THE LONG WAY HOME
Peter (always known as Pete) was born in Deptford, the son of George, an engraver in a bottle factory, and Minnie Cremore. He had a very happy childhood.
He passed the 11+ exam and went to Shooters Hill Grammar School in Greenwich. Other alumni include Frankie Howerd, Ginger Baker, Jools Holland and Boy George.
As a teenager, Pete became active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
Pete left school at sixteen and went to work in the bottle factory alongside his father. The air was full of iron filings and the noise was unbearable. Pete quit after just one day. “People shouldn’t be treated like that.”
Pete’s father died of lung cancer shortly afterwards.
After that, Pete took a number of manual jobs. He was working as a lorry driver when a friend gave him a book about the environment. It changed his life.
He joined the newly formed ‘Friends of the Earth’, being one of the first four members. They worked out of a poky office – and the organisation grew. Pete called them ‘The freaks of Freak House’.
However, Pete quickly grew disillusioned. The other members were all aristocrats – “An old boys’ and girls’ network.” Not trusting his working-class background, they wouldn’t give him any responsibilities. Pete resigned.
He went to work as a post office clerk, a job he held for four years – “Very Dickensian”.
At this time, Pete married Annette Cross.
Unexpectedly, Pete received a phone call from David McTaggart, the Canadian boss of the newly formed Greenpeace International, an organisation formed to protect the environment.
McTaggart asked Pete if he would create a UK branch of Greenpeace.
Pete agreed, becoming one of five directors. The wages he paid himself were the same amount he would have received on the dole.
He also acquired the nickname, ‘Wilx’.
Very quickly, Greenpeace’s support grew, overtaking the World Wide Fund for Nature and Friends of the Earth, as leading environmental campaigners.
However, Pete put so much time into his work that his marriage to Annette failed.
Most of Pete’s environmental achievements happened in the 1980s.
In an attempt to alert people to the whaling trade, he towed an inflatable whale up the River Thames. It sank. Far from being a PR disaster, the British press lapped it up.
The sinking of the whale was seen as being symptomatic of its plight.
Pete also was responsible for getting the hunting of dolphins banned.
He called for limits on the UK fur trade. Pete came up with the popular slogan ‘It takes forty dumb animals to make a fur coat, but only one to wear it.’
Pete also led a campaign to stop the British government from dumping tons of nuclear waste in the Atlantic Ocean. After various meetings, Pete persuaded both the National Union of Seamen and the railway workers unions to stop transporting the waste.
Then, Pete managed to convince the nations that were part of the London Convention (an international agreement to prevent marine pollution), to vote against the dumping of the nuclear waste in the sea. Eventually, Margaret Thatcher’s government caved in and stopped getting rid of nuclear waste in this manner.
The ban on dumping such waste in the oceans, still holds to this day.
Pete was involved in another project off the coast of Cumbia. The nuclear power plant at Sellafield, had a pipeline that pumped plutonium waste into the Irish Sea.
Pete bought an old fishing trawler, the ‘Cedarlea’, and with a crew of activists sailed out to try to block the pipe. From there, they got into an armada of rubber dinghies and sailed beneath the platform above the pipe.
The workers on the platform sprayed Pete and his crew with hoses and then started hurling three-ton barrels of nuclear waste at them. Pete was undeterred.
A High Court injunction was taken out to stop Greenpeace from blocking the pipe. They ignored the court’s orders.
It led to Pete, and Greenpeace, being fined £50,000 – money they did not have. However, the public outcry was so great that the fine was paid off in full by donations received.
Other environmental issues that Pete was involved with included preventing seal culls in Scotland, stopping chemical discharges into coastal rivers and seas, and the protection of whales from Japanese hunters.
Pete made the decision to give up eating meat, becoming a vegetarian.
Pete was central to all of Greenpeace’s ‘stunts’. On one occasion, during a demonstration in London, he drove a double decker bus past a police cordon. The officers didn’t realise a hole had been cut in the roof of the bus to allow activists out in order to scale Big Ben.
Despite all of their successes, a large rift grew between the European and North American branches of Greenpeace. It threatened to tear them apart.
However, in July 1985, French intelligence services blew up the flagship of Greenpeace, Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland Harbour, killing photographer Fernando Pereira.
There was international outrage – and the tragedy united the divided branches of Greenpeace. It also elicited worldwide sympathy for the organisation, who gained many more members and filled their coffers.
The French government were charged with piracy.
That same year, David McTaggart (the founder of Greenpeace), asked Pete if he would lead an expedition to Antarctica.
There was an Antarctica Treaty in place, which guaranteed the neutrality of the continent – and also prevented any country from mining the natural resources.
However, three of the signatories, the UK, USSR and the USA, decided they wanted to break the terms of the treaty, to the anger of Germany, Australia and New Zealand. Greenpeace sided with the latter nations.
By setting up a camp in Antarctica (the only non-governmental organisation to do so), it meant Greenpeace had a right to attend any meetings between the disagreeing nations – ‘Observer Status’.
Pete led the first Greenpeace mission to Antarctica late in 1985 and spent the whole winter there. He said the polar region was ideal for research projects.
He wintered in Antarctica every year between 1985 and 1992 (bar 1991) – seven visits.
The British public were very much on Greenpeace’s side, appalled that the government was trying to break the treaty.
The publicity generated was so great that the British government eventually changed its mind. The Women’s Institute (WI) adopted Antarctica as its main cause. Mrs. Thatcher received 5,000 hand-written letters from WI members.
Eventually, Antarctica was declared a ‘World Park’, belonging to all nations. A fifty-year moratorium for mining minerals was imposed, which is still in place.
Pete said, “We forced the Antarctic Treaty nations to agree to a mining ban for fifty years – and a world park status for an entire continent.”
Shortly after returning from his last trip, Pete left Greenpeace.
He became a nuclear consultant, advising government bodies on what to do with waste, how to get the support of the public and in calculating what were acceptable doses of radiation.
Simultaneously, Pete continued to campaign against nuclear expansion.
He met teacher, Gaye Jerrom, and they became partners. They moved to Peasenhall in Suffolk, where they married in 2000. They had two daughters: Emily and Amy.
Pete then worked as an advisor on the government committee on Radio-Active Waste Management, and for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Part of his role was to help removing defunct offshore oil establishments.
He also worked with the Nuclear Information Service.
Pete published his autobiography in 2014. It was entitled ‘From Deptford to Antarctica: The Long Way Home’
He remained vigorous in objecting to the development of Sizewell C on the Suffolk Coast, co-founding a resistance group called TASC (Together Against Sizewell C).
Pete also campaigned against the littering of the oceans – “Trashing our World”, he called it.
Pete was knowledgeable, persuasive and always irascible, but was energetic and driven – and was loved by anyone he worked with.
Asked about his political beliefs, Pete said, “It is in everybody’s interests to have a cleaner environment, whether you’re left, right or centre politically.”
He added, “We want cleaner air, clean seas, happiness and peace – but we have avarice, pollution and short-sighted policies.”
In 2023, Pete and Gaye’s home in Peasenhall, ‘Meadow Cottage’, was flooded during Storm Babet. This caused him a lot of stress.
Pete died suddenly, of a heart attack.
At his death, TASC said, “A legend in his own lifetime, the sudden, untimely death of Pete has left those who knew and worked with him shocked and desolate.”
They added, “It is almost impossible to comprehend that such a force of nature has left the stage, and, without doubt, the planet has lost one of its toughest and most tenacious defenders.”
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