Community / Disarmament researcher wants to hear local stories
AN ACADEMIC from the University of Glasgow will be visiting the isles over coming days as part of her research into the history of peace work and disarmament campaigns in Shetland and across Scotland.
Dr Charlie Peevers, who is a professor of international law, hopes to speak to as many people as possible who are either involved in or have memories of local and national campaigns.
Her visit is part of the Scottish Disarmament Project which acknowledges that mass movements have been behind every major disarmament initiative of the 20th century.
Due to arrive on Friday morning Dr Peevers will first head to the Shetland archives to view the material it holds on the campaign against Dounreay expansion in the late 1970s/early 1980s.
She also plans to attend Saturday’s Gathering for Peace vigil outside the Parliamentary Office on Commercial Street.
Citing the missile testing site on Uist in the Western Isles, she said Scottish island communities have hosted a lot of military bases and have often been singled out as proposed dumping and storage facilities for nuclear waste.
“The project has a very open approach to participation and ranges from including military personnel and corporations for their perspective on working to achieve peace, to campaigners against nuclear weapons and local grassroots activism,” Dr Peevers said.
“The broader story I am telling is about the unacknowledged significance of Scottish disarmament movement but also militarisation of parts of Scotland to the development of international disarmament law.
“The field work study is about recording the voices of people who either remember either local activism or concern, or were part of them.
“Scotland isn’t a state but nevertheless it has an influence in international affairs, and sometimes that’s not a Scottish story so much as it is that of various different communities within a nation called Scotland.”
While in Shetland, Dr Peevers has lined up a number of interviews but she would also like to hear from anyone else who feels they could contribute.
She said she hoped also to speak to military personnel and their interpretation of their contribution to peace and upholding of international law.
Dr Peevers added: “The project takes the perspective of the UN and all the states – let’s say bar Trump right now – that recognises that disarmament in some form or another is still necessary.
“Obviously the debate is over the scale of the actual goal, but these are the foundation stones to at least the charter system and the prohibition of the use of force, however much they are under strain right now.”
She can be contacted via e-mail scottishdisarmamentproject@gmail.com
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