Introduction

Shelley Anderson and Janet Larmore

Shelley Anderson is editor of Reconciliation International. Janet Larmore works for Greenpeace International. Both are US citizens living in the Netherlands. At the time of the Bradford conference, they both worked for Disarmament Campaigns.

"It's wonderful to meet a group of people whose time has come." With this greeting James O'Connell of the Bradford School of Peace Studies welcomed participants to the Bradford Conference on Nonviolent Struggle and Social Defence, held 3-7 April 1990 in Bradford, England. In the following pages you will read about some of the discussions from that conference. The gathering, which included five full days of plenary sessions, workshops and intense personal conversations that went on into many late hours of the night, was organised by War Resisters' International (WRI) and the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), in cooperation with the Bradford School of Peace Studies.

Over 100 people attended the conference, where a unique mix of politicians, grass roots activists, researchers -- and one member of the West German Military Academy -- challenged and listened deeply to one another. Some participants, like German parliamentarian Petra Kelly and researcher Gene Sharp, are well known in international peace movement circles; others are respected activists inside their own communities, involved, in particular, with campaigns to abolish their countries' militaries or in promoting conscientious objection.

They came with first-hand experiences of both violence and active nonviolence: a Dutch nonviolence trainer had lived in Romania under Ceaucescu; a South African minister from Natal had witnessed the assassination of his next-door neighbour; a Central American peace activist traced his activism to seeing, when he was a young boy playing football with friends, government soldiers drag a team mate away and behead him. East German participants listened attentively to Maria Diokno from the Philippines on how the revolution brought about by people's power was betrayed; Elzbieta Rawicz-Oledzka of Poland and Vanessa Griffen of Fiji co-led a workshop on the role of social defence after a military takeover. Perhaps the only thing all the participants had in common was a desire to explore the power of nonviolence.

People's power in the Philippines, the nonviolent revolutions in Eastern Europe, the pro-democracy movement in China have all inspired more people to investigate the possibilities of nonviolent social defence. But as interest increases, so do the questions. And one major question which confronted many of the Bradford conference's participants was -- what exactly is meant by the phrase "social defence"? And how does it differ from the other terms -- civilian-based defence, popular resistance, people's power, nonviolent civilian defence. Common to all these is a belief in the usefulness of mass, non-military action by ordinary citizens in defending their way of life. But should the definition be restricted to defending a territory against outside aggression? Or should it be expanded to include the protection of institutions or certain values against any threat, internal or external? If this is the case, whose values are to be defended? The consensus or the degree of social unity that this assumes may not exist in reality. What if the way of life to be protected is actually the source of violence itself? How is social defence different from nonviolent struggle?

Coming up with a concrete definition is not just an academic exercise. Linked to all this is an important strategic question about how the idea of social defence should be presented to the larger society. This is the question of whether or not social defence is a supplement to military defence, or a replacement. Some advocates urge a de-coupling of social defence from its pacifist roots, and an emphasis on social defence as a practical way of making the costs of an occupation so high that any aggressor would think twice about an invasion. Researchers such as Gene Sharp and Jean-Marie Muller have found military officials very interested in social defence for this reason. Indeed, in response to the 1985 study La Dissuasion Civile, written by Muller and his colleagues Christian Mellon and Jacques Semelin for the Foundation for National Defence Studies, General Buis wrote, "If nuclear deterrence fails, if the enemy has not been discouraged from attacking, then our deterrence strategy is useless. That is why civilian resistance is necessary; and it must be nonviolent."

Advocates point out that social defence is a method that could be used by any citizen, after training, not just by pacifists or nonviolent activists. Social defence could be integrated into military defence plans, which could be an important step towards persuading the military to adopt more defensive strategies -- another first step towards the longer term goal of ending the military. The advantage to both this approach and definition of social defence is a very practical one, supporters point out -- even if does not accept the pacifist dream of ending war completely, the body count is lowered. While a simultaneous civilian defence may not come up to a pacifist ideal, fewer people are killed.

But for many nonviolent activists the idea of working alongside the military is tantamount to sleeping with the devil. While nonviolent action may involve many of same components as military action (keeping morale up, good communications, clear goals and coordinated action), many believe the two systems are incompatible. In a conference workshop dealing with this issue, Slovenian peace activist Marko Hren said that the military model was based on centralised power, hierarchy and obedience. A nonviolent resistance, on the other hand, was by its very nature decentralised and non-hierarchical. He gave the example of his own country of Yugoslavia, where at the time military units were augmented by the organisation of civilians for non-armed defence.

Many of the conference participants supported a much broader definition of social defence, a definition that would encompass nonviolent social movements that struggle to change society from within. "The word ´defence' in the phrase social defence is losing its international dimension in Europe," said Andreas Gross of Switzerland at the conference. "In the future, there may not be one state defending itself from another, but rather democratic, social and peaceful achievements, processes and projects against the use of force from several sides. This progression from foreign policy to the internal politics of countries throughout the world must be included in the social defence concept, so practical concrete steps can be developed on the way to societies without armies." German activists, uncomfortable with the reactive connotation of the terms "social defence", have come up with the phrase "social attack", meaning a programme of action that gets to the roots of violence in one's own society. Julio Quan of Guatemala defines social defence in this broader context as, "The creation of a democratic based power for economic, social, political, ideological and ecological security."

As stated before, social defence implies a degree of unity, or consensus, on the part of the civilian population. What if such consensus does not exist -- and for good reasons, because society's own institutions are the oppressors? Some theorists, such as Theodor Ebert, distinguish between the nonviolent defence of a society against a military aggressor, either internal (coup or civil war) or external, and when the aggressor is the government itself or an institution in the society. The first definition is an example of social defence. The second he would call Gewaltfreier aufstand, or social uprising. Many activists do not like such a distinction. Women in particular are expanding on the idea of social defence to explore questions like just what are the values we would want to defend and what kind of world do we want to live in.

"Women can't defend the existing governmental institutions with their sexist structures, as they are an expression of structural and personal violence against women," writes Renate Wanie in her paper "Women and Social Defence". "I believe that women will take an active part in putting social defence into practice if they can combine their political hopes for a life worthy of human beings with their individual daily and autonomous decisions." Wanie cautions peace groups to examine their own sexist structures and ways of organising, and points out that nonviolence can be a double-edged sword for women. "We have to be careful so that in nonviolent actions -- which often imply a readiness to suffer and a sacrificial attitude -- women don't reinforce our socialised role. An act which can be liberating for men, as it contradicts their conventional role, can affect women negatively."

Another important challenge raised at Bradford throughout the conference was just how applicable Western ideas of social defence are to situations in the South. Once again, the aggressor may not be an external enemy, but one's own government, or other official institutions. There may also be more than two parties involved in the conflict, as is the case where countries are composed of many different ethnic or tribal groups. The violence of poverty, of external debts which hold development for ransom, and of newer, more sophisticated forms of warfare such as low-intensity conflicts demand new nonviolent strategies and campaigns. A great deal of sharing went on during the conference between East Europeans and participants from Latin America, Palestine, Asia, the Pacific and South Africa, whose experiences with repressive governments and active nonviolent opposition gave them some comparison.

The conference was exhausting, stimulating and challenging by turns, just as the entire issue of social defence is. We hope this account of some of the conference's proceedings will encourage more groups and individuals to investigate the potential of a nonviolent defence. Then perhaps we will see if social defence is, indeed, an idea whose time has come.