Helen Archer | On 27, Jun 2023

The 1980s is not a decade much renowned for its counterculture. It was, generally speaking, a period of rampant materialism and individualism like no other. But as the West continued its decades-long testing of nuclear power, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament began to flourish, and a nascent Greenpeace sent its Rainbow Warrior ship out to the Pacific Atolls in order to both help its islanders and protest against the continuing, devastating explosions. Produced by Caroline Hawkins and directed by Chloe Campbell, this pacy three-part documentary details the 1985 bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, which killed Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira, and the investigation that followed.

The series has remarkable access to some of the main players, including members of the Rainbow Warrior crew, police and politicians, and, laterally, members of the French secret service who carried out the attack. The first episode details the activists’ mission, as they travelled to the Marshall Islands in order to highlight the plight of the Rongelap people, whose health and island had been left devastated by contamination from the radioactive fallout showering down on them in the wake of the USA’s nuclear testing. Malcolm Rifkind and Michael Heseltine, among others, are interviewed, to extoll the virtues of nuclear weapons, juxtaposed with remarkable archive footage of the Americans examining the Rangarat people (who are referred to as “savages”) – human guinea pigs whose health was tracked through the years by the very people who had poisoned both them and their land.

After helping islanders relocate, the Rainbow Warrior docked in New Zealand, from where the crew planned to head to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia, hoping to form a human shield during France’s ongoing nuclear testing. It was there that their boat was attacked in the night, while many of the group were asleep on board. Landing on the desk of the Aukland police, who had never had to investigate a case like this – it was the first and only attack the country had come under from a foreign power, in what is now described as state terrorism – their investigation led them to the French government, who were apparently worried enough about the threat the crew of the Rainbow Warrior posed to their nuclear testing, that they engaged the Secret service to first track them and then to disable the boat.

The excuses of the members of the secret service who carried out the attack come in thick and fast by the time we get to the final episode. They were, of course, just following orders, and had even suggested alternatives to their superiors that would limit the threat of life – although they had been told that Greenpeace had been infiltrated by the KGB. The boat was rocked by two blasts – the first meant as a warning to evacuate, while the second was set to destroy it. It is surmised that Pereira went back to his room after the first blast in order to rescue his camera equipment. One agent, Jean-Luc Kister, laments the fact that, like Pereira, he was the father of a young daughter, and that it could just have easily been her left fatherless, as though some sort of them-or-us combat had taken place, rather than a surprise attack on a boat full of defenceless pacifists. It all echoes the first episode’s justification of nuclear testing, in which the people of the Pacific Atolls are acceptable collateral damage in a never-ending arms race, which we are duly informed is necessary to retain peace.

Kister, at least, accepts his part in the mission, and has expressed regret. To this day, France has never apologised, despite evidence that the orders came straight from the top. This documentary sears with a barely suppressed anger at both the targeting of Greenpeace and the way in which those responsible – directly and indirectly – evaded justice. And, although none of the Greenpeace crew felt that it was worth risking human life for, it sears, too, with a recognition that their kind of activism is still necessary, and a sadness that it is still required. 

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