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Rally against nuclear submarine, USS ‘Gurnard’, John B. Ellis, University of Melbourne Archives.
The Rainbow Warrior
10 July 2025 marked 40 years since two explosions occurred onboard Greenpeace’s flagship vessel the Rainbow Warrior while it was at dock in Auckland, New Zealand. It was quickly revealed that French undercover agents had planted the bombs. This act of state terrorism tragically killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira and sunk the ship on the eve of its protest voyage to France’s nuclear testing site in the South Pacific.
From 1966 to 1996, France undertook 193 nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa Atolls in French Polynesia/ Mā’ohi Nui, which remains a French territory today. Until testing moved underground in 1975, 41 nuclear bombs were detonated in the atmosphere.
The establishment of the French nuclear testing program in the Pacific followed nuclear testing programs by the United States in the Marshall Islands (1946-58) in the Pacific Ocean, and by the British on Christmas (Kiritimati) Island in the Indian Ocean and in South Australia (1952-58).
Greenpeace first sailed to French Polynesia/ Mā’ohi Nui to protest French nuclear testing in 1972. In May 1985, a month prior to its sinking, the Rainbow Warrior evacuated more than 300 people from Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, irradiated by fallout from US thermonuclear weapons testing on nearby Bikini Atoll.
Despite the intention of the French state, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior only galvanised support for the antinuclear cause. Its anniversary is a time for reflection on the loss of life and livelihood as a result of nuclear testing. Not only Pereira’s death, but the many thousands of Indigenous lives disproportionally impacted by nuclear testing in Oceania. 40 years on, Farrago revisits the pan-Oceanic solidarity movements of the 70s through to the 90s that fought to bring an end to the nuclear era in the Pacific.
Pan-Oceanic Anti-Nuclear Solidarity
Organised protest against nuclear testing in the Pacific and Australia began as early as the 1950s.
The first wave of regional solidarity against French nuclear testing arose in the early 1970s as concern grew regarding the health impacts of atmospheric nuclear detonations. These tests polluted the atmosphere with radioactive particles which spread throughout the region and the world via the air, earth and sea.
In Australia, major campaigns such as People for Nuclear Disarmament (PND) and Movement Against Uranium Mining (MAUM) mobilised. The Hawke government suspended uranium exports to France from 1983 and in the same year announced its ‘three mines policy’, which restricted uranium mining in Australia.
The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) emerged in the mid-70s as an region-wide, Indigenous-led organisation that expanded the anti-nuclear agenda from solely an ecological perspective, to explicitly address issues of political independence, sovereignty and self-determination in the Pacific Islands and Pacific Rim countries.
From 1975, the NFIP assembled delegates from member countries and territories across the Pacific at major conferences every three to five years, with the 1978 conference in the Federated States of Micronesia adopting a dual agenda: an end to nuclear testing, and political independence.
The NFIP went on to establish the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) as its organisation and communications hub. Operations included the publication of a monthly magazine Pacific News Bulletin to share information and stories across its vast network.
The attack on the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the signing of the Treaty of Rarotonga to establish a South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ) and the publication of the Royal Commission into Nuclear Tests in Australia.
The Archives
The NFIP is a ‘history still waiting to be written,’ says journalist, researcher and former NFIP member Nic Maclellan, speaking to Farrago.
A slice of Australia’s antinuclear history can be found within the University of Melbourne’s archives. An archives staff member told Farrago that the Campaign for International Co-operation and Disarmament (CICD) gradually transferred its archives to the University from 1979 onwards.
The University also maintains a relationship with Trades Hall to preserve its records, accounting for its extensive labour movement archives. The John Ellis Collection, images from which accompany this article, includes four decades of photographs capturing the labour movement in Victoria and associated campaigns across nuclear and environmental issues.
Anti-Nuclear Activism in the 21st Century
Today, the threat of rising sea levels has seen renewed debate around the agenda of climate change activism. In the Pacific, the ecological challenge of climate change also translates into a fight for culture, land and rights. Recently, a landmark ruling from the International Court of Justice advised that states have a legal obligation to act on climate change. Law students in Vanuatu began the case as a classroom exercise.
As Maclellan points out, although the Pacific nuclear testing era may be history, nuclear issues have not gone away. Campaigns continue both locally and globally to address the challenges of nuclear technologies and their legacies.
In 2007, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was founded in Melbourne. Its central aim is the adoption of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which proposes a blanket ban on nuclear weapons. The Treaty opened for signature in 2017–the same year ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize–and entered into force in 2021, with 94 countries as signatories so far.
Founding member Dave Sweeney outlined to Farrago two strategies that contributed to ICAN’s–and the TPNW’s–success. First, following the lead of successful treaties banning chemical weapons and cluster munition, ICAN proposed an international legal framework to push the abolition of nuclear weapons. Then, the organisation spent 10 years building global support for the idea before putting the Treaty into writing.
The uptake of the TPNW reflects international frustration with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which has largely determined international nuclear relations since it came into force in 1970. Non-nuclear state signatories have stood by their commitment to non-proliferation, but the five nuclear-weapons states under the Treaty have failed to disarm. Sweeney says the TPNW gives a voice to non-nuclear states who have felt powerless in nuclear disarmament negotiations.
Notably, Australia has neither signed nor ratified the Treaty, although the Albanese government softened Australia’s Abbott-era ‘No’ position to abstention and sent an observer to the 2023 Meeting of State Parties.
ICAN Ambassador Karina Lester, a Yankunytjatjara-Anangu woman, is the daughter of nuclear testing survivor Yami Lester, who was blinded during childhood by British nuclear tests at Emu Plains in South Australia in the 1950s. In her statement to the UN TPNW Conference, Lester gave her support to a paragraph recognising ‘the disproportionate impact of nuclear tests on Indigenous peoples around the world’ and emphasised that the legacies of testing would be felt across ‘unknown generations to come’.
Memory of the harm caused by nuclear weapons is crucial to ICAN’s campaign, but honouring the past is not static. It is a continuum, says Sweeney: we look ‘back so that it helps us chart a path to a safer future’.