Trident Ploughshares Blockade at Aldermaston on 15th June 2009

It was a glo­ri­ous morn­ing as 5 sep­a­rate groups made their way towards Alder­mas­ton. At 6.30a.m. the Muriel Lesters arrived at North Gate to find it had not been opened yet for the park and ride coach­es so they fur­ther locked it with their own chains and some super-glue and arranged them­selves as com­fort­ably as pos­si­ble in their lock-ons and hung their peace ban­ners.

There were 5 of them locked on, includ­ing one in a wheel chair plus a lone sup­port­er. A police­man soon arrived and asked them, in amaze­ment, why they had cho­sen that par­tic­u­lar gate (it being rather out of the way and not a usu­al tar­get for demon­stra­tors). They inge­nious­ly replied that they had nev­er blocked that gate before! They were then told that they were doing noth­ing ille­gal and could stay there all day if they wished! Well we know we are doing noth­ing ille­gal and that the real crim­i­nals are those build­ing ille­gal weapons of mass destruc­tion inside the fences. And the Muriel Lesters also knew, unlike the police, that they were an essen­tial part of an over­all block­ade and that oth­er gates were being block­ad­ed. They remained where they were.

At 7a.m. women from the Alder­mas­ton Women’s Peace Camp pushed their heavy lock-ons into place at Home Office Gate, and three women locked on, slow­ing traf­fic down whilst the East Anglian group drove two cars into Tadley Gate com­plete­ly block­ing it. The two cars had been care­ful­ly pro­vid­ed with lock-on tubes fixed to the back-seat floors so that when the cars were posi­tioned the sup­port­ers in the front could get out fast and the two in the back seat just opened their doors and then sat in the road and put their arms in the tube. Thus 2 peo­ple locked-on to each car and the rest of the sup­port­ing group spray paint­ed CND signs on the cars and hung ban­ners say­ing ’Nuclear Weapons are State Ter­ror­ism’.

Mean­while, two intre­pid cyclists man­aged to pad­lock shut both sets of gates at the Main Gate and then rush off with­out get­ting arrest­ed in order to sup­port the oth­er groups. They were soon joined by 2 oth­er cyclists and through­out the morn­ing not only gave good sup­port but also got lots of ideas about how to do some bicy­cle block­ades anoth­er time. They put up their ban­ner that said ’Bikes Block Bombs — No Tri­dent’ at the Tadley Gate.

At 7.30a.m. two com­bined TP affin­i­ty groups call­ing them­selves the ’Birth­day Group’ (it was Alison’s 60th birth­day) manoeu­vred a car­a­van into the Boil­er­house Gate stop­ping the line of traf­fic that had been direct­ed around to that gate. There were 4 locked to each cor­ner of the car­a­van sit­ting on the ground with their arms in con­crete lock-ons that were fixed inside each cor­ner of the car­a­van. One oth­er block­ad­er locked him­self to the side of the car­a­van. Then the ban­ner went up say­ing ’No Tri­dent Replace­ment’ and the birth­day cake came around.

Streams of traf­fic were try­ing to get into the var­i­ous gates and hav­ing to move slow­ly around the base try­ing to find a way to get in. The base had been suc­cess­ful­ly blocked at 5 gates and although the locks were bro­ken with­in min­utes at the main gates and traf­fic trick­led in past the con­crete blocks at Home Office Gate nev­er­the­less 3 gates were blocked for between 2 to 3 hours. The hard­est to move were the two cars as it was dif­fi­cult for the cut­ting teams to remove the tubes with­in the restrict­ed space inside the cars. Once every­one was removed the cars and the car­a­van then had to be towed away.

Eleven peo­ple were arrest­ed and tak­en along to Lod­don Val­ley Police Sta­tion. The 5 at North Gate had been released last of all, cut out and then plonked on the grass and instead of being arrest­ed they were left free to join the sup­port­ers from the oth­er blockad­ing groups. We all sat down and shared food and drink and our expe­ri­ences of the day. We had had a kind ded­i­cat­ed press per­son who got out the press releas­es for us as he cycled round col­lect­ing people’s pic­tures and anoth­er sup­port per­son who had dri­ven me around to take pic­tures and to get an over­all pic­ture of what was going on. We were able to do a cou­ple of inter­views includ­ing one for the local radio. You can find local press accounts here at http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article.aspx?articleID=10297 and at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/8101261.stm

You can also find pic­tures of the block­ades at http://aldermaston.net/media

In all eleven peo­ple were arrest­ed and tak­en along to Lod­don Val­ley Police Sta­tion. They were not kept inside too long and we were all re-unit­ed at around 4p.m. After more chat­ting and de-briefs we all set off home — tired but hap­py.

The 11 arrest­ed were all charged with wil­ful obstruc­tion of the high­way either with or with­out a motor vehi­cle and were giv­en rather stiff bail con­di­tions to stay well away from Alder­mas­ton and Burgh­field that some of them may chal­lenge in court. They have to appear at New­bury Mag­is­trates Court on the fol­low­ing dates:- 7 on the 25th June, 2 on the 26th June, 1 on the 30th June and 1 on 2nd July. If any­one lives near the court then some court sup­port would be wel­come for the actu­al court cas­es. You can con­tact me if you want to do this and I will let you know the dates.

Any groups read­ing this who want to be involved in the next hid­den block­ade do con­tact me.….…we need to keep the pres­sure on Alder­mas­ton and try to per­suade our Gov­ern­ment to ful­fil its promise to the world com­mu­ni­ty to dis­arm its nuclear weapons not make new ones.