This article was first published by Greenpeace France, in French
'Are we really still content just crossing our arms in opposition?' – Alain Connan
Alain Connan, the former captain of several Greenpeace ships in the 1980s and 1990s, has died at the age of 91. This rainbow warrior of a man was a key figure Greenpeace history, which he spent years helping to write.
Born in 1933 in Lorient, Brittany, he began his career aged 16 in the French merchant navy. He became a Greenpeace member in 1979 and then took an early retirement from the navy in 1983 to devote himself to the organisation and to campaign for ocean protection. He soon became a captain of Greenpeace ships, one of its spokespersons from 1985, and then head of Greenpeace France when it reopened in 1987, two years after its closure following the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French government agents.
He sailed at sea until 1993, notably at the helm of the Rainbow Warrior II, and was a tireless campaigner against nuclear testing in French Polynesia – work which contributed to the suspension of testing in the Pacific and subsequently to the 1996 UN Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). He also actively contributed to the campaigns for the moratorium on whale hunting and the creation of the 'World Park Antarctica' nature reserve.
Tribute from Rémi Parmentier, Greenpeace France co-founder:
"When Alain skippered the Sirius for the first time in 1984, I was a campaign coordinator on board. I explained to him that for a year or two I had been observing the movements of the Soviet whaling fleet which left Odessa (then USSR, now Ukraine) and crossed the Bosphorus and the Mediterranean towards Antarctica.
"Our plan was to surprise the Soviet fleet in the Strait of Gibraltar and, after several weeks of cat and mouse, we succeeded. The fact that we were both French created a bond that I think dissuaded him from leaving before the mission even started: it must be said that the project was indeed a bit crazy (so was our crew, if I may say so). Thanks to Alain's patience and remarkable seamanship, one morning at dawn we caught up with and boarded a Soviet whaling ship. A few days later, we also came across the huge whaling factory ship in the middle of the night that was sailing through the Strait of Gibraltar, all lights out in the hope that we would not see them and in violation of the most basic rules of navigation safety (strangely, even during the reign of Konstantin Chernenko who had succeeded Yuri Andropov a year earlier, Soviet leaders seemed to be worried about the bad publicity that an encounter with our little organisation might attract).
"Throughout his life, Alain had many adventures at sea, notably volunteering in the early 1960s to (re)build the Algerian merchant navy after the war of independence, during which Alain sided with the Algerian rebels. However, as I was able to observe, this did not prevent him from being impressed and moved (and perhaps sometimes amused) by his first contact with the 'spirit of Greenpeace' of the time. He continued to serve as a Greenpeace captain for more than a decade, including on at least one sensitive Rainbow Warrior II expedition to Moruroa, the site of numerous French nuclear tests."
Greenpeace International joins the the entire Greenpeace France team in paying vibrant tribute to Alain's activism; may it be a source of inspiration for all the activists who constitute the movement today.
See also:
UDB Environnement : AREVA : Lettre de Alain CONNAN
