Press Releases & Updates 2001

Founded in 1980, The Right Livelihood Awards are presented annually in the Swedish parliament and are usually referred to as "Alternative Nobel Prizes", having been introduced "to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today." The award of SEK 2 million is shared with activists working for peace, social justice and cultural renaissance in Israel/Palestine, Brazil and Venezuela.

The TP campaign is represented for the award by the "Trident Three", Angie Zelter, Ellen Moxley and Ulla Roder, who were famously acquitted in October 1999 in Greenock Sheriff court in Scotland after disarming a Trident-related research barge. Ulla Roder is currently on remand in Cornton Vale Prison in Scotland awaiting sentencing tomorrow for a number of alleged anti-Trident offences. The Right Livelihood Award honours the campaign as "a model of principled, transparent and non-violent direct action dedicated to rid the world of nuclear weapons. Their imaginative campaign highlights the illegality of these weapons."

A delighted Ellen Moxley said: "To receive this prestigious award from the international community means that the hard disarmament work of all the 130 TP pledgers has been vindicated. In contrast to the Opinion of the Scottish High Court which dismissed the Greenock acquittal and thus showed itself to be an instrument of the nuclear state, this award confirms that the TP movement is a key contributor to a non- nuclear future and that Trident is illegal under international law."

The TP campaign was initiated in 1998. Since then there have been 1350 arrests of its activists, 1351 days have been spent in prison, there have been 171 trials and fines totaling £25,274 have been imposed by the courts. The British government has consistently refused to meet the campaigners to discuss the disarmament of Trident.

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