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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

What happens when an organisation founded on radical activism… decides to work with - instead of against - authorities?

For Paul Watson, of Sea Shepherd, that conundrum has led to an acrimonious split from the organisation that he started.

Watson has been hailed by some as a hero for his exploits against whaling ships on the high seas - but others say he’s an ‘eco-terrorist’ who has given environmentalism a bad name.

Today, National Correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Mike Seccombe on whether this is the end for Paul Watson’s brand of high-stakes environmentalism.

It’s Wednesday, October 19.

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RUBY:

Mike, you've been looking into this fairly sensational falling out that's occurred at Sea Shepherd, which is the environmentalist anti-whaling group. And Sea Shepherd was founded by a man called Paul Watson, who is now at the centre of this story. So to begin with, could you tell me about Paul Watson and how his organisation, how Sea Shepherd came about.

MIKE:

You're right it was founded by a Canadian guy, Captain Paul Watson. He's an actual mariner and he began his environmental career way back in the seventies. I think he was initially involved in some mainstream environment groups in the United States and then in the early seventies helped found Greenpeace.

Archival tape -- Reporter:

“To cynical survivors of the sixties. It may seem surprising that there's any idealism left around, and perhaps our curiosity can be pardoned. Are the Greenpeace people superannuated hippies? Are they misguided liberal intellectuals or publicity prone protesters? Or are they latter day heroes?”

MIKE:

But almost immediately, Watson began to grate with the rest of the Greenpeace people. The problem there was that some of the other founders were Quakers and pacifists. Hence the 'peace' part of Greenpeace and Watson favoured far more aggressive tactics.

So he fell out with the organisation pretty catastrophically in 1977 when he led a protest against the annual slaughter of seal pups in the north east of Canada. And he got enraged and confronted one of the hunters, seized the hunters club and the pelts that the hunter had and threw them all into the sea. And so anyway, this resulted in him being ousted from the board of Greenpeace, reportedly by an 11 to 1 vote, with the one vote in his favour being him.

He was definitely instrumental in the foundation of Greenpeace, but nowadays Greenpeace doesn’t acknowledge him as a founder, only says he was a quote, an influential early member. Anyway, having been drummed out of Greenpeace, he decided to found his own group, and that was Sea Shepherd.

Listeners might have seen, you know, the logo, people wearing the Sea Shepherd T-shirts around the place, you know, which aren't like other conservation T-shirts, you know, with little cuddly fairies on them. Their logo that he designed looked like a pirate flag, you know, with a shepherd's crook and Neptune's trident beneath a human skull.

RUBY:

Yeah, the Sea Shepherd logo is very recognisable, and the group itself, I think most people would know them because of their activist tactics, particularly for the direct action that they've taken against whaling ships, in particular Japanese whaling ships in Antarctica. And their profile has really been built off the anti-whaling crusade that they've undertaken, hasn't it?

MIKE:

Yeah, you're absolutely right. So you started out with a single ship and gradually built up a bit of a fleet.

Archival tape -- Reporter 2:

“Anti-whaling activists have been involved in a dramatic clash with Japanese whalers in Antarctic waters.”

MIKE:

They would go out and mostly harass whaling ships on the high seas and, you know, unshackled from Greenpeace's pacifism. You know, he pursued very direct tactics, including, you know, ramming ships.

Archival tape -- Reporter 2:

“The Sea Shepherd ship, the Steve Irwin, collided with a Japanese vessel as it was trying to pull a whale on board.”

MIKE:

They were trying to sink whaling ships with explosives, otherwise scuttling them. I mean, not trying to cost human life, I might add, usually them trying to sink empty ships. But they certainly sank a few.

Archival tape -- Documentary voiceover:

“The Edward Abbey fires a cannon shot across its bows. Still, the Japanese ship does not stop.”

MIKE:

So it was a very swashbuckling, aggressive approach.

Archival tape -- Reporter 2:

“A Sea Shepherd crew has spent the past two days pelting the Japanese with bottles of rancid butter.”

MIKE:

And it won support from a lot of celebrity backers Mick Jagger, Sean Penn, Daryl Hannah.

Archival tape -- Daryl Hannah:

“Sea Shepherd is perhaps the most effective organisation in the world protecting our oceans.”

MIKE:

And he was very much seen as the sort of bad boy of the environmental movement.

Archival tape -- Reporter 3:

“Tokyo has confirmed it has cut short its Antarctic whale hunt for the season and says it was due to the activities of the militant environmental group.”

MIKE:

Many others in the movement claimed that he was doing more harm than good and was actually, you know, galvanising pro-whaling groups against environmentalists or at least giving environmentalists a bad name.

Archival tape -- Reporter 4:

“Japan has called in the ambassadors of Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands and told them to take action against the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd.”

MIKE:

Those tensions existed throughout his career with Sea Shepherd, I think, and they've sort of come to a head now. You know, his own organisation has now rather sensationally ousted Watson, or they sought to sideline him and he quit as perhaps a more exact way of putting it. So the founder of Sea Shepherd has effectively been kicked out of Sea Shepherd.

RUBY:

Hmm. Okay. So how exactly did the tide turn against Paul Watson? Within his own organisation, Mike, how did this group, known for its activism, its militant activism, begin to turn away from those ideas and from its founder?

MIKE:

I called Paul to ask him exactly that. He lives up in Vermont now in the United States, and we had a bit of a chat about it. And the way he tells it, this was all about Sea Shepherd looking to act more like a mainstream environmental organisation rather than the radical one that he had always envisioned. And he told me that he'd begun to be shut out of things around 2019.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“But 2019 that began to marginalise me because they said that my reputation was preventing them from getting directors' insurance.”

MIKE:

And so to some extent it was financially motivated. So instead of Watson, the organisation began to be more and more influenced by its newly appointed president, a guy called Pritam Singh. And Singh's an interesting character.

He's quite different from Watson. He's a capitalist, which Watson isn't. And also he's a man given to, you might say, quiet contemplation.

He runs a hotel and development and management company based in Key West in Florida. And he also helped found the first mindfulness training institute in the United States, as well as a couple of Buddhist monasteries. So under him, Sea Shepherd has become somewhat less radical in its tactics. I mean, they're still involved in direct action on the high seas and what have you, but they don't try and sink people and they don't do that sort of stuff. And it has put a lot more effort into cooperation with government authorities and regulators or, you know, as Watson puts it, you know, he says in June.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“They made a decision they're going to change the direction of the organisation to be less controversial, less confrontational, you know, to concentrate on research and, you know, basically, you know, be mediocre sort of like Oceana or something.”

MIKE:

And he says that when he told the board he could not support Sea Shepherd's new direction, they responded essentially by saying.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“And they said, well, you work for us, you get paid by us, so you do what you're told.”

MIKE:

He says that they wanted to pay him a lot of money.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“Lot of money, about 300,000 a year just to just shut up. That's right. Like a mute figurehead for the organisation. So I'm not going to do that. I'll just resign.”

MIKE:

From there, things just got ugly and legalistic.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“There was no meeting, no discussion, no votes.”

MIKE:

Anyway, that’s his version of events.

The whole thing raises questions about, I guess about the role of activism and whether organisations like Sea Shepherd can do more by working with authorities rather than by standing against them.

RUBY:

We'll be back after this.

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RUBY:

Mike, Sea Shepherd was founded on fairly radical and aggressive ideas and have in the past used violence sometimes to meet their aims. But it seems like what the organisation is now doing is similar to what other conservationist organisations tend to do when they get bigger, which is to look inside the tent and to try and make change from within to to work with governments rather than against them. This shift, what does it say to you about the way the conservation movement as a whole is changing?

MIKE:

In Paul Watson's view, it leaves the whole overall movement worse off. You know, he sees a variety of roles for different organisations. He doesn't necessarily disrespect, you know, people who go through the courts and people who do research and all that sort of stuff. He just sees a role for a very radical organisation within the broader movement.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“The Sea Shepherd has always been in that unique position of pushing the edge, of being direct action, of being controversial, being confrontational. That's what we have always done for 45 years. That is our role.”

MIKE:

He told me, quite frankly, that, you know, he saw Sea Shepherd as having a particular place in the environmental landscape. And he said, you know, we fill a particular niche within the marine conservation movement.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“In your face, we’re there to rock the boat, we're there to be controversial and confrontational. That's what we do.”

MIKE:

So he also used this rather colourful metaphor. He said.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“I always used to describe ourselves as the ladies of the night of the movement, because a lot of people agreed with this. They just didn't want to be seen with us in the daytime.”

MIKE:

So that's his take, is that, you know, they're out on the edge and that's where they should be. And he says the organisation now has become, quote "an Uber service for government bureaucrats".

RUBY:

And so, I mean, that might be Paul Watson's case for why a group like Sea Shepherd has to be radical. But as the group has grown, has that version of it become somewhat impractical? Is there a case to be made here that Sea Shepherd can no longer get away with the kind of aggressive activism that it was founded on because its stakeholders have changed, and the legal and political landscape that it's operating in is also different.

MIKE:

Well, yes, you're quite right - the world has changed. You know, insurance and legal issues might prevent organisations from functioning in the same way. In fact, you know, as I mentioned, one of the reasons Watson was marginalised was because Sea Shepherd was having trouble getting directors' insurance. But even before that, even before he was ousted, you know, the sort of international net had closed significantly on Watson and his operations back in 2012. He was detained in Germany, for example, at the request of Costa Rica because of Sea Shepherd's activities there. But he skipped bail in Germany. And a month after that, Interpol issued a red notice for his arrest. You know, you can see the way international forces were sort of colluding to try and get him if they could. Soon after that, a US court declared that Sea Shepherd was a pirate organisation and I don't use the word pirate loosely, and they ordered the group to keep its distance from the Japanese whalers.

The chief judge of that particular Court of Justice by the name of Alex Kozinski of the Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit in Washington. In his final decision, said, and I'll quote him, "You don't need a peg leg or an eyepatch, when you ram ships, hurl glass containers of acid, drag metal reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders, launch smoke bombs and flares and hooks and point high powered lasers at other ships. You are without doubt, a pirate, no matter how high minded you believe your purpose to be."

So there you go. He's been officially declared a pirate - by the US courts anyway. As a result of the red notices and the rest of this, Watson was pretty much an international fugitive. He lived partly at sea and partly in France for two years because France gave him asylum. And then he did return to the US and surprisingly wasn't arrested. And he credits the former US Secretary of State John Kerry for easing his passage back into the United States. But he's sort of stuck there now. He can't really travel internationally, including to Australia, for fear that he might be nabbed and arrested and deported to Japan.

RUBY:

Mmm ok. And I think it's clear that it has become more and more difficult for activists to undertake these kinds of acts. But we are continuing to see grassroots environment organisations become more radical. I'm thinking here about groups like Extinction Rebellion, for example. So is it the case now that only people who can do really radical politics are these small groups that don't have to deal with things like insurance and boards and corporate rules?

MIKE:

Well, yeah, I think your point’s well made and very interesting and it's one that I intend to explore further. And I think behind it is that in many places around the world, including Australia, the authorities have introduced ever more draconian penalties for protest actions.

And you know, by that I don't mean, you know, blowing up ships or anything. I mean, relatively minor civil disobedience that we've seen for decades, you know, like blockading forestry operations or blocking streets when you have a street march. And because they've, you know, imposed these much heavier penalties, the result of that is that the more mainstream groups are no longer engaging in direct action.

And so, as you say, we're seeing new groups fill the void, groups with much looser structures, you know, like Extinction Rebellion and Blockade Australia. And I'm reminded of President John Kennedy's quote, you know that those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable, you know, by cracking down on people who have a legitimate beef, it just makes it more likely that that that the action will become more radical.

So that's one observation I'd make. The second observation is that whatever you might think about Watson and Sea Shepherd, they were very effective. And there are a whole bunch of people out there who are really deeply engaged in environmental issues who would otherwise not have been. So, you know, perhaps there is something to be said for having people out there on the fringes. I'm not endorsing violence, of course, but it seems that radical action can be effective. And the proof of that, I guess, is that when you look around the world now. Whaling has largely ceased.

RUBY:

Mmm. Which is no small feat, but as a result of the actions led to that, Paul Watson is now gone from Sea Shepherd and also can’t travel to many places in the world. So where does that leave him - what’s next for Paul Watson?

MIKE:

Well, what's next for him is he's going to keep right on doing what he's always done.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“So in response I’ve set up my own foundation, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation - I know it sounds a little egotistical, but I figured they can’t take that away from me.”

MIKE:

You know, what he calls the confrontational activity that once made Sea Shepherd the world's most infamous environment group.

Archival tape -- Paul Watson:

“We’ll just continue doing what we’ve been doing.”

MIKE:

And the other fact is of course that he's getting serious financial support from people who used to back Sea Shepherd. In one case a billionaire supporter has promised to pay for a new ship for him.

So bottom line there I guess, is I don't think we've heard the last from Paul Watson.

RUBY:

Mike, thank you so much for your time.

MIKE:

A pleasure. Thank you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

The prosecution and the defence in the trial of Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins have finished making closing submissions to the jury.

Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold told the jury that they should disregard politics and focus on the evidence, saying quote: “This case is about what happened on a couch in a room on Saturday the 23rd of March, 2019.”

Acting for the defence, Stephen Wybrow said, quote: “You can’t be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that she knows what happened.”

Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty.

And…

The recording artist Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, has agreed to buy the right-wing social media platform Parler, according to the company. Parler boasts that it has loose moderation policies and has been widely criticised for allowing hate speech.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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