Jubilee Ploughshares Action

Susan van der Hijden, born 1969 in ’s Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. Moved to Amsterdam in 1976 and stayed there ever since. Has had several jobs and started several studies, the longest one being for social work (for about 2 years). Susan joined the big (500,000 people) anti cruise missiles demonstrations in the 80’s in the Netherlands. She remembers folding dozens of peace-doves during lessons in school.

Susan met the Catholic Worker movement at the beginning of the Gulf War in 1990. She moved in to their community in Amsterdam in 1993 and has lived there ever since. The Catholic worker is a Christian-anarchist-pacifist movement, started in the 30’s in the US by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin and now consists of about 130 houses of hospitality in the US, Europe and Australia. The movements combines doing the works of mercy: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, visit the prisoner etc. with doing resistance. The CW was one of the main inspirational sources for the Ploughshares movement.

The Amsterdam Catholic worker houses 4 core group members and 12 homeless refugees and 1 fat white cat. The main resistance focuses are the arms trade (weekly vigils at the Amsterdam stock-market) and the refugee detention centre.

Susan came to know the ploughshares movement through the many newsletters from the CW houses; many Catholic Workers are in someway involved with ploughshares. In 1998 She went first to the European ploughshare gathering ’Hope and Resistance’ and then in August to the first Trident Ploughshares camp and blockade at Faslane. She became a Trident Ploughshares pledger in January 2000.

Personal Statement from Susan van der Hijden

Dear friends,

Peace be with you. I have come to Wittering airforce base today in an attempt to restore justice and peace on earth. To fulfil Gods law of love and the prophecies of Micah and Isaiah: ’They will beat their swords into ploughshares...and learn war no more’. To repent for our complicity in the oppression of the poor in the world and to start repaying our debt to them. To put the theories of the Jubilee year, as proclaimed by the Catholic church into practice.

As Trident is one of the great destabilising factors for peace and justice in the world I have chosen to, non-violently, dismantle a vital part of this mass murder weapons-system, namely the nuclear weapons convoy. We chose to use household hammers for this job and would like to pass those tools on to others so that we can clear the world of nuclear weapons together. It was no light decision, I realise I am upsetting a lot of peoples’ lives, including my own by doing so. But what a small price to pay to make the world a little safer, a little more just.

The main purpose of Trident is to keep the current status quo between the rich and the poor, the powerful and the oppressed. It is used to protect Britain’s vital interests by threatening third world countries into obedience.It is also threatening us in the first world by the constant danger of accidents (especially with the convoy) and the devastating effects a nuclear war will have on the whole planet.

’We could not, not do it.’, Daniel Berrigan said after the first ploughshares-action 20 years ago, and that is the case for this action too. Our witness at Wittering today is an attempt to follow Christ, to try and fulfil the law: the law of God, of humanity and international law.

As a Christian and a human being it is my duty to try to stop Trident. Nuclear weapons go against everything God teaches us and against the morals and values with which I was raised. Of all commandments the most important one is love; love your neighbour, love your enemies, Jesus told us, Trident however is only capable of death and destruction, fear and Vengeance. I was raised to believe in the goodness of people, to value trust, love and kindness, not to steal, murder, or threaten others. Again Trident is the opposite, It comes from fear, hunger for power and delivers murder.

It is also my duty to stop Trident because the law says so. The Nuremburg ruling clearly says that it is every citizens duty to act when a government is involved in illegal activities. Under International law the use of and threatening with nuclear weapons such as Trident is illegal.The convoy vehicles transporting these nuclear weapons serve as the Nazi-trains that brought the people to the gas-ovens: the lorries bring the gasovens to the people.

I hope this will explain our action a little, I wish to say nothing more until the trial. We have done what we could, now it is up to you to complete the dismantling of Trident. Hey, if we can do it, anybody can!

Pax et Bonum,

Susan van der Hidjen

Personal profile - Fr Martin Newell

Fr Martin Newell is a Catholic Priest, ordained at Upton Park in 1997. He has been based in St Margaret’s, Canning Town, in London’s East End for the last three years.

Fr Newell is 33, born in Walthamstow in 1967. His family moved to South Woodford, where he was an altar server at St Anne Line for 11 years. He attended Our Lady of Lourdes Primary, Wanstead, and Ilford County High School for Boys. In 1985 he went to Southampton University to study Economics, achieving a 2/1.

It was during this time that Fr Newell came to believe that God was calling him to the ordained ministry. It was a time of deep conversion for him. He came face to face with poverty in inner city Birmingham with the Ashram Community, a radical Christian community, and also with London’s street homeless through the London Simon Community. The practical challenges of these experiences were deepened by prayer and study, including books by radical Evangelicals like Ronald Sider ’Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger’, and Jim Wallis’ ’The New Radical’ and ’Call to Conversion’(he also heard Jim Wallis speak), as well as Catholic Social Teaching found in ’Proclaiming Justice and Peace’. He came to see a ’preferential option for the poor’, beginning with a simplified personal life, as an essential dimension of his discipleship as a Catholic Christian, and as of the essence of God.

After University in 1988, Fr Newell joined the Jesuit Volunteer Community one year programme. He shared a council flat in Toxteth, Liverpool, with three others in a small Christian community. He worked with people with mental health problems, and with victims of crime. He also helped to start an Anti-Poll Tax Union.

In 1989 Fr Newell returned to live and work in for a year in the Simon Community, which he is still involved in. During this time he applied to his home Diocese of Brentwood. He was at St John’s Seminary, Wonersh, from 1990 to ’96. [In the summer of 1991 he spent a month in Peru with a group led by Fr John Medcalf.] He spent one year reflecting on life, faith, Church and priesthood while sharing the life of the urban poor in East London, living in a bed-sit and doing low paid manual work. In 1996 he was ordained Deacon and sent to Upton Park.

Fr Newell joined Christian CND in 1991, then Pax Christi. He also discovered the Catholic Worker movement through the New York ’Catholic Worker’ paper. In 1997, through the Liverpool Catholic Worker community,[which rose out of the East Timor / British Aerospace ’Seeds of Hope’ Ploughshares action,] he took part in his first act of ’civil responsibility’, which led to arrest with 8 Timorese on the airfield at BAE Wharton. He has twice before been arrested in protests over Trident.

Personal Statement from Fr Martin Newell

WHEN TWO LAWS CO-INCIDE

I am here to uphold the Law. The Law is being broken by the threat of nuclear holocaust that Trident represents. In 1997 the World Court ( International Court of Justice of the UN) ruled the threat or use of nuclear weapons to be generally illegal under International Law which is part of local Law)

In 1963 the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church said "the indiscriminate destruction of large areas along with their inhabitants is a crime against God and humanity, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation".

Morally and legally, the threat and the use of such weapons are the same. Trident constitutes such a threat. That which merits such condemnation demands removal: law breaking demands prevention. As an ordained Catholic Priest, I have a duty to speak God’s truth with my life, as well as the common Christian duty to do good and resist evil.

When I was a child, I remember learning about the Nazis Holocaust of the Jews. And I questioned myself: "What would I have done if I had been a German in the 1930’s? Would I have stood up for the Jews and for peace?" And I was taught about the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, where people were convicted of not disobeying unjust orders. And again I asked myself: "What would I have done? Would I have disobeyed unjust orders? What if there was a Holocaust happening now, or being threatened now? Would I do anything? As a child, I thought, sadly, ’No’.

Now, as an adult, I have asked myself: "What will I do about this threatened nuclear holocaust, which quietly hangs over the world: Which, just as in the 30’s, we prefer not to think about? Up until now, I have acted in small ways. Now, encouraged by the Judgement of the World Court, strengthened by the Holy Spirit, I seek effectively and symbolically to prevent crime and sin, to wield not weapons of war, but weapons of the Spirit of peace. I seek to help our nation to beat these ’swords into ploughshares’. To begin a process only government and people can complete.

And this Trident nuclear system, the weapon of the rich and powerful is backing up the global armed robbery of the poor of the world. In the daily death of thousands around the world, the nuclear holocaust is already happening. The Jubilee 2000 Debt Campaign has tried to ’break the chains’ of the worlds poor. Let us also break this chain of death, and take up the hard work of making peace, of restoring justice, of proclaiming Jubilee in God’s world.

Fr Martin Newell, 2 November 2000

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