The anti-nuclear protesters who won
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 31 July 2019
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1980 the Bavarian government announced plans to build a nuclear reprocessing plant in Wackersdorf in southern Germany. Eight years later construction on the plant was halted after a sustained protest campaign which saw tens of thousands of demonstrators and sometimes violent clashes with the police.
Lucy Burns speaks to local district administrator Hans Schuierer, who became a figurehead for the protests.
Picture: demonstrators fight against police during a protest at the Wackersdorf construction site (Istvan Bajzat/DPA/PA Images)
Transcript
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| 0:29.2 | Hi and thanks for downloading witness history from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:37.0 | I'm Lucy Burns and today we're going back to a milestone for the German anti-nuclear movement with the success of an eight-year |
| 0:45.0 | protest campaign against the construction of a nuclear reprocessing site in rural southern |
| 0:50.6 | Germany. |
| 0:51.6 | In West Germany, Riot police used water cannon to hold back anti-nuclear protesters |
| 0:57.0 | at the site of the country's first nuclear reprocessing plant. |
| 1:00.0 | Demonstrators ringed the construction site at Vakasdorf in Bavaria. |
| 1:05.0 | As missiles were thrown, the police replied with water cannon and tear gas. |
| 1:09.0 | Sometimes it was 10, 20,000. The biggest demonstrations were 50, 60,000 people. The whole community was there. |
| 1:20.0 | This is Hans Schwer. He was the head of the district authority in Schwandorf, the area where the nuclear plant was being proposed. |
| 1:28.0 | I first heard rumors about it in 1979. A newspaper had a story that there was a nuclear |
| 1:37.2 | site being planned in the area. And a few weeks later, the Bavarian Environment |
| 1:42.4 | Minister Alfred Dick invited me to a strictly |
| 1:45.5 | confidential meeting and told me what was being planned. That was the first time I heard the phrase |
... |
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