Action round-up from Faslane anti-nuke action month

Four Olympic Gold Medal Winners arrested at Faslane Naval Base on Monday 11th June!

The  four women from Glas­gow and Edin­burgh are mem­bers of the Gare­loch Hor­tis peace group which was tak­ing part in thir­ty days of actions to mark thir­ty years of Faslane Peace Camp’s protest against Tri­dent nuclear weapons. The group staged the Peace Olympics with events as var­ied as syn­chro­nised swim­ming and putting the Hag­gis.

The medal­lists were arrest­ed dur­ing the Tug of Peace across the North Gate of the base.

The event drew atten­tion to the con­tin­ued pres­ence of the ille­gal and dead­ly weapons in Scot­land, and all eight oth­er nuclear nations. The win­ners’ podi­um high­light­ed that the only way to win the Race for Peace is to lay down the weapons of mass destruc­tion.

 

Activists blockade Faslane Naval Base

19.6.2012

Today at 7 o’ clock in the morn­ing activists of the Faslane Peace­camp block­ad­ed the Tri­dent Naval Base. Three peo­ple locked on in front of the South Gate. From the orig­i­nal five peo­ple at the North Gate two were arrest­ed imme­di­ate­ly while the rest were able to block­ade one lane of the road. The block­ade last­ed about 90 min­utes.


A spokesper­son said on behalf of the Peace Camp: ” We are hav­ing this block­ade today because we want to show our oppo­si­tion against nuclear weapons. We express our fear and our anger in a non­vi­o­lent way. We ask the British gov­ern­ment to lis­ten to the opin­ion of the major­i­ty of Scot­tish peo­ple and MSP’s. The Peo­ple do not want Tri­dent! They do not want this base with it’s nuclear weapons in Scot­land. Due to the fact that in the next few years Scot­tish inde­pen­dence may be achieved now is the time to put pres­sure upon the British gov­ern­ment. Instead of start­ing to put mon­ey into a Tri­dent replace­ment we want them to shut down the Faslane Naval Base and stop their nuclear weapons pro­gram.”

An inter­na­tion­al activist added: “This block­ade was a very inter­na­tion­al one. Peo­ple from all parts of Britain and activists from Spain and Swe­den were involved. I think that it is my right and my duty as a glob­al cit­i­zen to do non­vi­o­lent direct actions against nuclear weapons as long as our gov­ern­ments do not ful­fill their duty and stop fight­ing wars. Nuclear weapons are ille­gal by inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law and I want all coun­tries to respect this and make a step to a more peace­ful world.”

This block­ade is part of the 30 days of action from the 9th June to the 9th July. To find out more about what has hap­pened and will hap­pen in the future vis­it our blog.

http://faslanepeacecamp.wordpress.com/

Faslane Peace Campers Trespass at Coulport Nuclear Weapons Depot

15/06/2012

Angus Chalmers and Leon­na O’Neill of Faslane Peace Camp entered RNAD Coul­port in the ear­ly hours of Wednes­day morn­ing.

They left the camp on foot at approx­i­mate­ly 10pm with the inten­tions of see­ing how close they could get to Coul­port under the cov­er of dark­ness. By the time they were approach­ing the out­er fence perime­ter the two still had­n’t been appre­hend­ed or detect­ed by secu­ri­ty or any of the night vision cctv cam­eras, and so decid­ed to con­tin­ue to see how far luck (or the inep­ti­tudes of the secu­ri­ty sys­tem on what should be the most heav­i­ly guard­ed naval depot in the UK) would get them.

They decid­ed to approach the Explo­sives Han­dling Jet­ty via the shore line and entered by wad­ing water and climb­ing a razor wire fence. At this point they decid­ed to walk vis­i­bly and announce them­selves to the first police they saw. To their sur­prise they were met with zero secu­ri­ty per­son­nel and were able to access a jet­ty a mat­ter of feet from the Explo­sives Han­dling Jet­ty where the Tri­dent nuclear war­heads are loaded to the Van­gau­rd sub­marines.

Angus climbed a fur­ther fence into the estab­lish­ment set­ting off the ban­dit alarm and alert­ing the MOD secu­ri­ty and cctv cam­era oper­a­tors. Both were soon appre­hend­ed by MOD police and arrest­ed and charged with miil­i­tary by-laws and the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act 2005 (SOCPA). Both were held in cus­tody until court on Thurs­day after­noon where the SOCPA charges were dropped and they plead­ed not guilty to the by-laws charges.

Leon­na and Angus said “This is evi­dence that the Couport Nuclear Weapons Depot is unsafe. The capac­i­ty for this tech­nol­o­gy to irreper­a­bly destroy life and the envi­ron­ment should be rea­son enough to ensure that it is safe guard­ed and pro­tect­ed in a way that does not allow for human error or com­pla­cen­cy. The rel­a­tive ease at which we were able to approach and enter Coul­port on foot and the close prox­i­matey we were able to get to the Explo­sives Han­dling Jet­ty is sur­pris­ing and dis­turb­ing”.

 

Faslane Peace Camp and Trident Ploughshares Trespass at Faslane Naval Base

2/07/2012

 
Sev­en activists from Faslane Peace Camp and Tri­dent Ploughshares entered Faslane naval base this morn­ing with four mem­bers of the group slip­ping past guards and reach­ing points up to 100 yards inside the base. A fur­ther two were arrest­ed in the attempt.

At 7am this morn­ing Faslane Peace Camp and Tri­dent Ploughshares activists attend­ed the North gate of the Faslane Naval Base to ser­e­nade the approach­ing morn­ing shift staff with peace and nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment songs. The act dou­bled as a ruse to enable fif­teen of the group to attempt enter­ing the base. One TP activist, Bri­an Larkin, suc­ceed­ed in gain­ing entry to the base whilst the rest were pre­vent­ed from doing so by Minit­sry of Defence and Strath­clyde police.

Bri­an was charged with breach of SOCPA, the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act, and mil­i­a­try by-laws and lat­er released on an under­tak­ing. Upon being released Larkin said “the seri­ous organ­ised crime hap­pens inside the base and not in these actions for peace and dis­ar­ma­ment. It is the ongo­ing deploy­ment of Tri­dent sub­marines – each car­ry­ing 48 war­heads, eight times more destruc­tive than the bomb dropped on Hiroshi­ma which killed 200,000 peo­ple – that con­sti­tutes seri­ous organ­ised crime and vio­lates every prin­ci­ple of human­i­ty in inter­na­tion­al law.”

In a show of the same relent­less per­sis­tence that has kept the Peace Camp and the anti-nuclear move­ment going over the years, the group lat­er returned to make a sec­ond attempt at breach­ing the North Gate. Two were arrest­ed dur­ing the attempt whilst six gained entry, four of which reach­ing up to 100 yards inside the base.

The ban­dit alarm was acti­vat­ed and the Naval Base was locked down, pre­vent­ing traf­fic from enter­ing the base and nor­mal oper­a­tions to con­tin­ue with­in the base for 45 min­utes. The action was part of the Peace Camp’s 30 Days of Action mark­ing 30 years of con­tin­u­ous resis­tance to nuclear weapons at Faslane. Thir­ty peo­ple have been arrest­ed in the cam­paign which began on 9 June. Nine peo­ple were arrest­ed today.

It is not yet clear what the oth­er eight will be charged with but a breach of SOCPA charge is like­ly in addi­tion to breach­ing mil­i­tary by-laws. Angus Chalmers of the Fasland Peace Camp said “This land has been fenced and des­ig­nat­ed as a SOCPA area in order to make pos­si­ble the seri­ous crime of deploy­ing Tri­dent.” Mar­garet Brem­n­er of the Tri­dent Ploughshares Gare­loch Hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ists affin­i­ty group added “We cross this line today to demon­strate that this land, this earth, does not belong to a state which is using it to threat­en the destruc­tion of the earth and all its peo­ples. We enter this gate in order to reclaim land for life not death.”

Each of those tres­pass­ing were car­ry­ing let­ters explain­ing the inter­na­tion­al ille­gal­i­ty of nuclear weapons to present to work­ers inside the base. In 1996, the Inter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice wrote the advi­so­ry opin­ion that not only would the use of nuclear weapons be ille­gal but the very threat of use through deploy­ment, main­te­nance and upgrade of nuclear weapons sys­tems is in con­tra­ven­tion to the Nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.

Under the terms of the NPT which entered into force over forty years ago, the UK gov­ern­ment is oblig­at­ed to bring nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment to com­ple­tion. Instead the UK gov­ern­ment has con­tin­ued to main­tain and is now upgrad­ing its nuclear weapons sys­tem. The recent news that the MoD has award­ed lucra­tive con­tracts to arms com­pa­nies for the ini­tial stages of a Tri­dent replace­ment pro­gramme fur­thers this ongo­ing mock­ery of our inter­na­tion­al legal oblig­a­tions.

As long as our gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to fail in it’s oblig­a­tion to make seri­ous moves toward com­plete nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment, mem­bers of Tri­dent Plougshares and Faslane Peace Camp are com­mit­ted to non-vio­lent direct action to dis­rupt the deploy­ment of these ille­gal and immoral weapons.

Fur­ther demon­stra­tions are planned for the remain­der of the thir­ty days of action which will fin­ish on July 9th. Amongst oth­er actions, there will be an aca­d­e­m­ic sem­i­nar block­ade on Fri­day and a Rebel Clown Army insur­gence on Sat­ur­day. For more infor­ma­tion on the 30Days Action Cam­paign con­tact the camp via  faslane30@gmail.com.

Faslane Peace Camp: 01436 820901 or 07511793227
Tri­dent Ploughshares: Bri­an Larkin 07768 312676

For More infor­ma­tion on
Tri­dent Ploughshares see: www.tridentploughshares.org.uk
Faslane Peace Camp and 30 Days of Action see: http://faslanepeacecamp.wordpress.com/