[First Published in The Guardian, London, September 10^th, 1976]

LAST WEEK THREE anti-nuclear campaigners went to gaol in the small mid-California town of San Luis Obispo. They joined seven other colleagues already sentenced to periods of imprisonment ranging from 15 days to six months. All were gaoled for their self-confessed participation in a mass protest last month against the siting of a nuclear plant near an earthquake fault.  They are the first in a long line.

A further 477 people face similar charges, but unlike the 10 already gaoled, they are either pleading not guilty or entering ‘creative pleas’ such as a “plea for an end to nuclear suicide”, or a “plea for the lives of our children”. Their trials are expected to last until at least the end of October. By then, the accused believe, most of them will have been convicted, and their ‘martyrs list’ will have swelled to several hundred.

The assertive nature of the activists’ campaign, which involves blatant law-breaking, and the rather bemused legal system’s efforts to deal with their action, are adding an important chapter to the still short history of anti-nuclear protests here.

The trials arise out of two days of peaceful demonstration in August directed against the newly-built, and not yet operative, Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant on the Pacific coast 12 miles  from San Luis Obispo. An umbrella organisation of 20-odd Californian anti-nuke groups known  as the “Abalone Alliance” (it derives its name from local fishermen’s fear of radiation damage to their valuable mollusc crop) brought several thousand people to the beach at Diablo Canyon.

The aim was, in their cheeky pun, to ‘transform’ the power station. ln defiance of a court-order gained by the plant’s owners and builders, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, they swarmed into the 735-acre site, some scaling the high perimeter fences with ladders, others skirting the defences by sea on rafts. They erected a forest of windmills and solar panels, symbolically representing alternative modes of energy production. Most of the arrest were made then.

The following day more demonstrators were taken into custody when they tried to blockade the entrance as PG&E employees arrived for work.

None of the protestors resisted arrest, and their carefully calculated civil disobediance presented the county sheriff’s department with an unprecedented problem. For a start, San Luis Obispo, generally a rather sleepy place, does have a county jail – but not one which can cope with 500 new inmates in two days. So the protestors were herded into a gymnasium at the nearby medium-security state penal colony.

There, in a gesture of solidarity, 300 hundred of the anti-nukers refused to sign the ‘customary citation’ – a form agreeing to appear voluntarily in court, in return for immediate release from custody – unless they were promised (1) a mass court appearance together, and (2) that all of them would face an identical charge. A frustrated under-sheriff, one Arnie Gobble, was heard to mutter that he would be forced to obtain a warrant to evict the protestors from the prison.

There were threats also that corrections officers would eject them, but San Luis Obispo was spared the bizarre spectacle of gaolers turning liberators when after three days it was agreed that everyone would be arraigned (that is, would make just their first court appearance) all together, and that they would all face the same four charges, two of trespass and two relating to defiance of a court-order.

“It was quite a victory for us,” said Tony Metcalfe of the Abalone Alliance. “We were greatly encouraged by the impact that the authorities’ concession made. We got messages of congratulation from not only all over California, but throughout the US. Even previously hostile media praised us for our restrained but successful protest.”

IN FACT THE WHOLE OPERATION was distinguished by energetic planning as well as a clear resolve to pursue peaceful direct action. The Alliance seems convinced it is breaking new ground with its concerted use of civil disobedience for anti-nuclear protests, reminiscent of British CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) demonstrators in the 1960s.

Preparatory work for the Diablo Canyon demo involved much painstaking effort. Training sessions were held over the two months beforehand in six different locations across California. Each session, about seven hours long, included instruction in the arcane art of going limp in a police-officer’s arms, the construction of miniature windmills, and the formation of small cells of 15 or so people which would include a spokesperson, a first-aid person and a legal representative. A 24-page Direct Action Handbook was produced containing maps, fact-sheets and a code of discipline.

Alongside direct action, the Alliance is preparing to make what it calls its “last throw within the legal framework for objections to the plan”. The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, the quasi-judicial body that regulates nuclear development, will hold its final hearing on Diablo Canyon later this year. The Alliance will present evidence, which came to light during the plant’s construction, that the site lies just two and one-half miles from an important earthquake fault-line lying beneath the ocean.

The fault, named the Hosgri Fault after its geologist discoverer, is reckoned to expose the area to a threat of earthquakes registering 7.5 points or more on the Richter scale, which is considerably greater than the plant was originally designed to withstand.

Pacific Gas and Electric, however, has revised its estimate of how big a tremor the nuclear station could comfortably survive. Now, it will tell the Board’s hearing, the Hosgri threat lies within the plant’s tolerance. The company says: “Our properly designed plant would be in no danger from earthquakes, powerful windstorms or even tidal waves.”

The Alliance fully expects the Board to agree with the company, and an operating license to be granted allowing work to begin early next year. The Board has in fact never turned down an application. “We have a problem in that our country’s regulatory bodies have a evolving door policy,” says Metcalfe. “They draw their members from the industry itself, and eventually they return to it. It’s a totally self-enclosed operation.”

The Alliance’s anticipation of defeat in the conventional legal arena is matched by determination to press on with civil disobedience. “As time shortens,” says Metcalfe, “all our efforts will be geared to being as effective as we can be, and ensuring that Diablo Canyon simply does not open.” The Alliance is now considering another blockade of the plant, longer and sturdier than last month’s.

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POST-SCRIPT  (June 2020): – It took a extraordinarily long time, and many repeated demonstrations, but the protesters finally won. Forty-two years after this article was published, PG&E announced in 2018 that Diablo Canyon will close. It is to cease operations by 2025. – D.T.