U.S. judge to rule this month on anti-cruise protest

Press, 9 December 1983, Page 20

U.S. judge to rule this month on anti-cruise protest

From

JOYCE EGGINTON,

in New York

Some of America’s leading experts in nuclear technology have joined the group of British women who are seeking, through the United States legal system, to have cruise missiles removed from British soil. The women went into a New York federal court for a second time last month to present arguments in support of their claim that the lives of British people are being jeopardised by the siting of the missiles at Greenham Common in Berkshire. Their action — listed in the court calendar as Greenham Women Against Cruise Missiles versus Ronald Reagan et al — is being opposed by federal lawyers who argue that the civil courts cannot have jurisdiction in matters of defence and foreign policy. For the Greenham women, Carrie Pester, a former social worker, and Christine King, who brought her eight-month-old baby to court, stated their belief that the United States constitution provides them with a right to live and the right to be heard.

A supporting brief, submitted by the Centre for Constitutional Rights, a public-interest law group which is representing the Greenham women, claims that British people living near the cruise missile sites are already suffering “psychological injury as the result of objectively reasonable fears from the placement at Greenham of first-use missiles which are prone to accident and likely to provoke attack.” These fears, the brief adds, “are the direct result of the decision by the defendants to send and make operational cruise missiles in the

small country where the plaintiffs live.”

Federal Judge David Edelstein is expected to rule by the middle of this month whether the women’s case is admissible and may proceed. The evidence submitted to him includes written statements from 30 specialist witnesses on both sides of the Atlantic — nuclear scientists, physicians, military strategists, and clergy. One of the most detailed pieces of scientific evidence comes from Dr Michio Kaku, professor of nuclear physics at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York, who says the siting of cruise missiles in Britain makes nuclear war much more likely “because these weapons are specifically designed to fight and win” such a war. Even in a conventional war “there would be enormous pressure on the side that thinks it is losing to use the pinpoint accuracy of the cruise missile to compensate for battlefield losses, (a fact) which significantly lowers the level at which the nuclear firebreak will be crossed.

“This means that we are entering the point of no return. Either we stop these weapons now, or we will enter a stage where it is virtually impossible to halt the enormous momentum of the arms race with a freeze.” Submissions from several of the American witnesses make the point that, war or no war, immediate emotional damage is being done to

British people by the placement of cruise missiles. Dr Robert Jay Lifton, professor of psychiatry at Yale University and an expert on the long-term effects of the Hiroshima bomb, says that “the deployment of cruise missiles in Britain will subject residents to immediate, intensive psychological stress, as well as longer-range. impairment.”

A changing group of about a dozen Greenham women have pledged themselves to remain in New York for the duration of the law suit, which is likely to last several months.

“We do not expect to be back in court until early in the new year,” says Gwyn Kirk, a former teacher at Central London Polytechnic. “In the meantime we shall regather our forces in Britain and decide who will replace those already here.

“This is very different from anything we have done before. In previous law cases we have always been defending ourselves against charges of trespass, obstruction, and breaches of the peace. “Now we are using the law creatively as plaintiffs. Since there is no way for us to do this within the British system, we decided to bring action against President Reagan personally through the United States courts.

“It is also a way of explaining to American people how we feel.” Copyright — London Observer Service.