS: There is no question of anyone’s ‘rise’ or ‘fall’ because we don’t have a leader, as such, in the Green Party. There is, for reasons I’ve just explained, no hierarchical structure.

JJ: The real issue was whether or not Roger Garland was afraid to state that – because of his conservative background – he was staunchly anti-divorce because this might alienate the liberals. An is that also the reason you can’t state anything other than vague abstract positions in relation to abortion or on a subject like divorce?

TS: I am addressing these issues. In relation to divorce the Green Party would again say to people "think this out for yourself". But personally I think the constitutional ban on divorce is a terrible infringement on the rights of people who are allowed make mistakes in other areas.

JJ: So you think that there should be divorce in Ireland?

TS: Ultimately I think people should have that option. But I don’t like divorce.

JJ: With all due respect to yourself and the Green Party, many people reading this interview might say ‘if he can argue in such an articulate manner about animals being locked up in cages, why can’t he, and the Greens, run a parallel to a couple locked inside a miserable marriage and categorically come out on the side of saying that such a couple should be allowed to escape from that marriage if they choose to.

TS: I am saying that. And I don’t mean to be evasive but the point is that I would not want divorce to become a free-for-all. If getting a divorce is as easy as walking in off the street, and saying ‘we had an argument last night, we want to end the marriage’, that’s wrong. And that’s not what I want.

JJ: If you extend that argument to the subject of abortion would you also say, then, that you don’t want women being able to walk in off the streets and have abortions in Ireland?

TS: Yes. Because I think it would be the beginning of an awful lot of misery if, for example, as in the Eastern Bloc countries, abortion was used almost as a form of birth control device.

JJ: Do you see any legitimacy in the argument of using abortion as a means of birth control in relation to keeping down the population on the planet?

TS: No. When it comes to the planet as a whole and the way its population is going this is an extremely sensitive issue, particularly in a country like Ireland, which, traditionally, has said that every child is a blessing and a gift from God. And my belief is that everything in the earth is a blessing, whether we realise it or not.

JJ: But is your core belief that everything is a gift from God the base on which you’ve built your philosophy, in relation to the Green Party? And in relation to issues like divorce and abortion?

TS: That has been one major influence, yes. I do see the whole earth as being interwoven with a core spiritual value whether you want to call that a God or whatever. But I myself am very comfortable as a member of the Church of Ireland.

JJ: What is the Green Party’s position in relation to Section 31?

TS: Section 31 is a very brutal type of legislation in that it outlaws freedom of expression and outlaws views that I hope people would be intelligent enough to see for what they are. It’s a bad piece of legislation and whatever needs to be done about peace in Northern Ireland, actually making people sell their own newspaper voraciously around the streets and giving it cult status because those points of view aren’t available on the national airwaves, to my mind hardens the violent element rather then stops it. So Section 31 isn’t doing the job it is supposed to be doing at all.

JJ: There have been suggestions that Fianna Fail used its contacts in RTE to keep certain Dublin journalists off the air in the lead up to the election. Could the same form of censorship have been applied to the Green Party?

TS: I suspect that there are moves within media circles to influence the amount of coverage given to parties and I think that the Green Party have certainly suffered because of this. I can’t say I was kept off particular programmes in the lead-up to the election but I would suspect it’s not as easy to get on certain RTE programmes by being a Green Party person. And when the likes of Bertie Ahern comes on television after the local elections and says ‘I’d like to congratulate the Green Party and other single-issue candidates’, that can be seen as an element of control, a way of reducing the Green Party in the eyes of the electorate.

JJ: Isn’t this a key issue in relation to the future of the Green Party? When Roger Garland spoke to Hot Press in 1989 he agreed with the view that as the major political parties steal or take on board Green Party policies they may come a time when there is no need for the Greens.

TS: That is still a huge danger. And the only way to get around this is to keep pointing out that it is, fundamentally, an economic problem which is causing the crises on the earth at the moment. And neither the Left nor the Right have the answer. The word ‘Green’ to me espouses a way of thinking that is the way forward from capitalism and socialism. Green is the logical successor to the failure of the previous two, I’d even go further and say it is the way forward from capitalism and socialism. Green is the logical successor to the failure of the previous two, I’d even go further and say it is the natural way forward from one party, one person, patriarchal, or matriarchal, power structures. That’s what Green is to me.

JJ: To go even further back and to carry the Green "no hierarchies" philosophy to its logical conclusion would surely also mean the disassembling of the ‘God’ concept. Feminists certainly would argue that the ultimate patriarchal figure is God.

TS: I can see how feminists would have problems with that concept and say the dismantling should begin at that level. But I would hope that, by looking at other traditions and other perceptions of God, we can learn that it is not all about an aged man in a big white bear, stomping around and telling people what to do. And ultimately, what the Green Party is about is looking at how society organises itself, from the hierarchical force which, as things stand, is made up of the rich and powerful and how they co-operate with each other in order to remain powerful. Within both capitalism and socialism we are still locked in the realm of disassociating humankind from the earth. Even Marx saw the earth as a source of wealth to be exploited. But ultimately we are on a high road to nowhere unless we take the next logical step which is to realise that we, in common with all other life forms on the planet, are deserving of social justice. Socialism goes further in meeting those needs than capitalism does but it doesn’t go far enough. It doesn’t show the ultimate respect for life, which the Green Party would espouse. And economics as the management of the earth is, ultimately what has to be put right.

JJ: Some people would suggest that the recent election results have shown that your political opponents have succeeded in making people believe that the Green Party is irrelevant and that if this trend continues there will be no Green T.D. in the Dáil after the next election.

TS: They have succeeded to some extent in hoodwinking the public. And perhaps I should say that, as well as complacency on behalf of the party also led to that result. We haven’t been able to articulate what we really see as important. But the major difference between the Greens and other parties, and other politicians, is that we don not operate within the clearly disastrous confines of short-term thinking. Traditional politics means that all actions are taken in terms of the potential results within a four year period, before the next election. And that doesn’t allow for long-term policy decisions.

Action-based groups like Greenpeace and Earthwatch are generally removed from the political process. The Green Party, then, is charged with the responsibility of making sure that the long-term thinking of the Green movement permeates political decision making. That obviously has proven to be difficult for us because people are not used to thinking of politics in the long-term. That, to me, is the real dilemma behind the fact that we didn’t secure the electoral success I think we deserved.

JJ: What do you think it would take to win people over to what you, and the Green Party, are saying?

TS: I really hope our struggle is not going to be proven to have been valid by some ecological disaster. People will find out in two ways: Firstly, Sellafield may blow up and those left alive will realise that the commitment of the Government to this issue was largely cosmetic, not as green as they want people to believe. Secondly, people will grow to realise, as far more do in other countries, that the problems the earth, and Ireland in particular faces, can only be addressed through an ecological management of the economy, which involves local production for local needs, sustainable resource management producing renewable energy, recycling as much as possible and minimising waste.

Unless people address the problems of the earth at that level, the result will be a disaster. Maybe not as cataclysmic for Ireland as explosions at Sellafield which could emit the equivalent of two Chernobyls every ten years but just as catastrophic in the long run, for Ireland and for the world.