Greenpeace founder killed in crash

Greenpeace pioneered direct-action campaigning

The Canadian co-founder of environmental pressure group Greenpeace has been killed in a car crash in Italy.

David McTaggart, 69, died after his car collided with another vehicle near the central Italian city of Perugia.

Mr McTaggart helped to found Greenpeace in the early 1970s and was its chairman for over a decade until 1991. He had lived in Italy since the early 1990s.

He led the group during a period when it gained global prominence and played a key role in protests against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.

McTaggart: publicity shy publicity expert

It was an advertisment in a Canadian newspaper that led Mr McTaggart to devote his life to environmental campaigning.

The advert, placed by a group called the 'Don't Make a Wave' committee, called for volunteers to sail to the Polynesian atoll of Muraroa to stop French atmospheric tests of nuclear warheads. That group was later re-named Greenpeace.

At the time, Mr McTaggart was sailing in the South Pacific Islands and he decided to join the campaign, infuriated at the French Government's decision to close off vast areas of the Pacific for the test. He renamed his boat Greenpeace III, and sailed to the area.

Rammed

By anchoring his boat downwind from the planned test, he forced the French authorities to halt the first test. In response, the French Navy rammed the boat.

A year later, after repairing his boat, Mr McTaggart returned to the atoll, but was captured and beaten up by French military officers.

Mr McTaggart was also at the helm of Greenpeace in 1985 when French agents blew up the group's ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, killing a photographer.

He stepped down as chairman of Greenpeace in September 1991, but remained active in the group.

Ironically, although Greenpeace has become known for its publicity-generating skills, Mr McTaggart himself preferred to keep away from the limelight and seldom gave interviews.