Memories from Sweden by the dedicated peace researcher Owen Wilkes
Master of Peace, the new book published last month to celebrate the life and work of peace scholar and activist Owen Wilkes (1940-2005), is launched in Auckland on Friday. Here, a close friend from Sweden – who is not included in the book – remembers his mentor in both New Zealand and Scandinavia.
COMMENT: By Paul Claesson in Stockholm
I got to know Owen Wilkes through friends in 1980, when as a 22-year-old student I ended up in a housing collective where his ex-partner lived. He was then at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), having arrived from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and was, apart from the collaboration with Nils-Petter Gleditsch, already in full swing with his foreign military presence project.
He hired me as an assistant in charge of Spanish and Portuguese source material.
During this time I got to know Søren MC and Kirsten Bruun in Copenhagen, who had recently launched the magazine Defense — Military Critical Magazine. I contributed a couple of articles and was then invited to join the editorial board.
A theme issue about the US bases in Greenland grew into a book, Greenland — the pearl of the Mediterranean, which apparently caused considerable consternation in the Greenland Ministry. The book resulted in a hearing at Christiansborg.
I was also responsible for a themed issue on the DEW (Early Warning Line) and the Loran C facilities in the Faroe Islands. I was in Stockholm when SÄPO’s spy case against Owen started and I was there all the way.
SÄPO questioned me a couple of times and at one point during the trial, when I took the opportunity to hand out relevant material about Owen’s research – all publicly available – to journalists in the audience, I was visibly thrown out of the case by a couple of angry young men from FSÄK ( the security service of the armed forces).
Distorted by the media
Owen and I saw each other almost every day — sometimes I stayed with him in his little cottage in Älvsjö — and together we wondered how his various activities, such as his innocent fishing trip on Åland, were distorted in the media by FSÄK and the prosecutor’s care (SÄPO had subsequently started showing greater doubt about Owen’s guilt).
In 1984-85, after he had been expelled from Sweden, I was Owen’s house guest at his farm in Karamea, Mahoe Farm, on the west coast of New Zealand, at the northern end of the road. He was in the process of selling it.
Together with his brother Jack, he had started a commercial apiary, and together we spent an intense summer—harvesting bush honey, pollinating apple and kiwi fruit orchards, and building a small harvest house for the honey collection.
In the meantime, we sold — or ate — the farm’s remaining flock of sheep. When the farm was sold we moved to Wellington — I was offered a room in the Quaker boarding house, where I joined the work at the Peace Movement Aotearoa premises on Pirie Street.
Then Prime Minister David Lange had recently allowed New Zealand to withdraw from ANZUS, as a result of his government’s refusal to allow US Navy ships to call at port unless they declared themselves denuclearised.
As a result, PMA organized a conference on the theme of a nuclear-free Pacific, with participants from across the Pacific region. Along with Owen, Nicky Hager and others, I contributed to the planning and execution of the conference.
Mapping the US signals intelligence
Prior to this, Owen and Nicky had begun surveying American signals intelligence facilities in New Zealand. I participated in this, ie. with a couple of photo excursions to Tangimoana.
Owen and I kept in touch after my return to Sweden. What I remember best from his letters from this time – apart from his reflections on his work as a government defense consultant – are his often comical anecdotes about his adventures in the bush as a scout for the New Zealand Forest Service, where his main task was to survey Maori cultural remains before they were chewed to pieces by the forest industry.
His sudden death took a toll. I got the news from his partner May Bass. I would have liked to have flown to NZ to attend the memorial services for him but ironically they coincided with my wedding.
Owen played a very big role in my life. I admired him and miss him all the time. More than anyone I have known, he deserves to be remembered in writing. I was therefore very happy when I heard about the time and energy devoted to this book project. My sincere gratitude.