Category: Nuclear

21 Arrests as British Nuclear Weapon Sites Disrupted

11.12.2006

1st report: This morn­ing the Tri­dent sub­ma­rine base at Faslane and the atom­ic weapons fac­to­ry at Alder­mas­ton have both been the focus of dis­rup­tion as activists block­ad­ed entrance gates.

11.12.2006

1st report: This morn­ing the Tri­dent sub­ma­rine base at Faslane and the atom­ic weapons fac­to­ry at Alder­mas­ton have both been the focus of dis­rup­tion as activists block­ad­ed entrance gates.

At Faslane the North gate was block­ad­ed by activists from the Tri­dent Ploughshares cam­paign. The gate­way was blocked around 7 a.m. by a group of cyclists who formed a cor­don and then locked on to each oth­er using chains and pad­locks. Short­ly after­wards anoth­er group on foot block­ad­ed the gate­way by lying in the road, joined to each oth­er through tub­ing of plas­tic and oth­er mate­ri­als. Police, using spe­cialised cut­ting teams, removed these block­ages and made 14 arrests.

At the same time a group from Faslane Peace Camp blocked the road at the entrance to the South gate of the base, using lock-on tubes and bar­rels filled with con­crete. It took two hours to clear the road­way. There were 7 arrests.

The Faslane protests are part of the Faslane 365 cam­paign which so far has led to over 350 arrests.

2nd report: Faslane Nuclear base suc­cess­ful­ly block­ad­ed for over 2 hours

Gar­ry | 13.12.2006 19:01 | Faslane | Anti-mil­i­tarism | Scot­land
Mon­day the 11th of Decem­ber saw one of the most suc­cess­ful block­ades of the Faslane nuclear sub­ma­rine base since the start of the Faslane 365 cam­paign. The block­ade was a joint effort between a group of Tri­dent Ploughshares and the crew from Faslane Peace camp.

Mon­day the 11th of Decem­ber saw one of the most suc­cess­ful block­ades of the Faslane nuclear sub­ma­rine base since the start of the Faslane 365 cam­paign. The block­ade was a joint effort between a group of Tri­dent Ploughshares and the crew from Faslane Peace camp. One of the roads to the base was com­plete­ly block­ad­ed for 2 hours and 10 min­utes. In a day that saw 20 peo­ple being arrest­ed and the run­ning total ris­ing above 365 peo­ple, 3 of the block­aders have actu­al­ly been sum­moned to court on charges of breach of the peace.

At approx­i­mate­ly 6:30 am a group of peo­ple from the peace camp assem­bled by the road lead­ing to the base just by the south gate. After wait­ing for one of the patrolling police vans to dri­ve past, they pulled part of the fence of the peace camp out into the mid­dle of the road cre­at­ing a tem­po­rary bound­ary between them­selves and the police who were not much more than 100 metres away. Behind this fence they had hid­den 2 large oil bar­rel lock-ons which were rolled out onto the road, 3 peo­ple locked onto them in a line then 3 oth­ers joined them with 2 tough steel lock-on tubes, and anoth­er “babyâ€? oil-drum lock on cre­at­ing a daisy chain of six peo­ple with 5 pret­ty hard­core lock-ons.

It took the police about 20 sec­onds to arrive on the scene by which point they had suc­cess­ful­ly block­ad­ed the main road between Helens­burgh and the base. The police called for back up and for the cut­ting teams and with­in min­utes there were between 30 and 40 police on the scene. They imme­di­ate­ly got to work cut­ting into the lock-ons and were as usu­al very con­cerned not to let any­body see what sort of cut­ting equip­ment they were using to the extent that they erect­ed large visu­al bar­ri­ers to con­ceal their work. Peace campers did how­ev­er man­age to get footage of their equip­ment from our birds eye observers in the trees. They had 3 sep­a­rate cut­ting units at work on us yet it still took them 130 min­utes to clear the road. 7 peo­ple were arrest­ed at this inci­dent 6 for blockad­ing and one for pos­sess­ing a rope and har­ness.

As this block­ade was hap­pen­ing a sec­ond group block­ad­ed the entrance to the base at the north gate. The group of Tri­dent Ploughshares block­ad­ed the round-about by chain­ing their bicy­cles togeth­er and lock­ing them­selves to them with D‑locks around their necks. Oth­ers were arrest­ed for sim­ply cycling around the round­about slow­ly. This block­ade was suc­cess­ful in shut­ting down the road for half an hour. Both block­ades togeth­er ensured that the work of the base was severe­ly dis­rupt­ed for the whole morn­ing.

Of the 20 peo­ple arrest­ed all have been released but 3 of the releas­es were under con­di­tion that they will appear in court on the 20th of Decem­ber. These are the first of the 360 odd peo­ple that have been arrest­ed to be for­mal­ly charged with breach of the peace and gives an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the first time since the launch of Faslane 365 to actu­al­ly bring the legal­i­ty of the Tri­dent sys­tem into ques­tion in court. Par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant since the announce­ment by Blair that Tri­dent is to be replaced despite being ille­gal under inter­na­tion­al law.

We are now wit­ness­ing an esca­la­tion of the cam­paign against the spec­tre of nuclear war. Expect to see much more civ­il soci­ety resis­tance through­out next year as the Faslane 365 cam­paign comes to a cli­max.

www.faslane365.org
www.tridentploughshares.org
www.cnduk.org
www.peacenews.info/
www.faslane.co.nr/

—————————————

Aldermaston arrestSev­en peo­ple have been arrest­ed dur­ing an action which blocked two gates at the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment at Alder­mas­ton this morn­ing.

The Alder­mas­ton bomb fac­to­ry, where prepa­ra­tions are being made for a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear weapons for the UK, has also been block­ad­ed this morn­ing by the Block the Builders cam­paign. The “Home Office” gate of the site was closed, caus­ing a tail­back of work­er traf­fic as far as the A4.

The protest at Alder­mas­ton was part of an ongo­ing cam­paign against the £5.3 bil­lion devel­op­ment at Alder­mas­ton which will not only pro­vide infor­ma­tion for the British nuclear pro­gramme but also for the US pro­gramme under the shar­ing of infor­ma­tion under the Mutu­al Defence Agree­ment. The facil­i­ties include a new laser sys­tem which will help sci­en­tists cre­ate con­di­tions sim­i­lar to that inside a nuclear bomb to allow more accu­rate mod­el­ling. This allows Britain and the US to cir­cum­vent the Com­pre­hen­sive Test Ban Treaty which bans the actu­al test­ing of nuclear weapons.

http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk/
http://www.cnduk.org/pages/altwhitepaper.pdf

A Tri­dent Ploughshares spokesper­son said: “Our gov­ern­ment, far from hon­est­ly mov­ing towards dis­ar­ma­ment, is plan­ning to tie us to weapons of mass destruc­tion for the next 50 years. We must do what we can to put a spoke in the wheel of this ongo­ing crime. Tri­dent, present or future, is an instru­ment for bul­ly­ing and mind­less, unre­strained vio­lence. It belongs to a mind­set of threat, hatred and fear and is the very oppo­site of what we need at this crit­i­cal stage in the his­to­ry of the human race.”

—————————————

BIG Aldermaston Blockade on 11th December

The gov­ern­ment will pub­lish its white paper on the future of Britain’s
> nuclear weapons on Mon­day 4 Decem­ber 2006.
>
> We need to show that there is mas­sive oppo­si­tion to any new nuclear
> weapons. Block the Builders are call­ing a mass block­ade of AWE Alder­mas­ton

The gov­ern­ment will pub­lish its white paper on the future of Britain’s
> nuclear weapons on Mon­day 4 Decem­ber 2006.
>
> We need to show that there is mas­sive oppo­si­tion to any new nuclear
> weapons. Block the Builders are call­ing a mass block­ade of AWE Alder­mas­ton
> on 11 Decem­ber. Peo­ple from as far away as York­shire and Mersey­side are
> already indi­cat­ing their inten­tion to come to the Berk­shire bomb fac­to­ry.
>
> While there will be a three month peri­od for “debate” after the
> pub­li­ca­tion of the White Paper, Tony Blair has also made it clear that, in
> the end, MPs will only get to vote on the gov­ern­men­t’s pre­ferred option.
> Mean­while build­ing work at Alder­mas­ton con­tin­ues apace, mak­ing a mock­ery
> of the sup­posed “debate” as mil­lions are being invest­ed in new facil­i­ties.
> Right now, work on the Ori­on laser site — a key facil­i­ty for the future of
> Britain’s WMD project — is well under­way.
>
> On Mon­day 27 Novem­ber 400 peo­ple descend­ed on AWE Alder­mas­ton to car­ry out
> a cit­i­zen’s weapons inspec­tion organ­ised by Green­peace and Block the
> Builders (see http://moblog.co.uk/blogs.php?show=9068 for pix). Let’s
> build for a mas­sive block­ade on 11 Decem­ber!
>
> If you care about Britain throw­ing bil­lions at its weapons of mass
> destruc­tion while peo­ple die on hos­pi­tal trol­leys, if you care about a
> lack of resources for tack­ling cli­mate change, if you care about the mon­ey
> being spent on keep­ing troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, now is the time to
> get off your bum and come and show your oppo­si­tion to how your mon­ey is
> being spent and Britain’s sta­tus as a WMD pro­lif­er­a­tor.
> What do we want? Geno­ci­dal weapons of mass destruc­tion or real secu­ri­ty?
>
> This may well be an arrestable action, but we also need sup­port­ers.
> If we fail to act now, there will be anoth­er 20+ years of Britain as WMD
> state.
>
> Details of the block­ade can be found at:
> http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk/Blockades.php
> For ongo­ing updates and cam­paign alerts, join the tng list:
> http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/aldermaston_tng
> For reg­u­lar news, see: http://www.aldermaston.net/news
> –
> *****************************************
> BLOCK THE BUILDERS!
> non­vi­o­lent direct action against new nuclear weapons
> *****************************************
> Pledge *your* sup­port at http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk/pledge
> *****************************************
> _______________________________________________
> Btb_organise mail­ing list
> Btb_organise@aldermaston.net
> http://lists.aldermaston.net/mailman/listinfo/btb_organise
>

Nativity donkey arrested at Faslane North Gate

2.12.2006

A small group of pro­test­ers at Faslane Naval base were arrest­ed at around 18:30 for hold­ing a nativ­i­ty-themed block­ade at the North Gate to the base. The group of rad­i­cal Chris­tians are cur­rent­ly being tak­en to Clyde­bank Police Office to be held, pre­sum­ably until Sun­day after­noon or Mon­day morn­ing.

Faslane 365 Nativity scene (donkey, mary & joseph)2.12.2006

A small group of pro­test­ers at Faslane Naval base were arrest­ed at around 18:30 for hold­ing a nativ­i­ty-themed block­ade at the North Gate to the base. The group of rad­i­cal Chris­tians are cur­rent­ly being tak­en to Clyde­bank Police Office to be held, pre­sum­ably until Sun­day after­noon or Mon­day morn­ing.

Yet anoth­er day of the Faslane 365 block­ade end­ed as the police broke anoth­er weird and won­der­ful lock-on device. And tomor­row being advent Sun­day, and thus, the begin­ning of advent, it seemed only appro­pri­ate that Mary, Joseph and the (lock-on-device-aka-) Don­key should arrive at the gate, only to be sent away again. Bet­ter put, it would be appro­pri­ate if you’re part of Prayer-i58, the rad­i­cal Chris­t­ian-based anti-author­i­tar­i­an net­work.

Not get­ting what they want­ed, they sat down and police moved in to arrest them, dis­cov­er­ing over £50 worth of locks and chains hold­ing the pair in place. After some time spent cut­ting them out, the police took them to the hold­ing area just beyond the base, before begin­ning their jour­ney to cells for the night.

Hav­ing phoned around, legal sup­port can con­firm that the pair are en route to Clyde­bank Police Office, where many oth­er 365’ers have been held over the recent weeks. The total arrests num­ber cur­rent­ly stands at 327 arrests (as shown on the F365 web­site). As today is a Sat­ur­day, it is pos­si­ble those arrest­ed might be inside until as late as Mon­day after­noon.

EF! gathering advance notice: date & contact to get involved

The Earth First Gath­er­ing 2007 is well into the plan­ning stage.

Make space in your diary now: 18th — 22nd July 2007, some­where in Nor­folk. Please cir­cu­late this infor­ma­tion wide­ly.

If you want to get involved con­tact nexter@riseup.net.

The Earth First Gath­er­ing 2007 is well into the plan­ning stage.

Make space in your diary now: 18th — 22nd July 2007, some­where in Nor­folk. Please cir­cu­late this infor­ma­tion wide­ly.

If you want to get involved con­tact nexter@riseup.net.

Thanx
The Col­lec­tive.

The Camp for Climate Action was just the beginning! — next meeting January 13/14th, Leeds

Come and take the next steps for­ward and be part of a new­ly ener­gised move­ment in the fight to avoid cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change.

Drax at sunsetCome and take the next steps for­ward and be part of a new­ly ener­gised move­ment in the fight to avoid cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change.

In August of this year hun­dreds gath­ered near Sel­by to con­front the UK’s biggest CO2 emit­ter: Drax Coal Pow­er Sta­tion. The Camp for Cli­mate Action was an inspir­ing 10 days of learn­ing, sus­tain­able liv­ing and direct action to chal­lenge the caus­es of cli­mate chaos.

There is already much enthu­si­asm for organ­is­ing anoth­er Camp, come and get involved on 13th/14th Jan­u­ary at ‘The Com­mon Place’ in Leeds (see www.thecommonplace.org.uk for direc­tions). Meet­ings will run Sat­ur­day 11am-5pm and Sun­day 10am-6pm.

This project is still at its ear­ly stages and details such as when, where and how to organ­ise the next Camp are to be decid­ed at this meet­ing. Food and crash pad accom­mo­da­tion will be pro­vid­ed. Every­one will be asked for a dona­tion of around £10 to cov­er costs. If you have par­tic­u­lar access or child­care needs, or if would like more infor­ma­tion con­tact leeds@climatecamp.org.uk.

Please spread the news far and wide. You can down­load a rather nice poster here: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/resources.htm

Some of the neigh­bour­hoods from last year’s camp are meet­ing in the mean­time to gen­er­ate ideas for the next camp and organ­ise local­ly.

Lon­don Neigh­bour­hood Meet­ing
Lon­don Action Resource Cen­tre
Dec 2nd 1.00pm

York­shire Neigh­bour­hood Meet­ing
The Com­mon Place
Dec 6th 7.00–9.00pm

Man­ches­ter Neigh­bour­hood Meeting/Social
The Base­ment 24 Lever St, Man­ches­ter
4th Decem­ber 7:30 ( http://thebasement.clearerchannel.org/ for
direc­tions). Please email: mcragainstclimatechange@lists.riseup.net to con­firm

Local groups

Some of these are specif­i­cal­ly Cli­mate Camp, Ris­ing Tide or Plane Stu­pid groups, some are local groups involved in tak­ing direct action against cli­mate change that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly see them­selves as belong­ing to a nation­al group.

Not­ting­ham: nottingham[at]climatecamp.org.uk
Oxford: oxford[at]climatecamp.org.uk
Man­ches­ter: manchester[at]climatecamp.org.uk
Lon­don Ris­ing Tide: london[at]risingtide.org.uk
South Penines: potzo8[at] yahoo.com
South West: caromac20032000[at]yahoo.com
Leeds/Bradford: katieplum75[at]yahoo.co.uk
Scot­land and Ire­land: scotland[at]climatecamp.org.uk
Cam­bridge Action Net­work: cambridge[at]lists.riseup.net
Birm­ing­ham: flatline[at]aktivix.org
Read­ing: climatejustice[at]postmaster.co.uk
York Ris­ing Tide: yorks[at]risingtide.org.uk
Scot­land Ris­ing Tide: scotland[at]risingtide.org.uk
Lon­don Plane Stu­pid: london[at]planestupid.com
Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid: manchester[at]planestupid.com
Cam­bridge Plane Stu­pid: cambridge[at]planestupid.com
Oxford Plane Stu­pid: oxford[at]planestupid.com
Sheffield Plane Stu­pid: sheffield[at]planestupid.com
Sus­sex Plane Stu­pid: sussex[at]planestupid.com
Read­ing Plane Stu­pid: reading[at]planestupid.com

leeds@climatecamp.org.uk
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Aldermaston 26/27th Nov — national demo against new nuclear weapon facility

28 miles from Oxford, the biggest and most pow­er­ful lasar sys­tem in the world is being built at the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry, Alder­mas­ton, at a cost of £183 mil­lion (on the scale of Heathrow’s ter­mi­nal 5). Green­peace’s report on 20th. Oct. exxposed the sham of the gov­ern­men­t’s stance this year (May 22nd. ) when Dan Browne, Defence Sec­re­tary insist­ed “The Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment is not engaged in the devel­op­ment of any new war­heads”. The Green peace report revealed tes­ti­mo­ny by US nuclear weapons sci­en­tists that the new facil­i­ties are in fact for design­ing and build­ing new nuclear weapons. So much for par­lia­men­tary debate!

28 miles from Oxford, the biggest and most pow­er­ful lasar sys­tem in the world is being built at the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry, Alder­mas­ton, at a cost of £183 mil­lion (on the scale of Heathrow’s ter­mi­nal 5). Green­peace’s report on 20th. Oct. exxposed the sham of the gov­ern­men­t’s stance this year (May 22nd. ) when Dan Browne, Defence Sec­re­tary insist­ed “The Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment is not engaged in the devel­op­ment of any new war­heads”. The Green peace report revealed tes­ti­mo­ny by US nuclear weapons sci­en­tists that the new facil­i­ties are in fact for design­ing and build­ing new nuclear weapons. So much for par­lia­men­tary debate!

GREENPEACE iIS JOINING WITH THE BLOCK THE BUILDERS CAMPAIGN TO HOLD THE BIGGEST PROTEST WALK AND INSPECTION of this site on MONDAY 27th Novem­ber. Peo­ple will be com­ing from all over the UK to raise the issue of what is hap­pen­ing at Alder­mas­ton.
To build new nuclear weapons would not only be to com­mit our­selves to the waste of £75 bil­lion over the next 30 years it also total­ly under­mines the Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.

If you can come to the Greenpeace/Block the Builders event, con­tact Mal­colm on malcolm.carroll@uk.greenpeace.org. His phone num­ber is 07717802892. He will advise you where to meet with oth­ers for the pre-meet­ing on the Sun­day 26th. Novem­ber. You can ask him about overnight sleep­ing facil­i­ties.

Daughters of Rebecca at Faslane

Approx­i­mate­ly 100 peo­ple from across Wales took part in the rolling 1‑year Faslane 365 cam­paign over three days this week (Mon 13th — Wed 15th Novem­ber). 19 pro­test­ers includ­ing eight teenagers, some of whom were as young as 14, were arrest­ed for blockad­ing the nuclear base. Those under 16 were almost imme­di­ate­ly de-arrest­ed by the police, but those aged 16 and over are treat­ed as adults in Scot­tish law and were detained overnight in police cells along with every­one else. Warn­ing let­ters from the procu­ra­tor fis­cal were issued to arrestees on their release. Since the cam­paign began on Octo­ber 1st, only one Faslane 365 case has been referred to court.

Faslane Wales 1
Faslane Wales 2Approx­i­mate­ly 100 peo­ple from across Wales took part in the rolling 1‑year Faslane 365 cam­paign over three days this week (Mon 13th — Wed 15th Novem­ber). 19 pro­test­ers includ­ing eight teenagers, some of whom were as young as 14, were arrest­ed for blockad­ing the nuclear base. Those under 16 were almost imme­di­ate­ly de-arrest­ed by the police, but those aged 16 and over are treat­ed as adults in Scot­tish law and were detained overnight in police cells along with every­one else. Warn­ing let­ters from the procu­ra­tor fis­cal were issued to arrestees on their release. Since the cam­paign began on Octo­ber 1st, only one Faslane 365 case has been referred to court.

The South Wales group brought with them a con­tin­gent of the Rebel Clown Army, a giant red drag­on and assort­ed politi­cians, while the North Wales group includ­ed a size­able group of “Merched Beca” (Daugh­ters of Rebec­ca) with volu­mi­nous skirts, bon­nets and black­ened faces. The actions of Merched Beca in 1839–44, where pro­test­ers dressed up in women’s clothes and destroyed much-hat­ed toll gates in Wales, led direct­ly to a Roy­al Com­mis­sion to exam­ine the issue, and by 1844 most of the remain­ing toll gates had been legal­ly removed, allow­ing ordi­nary peo­ple to move freely along the roads. The 21st Cen­tu­ry Daugh­ters of Rebec­ca hope that their non­vi­o­lent direct action as part of Faslane 365 will bring about the decom­mis­sion­ing and dis­man­tling of Britain’s nuclear weapons, allow­ing tax­es to be divert­ed to more use­ful pur­pos­es.

wrexhamsaw@yahoo.com
http://www.wpjf.org.uk

Bradford Priest Arrested at Nuclear Blockade

16.11.2006

Over 50 Anti Nuclear pro­tes­tors from Leeds and Brad­ford took part in a mass block­ade of the Faslane Nuclear Naval Base in Scot­land this morn­ing. Twen­ty sev­en of the pro­tes­tors, includ­ing the Revd Chris How­son from Brad­ford were arrest­ed for their role in the block­ade, which includ­ed ‘lock­ing on’ to a giant CND sym­bol out­side the main gates of the base.

Faslane 365 Leeds & Bradford16.11.2006

Over 50 Anti Nuclear pro­tes­tors from Leeds and Brad­ford took part in a mass block­ade of the Faslane Nuclear Naval Base in Scot­land this morn­ing. Twen­ty sev­en of the pro­tes­tors, includ­ing the Revd Chris How­son from Brad­ford were arrest­ed for their role in the block­ade, which includ­ed ‘lock­ing on’ to a giant CND sym­bol out­side the main gates of the base.

A group of women were also arrest­ed after suc­ces­ful­ly block­ing the sec­ond gate of the base. They were dressed as lol­lipop ladies and car­ried ‘Stop Tri­dent’ signs.

Pro­tes­tors man­aged to cause dis­rup­tion to traf­fic try­ing to enter the base for almost an hour whilst police removed pro­tes­tors lying in the road and used cut­ting equip­ment to remove the ‘lock ons’.

The block­ade was part of ‘Faslane 365’, a year-long cam­paign set up to oppose the exis­tence of Tri­dent, the British nuclear sub­ma­rine pro­gramme and to oppose the intro­duc­tion of any replace­ment to Tri­dent.

The Rev Chris How­son said, “I came to Faslane to show sup­port to those who had planned to take part in the block­ade. I was arrest­ed by the police whilst stand­ing on the pave­ment out­side the base for rea­sons they would not explain to me, despite my repeat­ed requests. “It is clear to me that the Gov­ern­men­t’s inter­ests are not with the major­i­ty who are opposed to Tri­dent replace­ment and would rather see the bil­lions wast­ed on the nuclear weapons pro­gramme spent on health, edu­ca­tion or cli­mate change, but with George Bush and his col­leagues who want us to live in a world of threat, fear and nuclear hypocrisy.”

Pro­fes­sor Dave Webb from Leeds and Con­venor of York­shire CND said, “Today’s turnout has been fan­tas­tic. We have had a great mix of peo­ple blockad­ing today, young and old. It just goes to show that peo­ple are pre­pared to take action for the world we live in. The Gov­ern­ment must lis­ten to us all and allow a full pub­lic and Par­lia­men­tay debate on Tri­dent replace­ment, and dis­ar­ma­ment must be an option.”

http://www.faslane365.org/leeds_and_bradford