Category: Nuclear

As you may know Faslane Peace Camp recent­ly put out an appeal for new mem­bers. For­tu­nate­ly the pub­lic­i­ty has gen­er­at­ed more peo­ple mov­ing to the camp and the good news is that it now looks like the peace camp is not going to close at this cru­cial time in the debate about nuclear weapons in Scot­land.
Vis­it Faslane Peace Camp from Cam­corder Guer­ril­las on Vimeo.

     To help the peace camp some for­mer res­i­dents and sup­port­ers of the camp have set up a Faslane Peace Camp Sup­port­ers net­work to help dis­trib­ute infor­ma­tion, fundraise, organ­ise events and protests, ben­e­fit gigs, trips out to the camp and stay­ing there reg­u­lar­ly etc.

    This sum­mer the Sup­port Net­work are plan­ning to build an eco-house using recy­cled mate­ri­als for use as a com­mu­nal space at the peace camp and we recent­ly held a suc­cess­ful ‘Phoenix Gath­er­ing’ at the peace camp. Some of us are meet­ing in Mono on Wednes­day 22nd May at 7.30 to dis­cuss set­ting up a Sup­port Net­work in Glas­gow and how we can do more to help the camp.

    Any­one inter­est­ed in help­ing to sup­port the camp is wel­come to come along!

Cheers!

Phill
Faslane Peace Camp Sup­port Net­work

faslanepeacecampsolidarity@gmail.com

Or Faslane Peace Camp 01436 820901 / faslane30@gmail.com

CORRECTION: The open meet­ing on the future of the peace camp will now be held at 4pm in the Kin­ning Park Com­plex on Sat­ur­day 13th April.
For the last two years, there has been a small group of us rebuild­ing Faslane Peace Camp as a com­mu­ni­ty of anti-nuclear action. We came togeth­er with a shared vision that if we main­tain the camp as a safe and alco­hol and drug free space with reg­u­lar actions and cam­paign­ing, we could cre­ate a strong, autonomous com­mu­ni­ty active in the fight against Tri­dent and the mil­i­tari­sa­tion of the West coast of Scot­land.

Part of our vision has been achieved in mak­ing the camp a safe and wel­com­ing space with facil­i­ties to sup­port anti-nuclear action, low impact liv­ing and skill shar­ing. We have worked to sus­tain resis­tance to nuclear weapons as cen­tral to this space and our col­lec­tive rea­son for being here through our own direct action cam­paigns and active involve­ment in wider Scot­tish anti-nuclear and anti-mil­i­tary move­ments. How­ev­er, our main hope that we would grow, in terms of strength through num­bers, has not been achieved. Main­tain­ing this space whilst hav­ing an active cam­paign with so few of us has put us under such pres­sure, per­son­al­ly and as a col­lec­tive, that we can’t con­tin­ue.

This let­ter is our issu­ing a notice of this, iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial out­comes for the camp, our own lim­its in achiev­ing these and, hope­ful­ly ini­ti­at­ing an inclu­sive dis­cus­sion on the future of Faslane Peace Camp that does not see the four cur­rent res­i­dents assum­ing this respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Our pro­pos­al:
We feel, as a group, our lim­it on being here is 12th June 2013, the 31st anniver­sary of the Camp. If the respon­si­bil­i­ty on decid­ing and enact­ing the future of the camp is to be ours,(i.e. if this notice does not pro­voke wider con­struc­tive dis­cus­sion on the future of the camp or encour­age a new wave of res­i­dents) then we will enact the fol­low­ing pro­pos­al:
we will start tak­ing the camp down on 12th May to cre­ate a gar­den space (to be fin­ished by 12th June) that will both cel­e­brate the 31years of resis­tance here and act as a site facil­i­ty to sup­port future action camps.

We feel that leav­ing the camp emp­ty and open to chance is not an option because we have seen it hav­ing “fall­en into the wrong hands” and feel that this is much more detri­men­tal to the peace move­ment and activism in gen­er­al than the camp not being here.

The camp’s poten­tial, capac­i­ty and sup­port and the poten­tial for con­tin­u­ing:
We feel that the camp’s capac­i­ty to sup­port a self-suf­fi­cient com­mu­ni­ty of resis­tance should not go under­stat­ed. Despite ups and downs, for the last thir­ty years the camp has been an active chal­lenge to the sta­tion­ing of nuclear weapons on the Clyde. Many of the peo­ple who have passed through here have learned and con­tin­ued to prac­tise so many skills in active resis­tance and low impact liv­ing. Those of us here have grown and learned so much, from a per­son­al lev­el to an under­stand­ing of the nature of the state spon­sored ter­ror­ism of nuclear weapons and the banal­i­ty of the every­day run­ning of this evil. This is a space to learn, grow and chal­lenge a very fun­da­men­tal human will­ing­ness to tol­er­ate soci­etal cor­rup­tion (in this case, that of nuclear weapons) as well as main­tain­ing a degree of liv­ing “out­side the sys­tem” whilst we make attempts to chal­lenge it.

The facil­i­ties here are indica­tive of the inge­nu­ity of thir­ty years of cre­ative and resource­ful indi­vid­u­als who have sim­ply found ways to cre­ate alter­na­tive ways of organ­is­ing that chal­lenge so many of the neg­a­tive learned behav­iour in soci­ety.

Ide­al­ly, we would love to see this con­tin­ue, not least because so many have worked so hard to con­tin­ue it but also because the sym­bol­ism of dis­man­tling the camp at this poten­tial­ly cru­cial time in the strug­gle for nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment (in the con­text of the ongo­ing Scot­tish inde­pen­dence and Tri­dent replace­ment debates) would be the worst pos­si­ble tim­ing.

We believe that main­tain­ing sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty liv­ing here, as well as active cam­paign­ing, can only be sus­tain­ably achieved with a sig­nif­i­cant increase in num­bers, pos­si­bly eight res­i­dents. The poten­tial and capac­i­ty of the camp is also severe­ly lim­it­ed by the lack of wider input and prac­ti­cal sup­port for it’s inhab­i­tants. We have felt like care­tak­ers of a sou­venir. We have felt a strong and increas­ing sense of moral sup­port for what we are doing but with this has come inad­e­quate and dwin­dling prac­ti­cal sup­port.

In short, we feel that the camp can only have a future if a larg­er group of peo­ple decide they wish to be based here and the wider peace move­ment assumes a degree of col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty to sup­port these peo­ple, emo­tion­al­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly and take active mea­sures to ensure their wel­fare. The cur­rent res­i­dents would be com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing long term sup­port to any group or indi­vid­u­als that wish to con­tin­ue the Camp.

What hap­pens next:
So many peo­ple have giv­en so much of their lives and ener­gy to the Peace Camp and anti-nuclear move­ment so we expect our pro­pos­al and thoughts con­tained here to have mixed respons­es. We have there­fore decid­ed to call an open meet­ing on Sat­ur­day 14th April at 4pm in the Kin­ning Park Com­plex, Glas­gow as part of the Scrap Tri­dent week­end and wel­come any con­struc­tive input on this day or via email from this point onward (faslane30@gmail.com).

What­ev­er the deci­sion on the future of the camp, we will con­tin­ue with cam­paign­ing and an active pres­ence at Faslane, but per­haps not in the form of con­tin­u­ous occu­pa­tion. Nev­er­the­less, we want to avoid the sym­bol­ism of tak­ing the camp away at this cru­cial and hope­ful time for dis­ar­ma­ment and will active­ly sup­port any viable alter­na­tive to this.

On 13–15th of April, there will be an unprece­dent­ed demon­stra­tion in Glas­gow and mass block­ade of Faslane with Scrap Tri­dent and we expect this to be the begin­ning of a new wave of anti-nuclear and anti-mil­i­tarist action. The future is dis­ar­ma­ment!

http://faslanepeacecamp.wordpress.com/