Camping campaigners in byelaws battle (and a 9th June Aldermaston party invite!)

1.06.2007
New byelaws for Britain”s nuclear weapons fac­to­ry — AWE Alder­mas­ton — came into force yes­ter­day. This brief arti­cle reflects on the impli­ca­tions for cam­paign­ers and chal­lenges being mount­ed to yet anoth­er crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of protest … and invites women to join the peace camp for a fab­u­lous camp birth­day cock­tail par­ty on 9 June.

As with many mil­i­tary sites across Britain, land at AWE Alder­mas­ton has been sub­ject to spe­cif­ic mil­i­tary byelaws for many years. While these the­o­ret­i­cal­ly crim­i­nalise a range of oth­er­wise non-crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, they have not been enforced. At bases around the coun­try where byelaws have been used against pro­test­ers they have almost uni­ver­sal­ly fall­en fol­low­ing legal chal­lenges (most famous­ly at Green­ham Com­mon where thou­sands of cas­es were thrown out after the byelaws fell).

How­ev­er, as of 31 May 2007, spank­ing new byelaws for AWE Alder­mas­ton came into force. Undoubt­ed­ly the MoD will be hop­ing that they have learnt from pre­vi­ous byelaws dis­as­ters and now removed all tech­ni­cal, human rights, and oth­er inher­ent flaws. [1]

Human rights
The new Alder­mas­ton byelaws were qui­et­ly put out to con­sul­ta­tion in April 2006, and in their orig­i­nal form, would have pro­hib­it­ed all forms of protest at AWE Alder­mas­ton. The pro­posed byelaws would have denied the right to free­dom of peace­ful assem­bly and asso­ci­a­tion as they crim­i­nalised meet­ings, assem­blies and pro­ces­sions (sec­tions 7 (f) and (h)). They would also have pro­hib­it­ed hand­ing out leaflets and hold­ing plac­ards, thus deny­ing free­dom of expres­sion.

Alder­mas­ton Women’s Peace Camp(aign), and sup­port­ers, made sub­mis­sions to the MoD­’s Byelaws Review Com­mit­tee under the Human Rights Act, and suc­ceed­ed in gain­ing the removal or amend­ment of sev­er­al of the orig­i­nal­ly pro­posed “crim­i­nal” activ­i­ties.

Pro­tect­ing the MoD from peace­women
The con­sul­ta­tion on the Alder­mas­ton byelaws took place as the Ter­ror­ism Act 2006 enabled the pro­vi­sions of the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act (SOCRAP) to apply to Alder­mas­ton and a num­ber of oth­er mil­i­tary sites in the UK. To date, SOCRAP has been used once against a pro­test­er at Alder­mas­ton. It remains unclear as to whether the Attor­ney Gen­er­al will give assent for the pros­e­cu­tion to pro­ceed. [2]

Defence Estates com­ment­ed at the time that “The Mil­i­tary Lands Byelaws and the SOCAP pow­ers, although capa­ble of being used inde­pen­dent­ly, are mutu­al­ly sup­port­ive and togeth­er pro­vide a lay­ered form of legal pro­tec­tion for the Min­istry of Defence.” [3]

Impli­ca­tions for protest
The amend­ed byelaws, although the­o­ret­i­cal­ly allow­ing protest at Alder­mas­ton, now threat­en the very exis­tence of the wom­en’s peace camp — which has been protest­ing out­side the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry every month for the past 22 years. The new byelaws crim­i­nalise camp­ing and light­ing “bon­fires” (the women use a camp fire to keep warm and cook). The byelaws also crim­i­nalise things as sim­ple as attach­ing ban­ners to the fence at Alder­mas­ton, which women have tra­di­tion­al­ly done to alert passers by to the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry, or are as vague as “caus­ing annoy­ance to any oth­er per­son” [4]

It is impos­si­ble to pre­dict whether the new byelaws will be strict­ly enforced, how­ev­er, pre­sum­ably the MoD didn’t go to all the both­er of cre­at­ing new ones in order for them to sit on a shelf gath­er­ing as much dust as the pre­vi­ous ver­sion!

Chal­lenges
Women from Alder­mas­ton Women’s Peace Camp(aign) have called for a cel­e­bra­to­ry camp birth­day cock­tail par­ty on Sat­ur­day 9 June. This will be the first camp week­end after the byelaws come into force and we would like to invite as many women as pos­si­ble to join us. Of course this will be a fan­tas­tic par­ty in its own right, but we would also like to send a clear mes­sage to the MoD that women will con­tin­ue to occu­py space out­side AWE Alder­mas­ton, con­tin­ue resist­ing Britain’s nuclear weapons pro­gramme, and con­tin­ue claim­ing the right to protest. [5]

On anoth­er front, a legal chal­lenge to the byelaws has been mount­ed and there has been pos­i­tive legal advice on the prospects of its suc­cess. Trea­sury Solic­i­tors have been informed that despite the wel­come changes to the byelaws, they remain dis­pro­por­tion­ate and are incom­pat­i­ble with the Human Rights Act. The next step will be to bring a Judi­cial Review.

We don’t know whether the police will enforce the bylaws at the time of the par­ty. If they do, women should be able to attend the par­ty and not risk arrest pro­vid­ed they heed police state­ments at the time and move to safe pitch­es. That said, the more women that are pre­pared to risk arrest the greater the effec­tive­ness of the gath­er­ing.

Do come any­way: it is the wom­en’s cock­tail par­ty of the year!
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NOTES:
1 Read the full byelaws at http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2007/20071066.htm
2 See http://www.aldermaston.net/news/169
3 See http://www.aldermaston.net/news/107
4 See AWE Byelaws, Sec­tion 7 (2)
(f) camp in tents, car­a­vans, trees or oth­er­wise;
(g) attach any thing to, or place any thing over any wall, fence, struc­ture or oth­er sur­face;
(j) act in any way like­ly to cause annoy­ance, nui­sance or injury to oth­er per­sons;
(k) light bon­fires or do any­thing like­ly to cause an out­break of fire;
5 See http://www.aldermaston.net for par­ty invi­ta­tion
info@aldermaston.net