Devonport submarine base blockaded by Trident Ploughshares, one arrest

Around thir­teen activists from anti-nuclear direct action group Tri­dent Ploughshares took the police by sur­prise when they block­ad­ed Devon­port naval dock­yard, near the cen­tre of Ply­mouth, in the ear­ly hours of Fri­day, 22 August, 2008. One man was arrest­ed. The Roy­al Navy base is used to refit nuclear sub­marines, includ­ing the Tri­dent nuclear mis­sile-car­ry­ing Van­guard fleet based at Faslane, Scot­land.

The block­aders, main­ly from the local Tamar­i­an affin­i­ty group and the Lon­don-based Muriel Lesters, obstruct­ed the main access road into the site at Camel’s Head. Dock­yard work­ers arriv­ing in vehi­cles were pre­vent­ed from enter­ing for half an hour, from around 7.30am on the last work­ing day before the Bank Hol­i­day week­end. The activists used two long met­al lad­ders, a lock-on tube with a chain attached, bicy­cle chains, a wheel­chair and their bod­ies to com­plete­ly block the incom­ing car­riage­way.

Police even­tu­al­ly arrived and had to divert traf­fic for a fur­ther hour, until the police cut­ting team final­ly arrived. At this point, the block­aders and their sup­port­ers agreed to leave, giv­en that most work­ers had already entered the base. They were able to keep all their ban­ners, lad­ders and oth­er blockad­ing equip­ment.

After releas­ing him­self from an arm lock-on tube (which had been passed through one lad­der and also chained to the cen­tral crash bar­ri­er), Daniel Vies­nik, 33, from Lon­don got up and then lay down again on the red line mark­ing the lim­it of the Min­istry of Defence prop­er­ty. He was sub­se­quent­ly joined by Irene Willis. After ignor­ing police requests to move, Mr Vies­nik was arrest­ed and car­ried away to a van. He was tak­en to Charles Cross police sta­tion and held for around three hours before being charged with obstruc­tion of the high­way and released. He was bailed to appear before Ply­mouth Mag­is­trates’ on 5th Sep­tem­ber.

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, the group tied anti-Tri­dent ban­ners to promi­nent bridges and round­abouts on roads going into Ply­mouth. Lat­er, in the city cen­tre, they dressed them­selves in white ‘radi­a­tion suits’ and some of them attract­ed the atten­tion of passers-by with a ‘die-in’, their ‘corpses’ sprin­kled with ‘nuclear fall­out’ ash. Oth­ers leaflet­ed shop­pers and engaged inter­est­ed locals and sol­diers from the near­by Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Army cen­tre in dia­logue about the nuclear men­ace on their doorstep and pro­pos­als to turn the site into a nuclear sub­ma­rine grave­yard.

One of the block­aders said, “Plans to replace or upgrade the Tri­dent sys­tem con­tra­vene our inter­na­tion­al treaty oblig­a­tions, which is hyp­o­crit­i­cal and ille­gal. We would like to see the British gov­ern­ment lead by exam­ple in push­ing for glob­al abo­li­tion of nuclear weapons and stop wast­ing bil­lions of pounds of pub­lic mon­ey on these instru­ments of mass mur­der. Local work­ers should be retrained to use their skills for more peace­ful pur­pos­es.”

Fri­day’s block­ade was the top sto­ry report­ed on local BBC TV news and was also cov­ered by local ITV news, local radio and the Ply­mouth Her­ald news­pa­per.

Tri­dent Ploughshares is com­mit­ted to dis­arm­ing the UK Tri­dent nuclear weapons sys­tem in a non-vio­lent, open, peace­ful and ful­ly account­able man­ner.
The group is organ­is­ing a Big Block­ade at Alder­mas­ton, Berk­shire – Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry – sup­port­ed by the Cam­paign for Nuclear Dis­ar­ma­ment (CND), on Mon­day, 27 Octo­ber, meet­ing on 26 Octo­ber. Check the Tri­dent Ploughshares web­site for fur­ther details and to request a brief­ing pack. Arrestable block­aders and non-arrestable sup­port­ers are need­ed. There will be a week­end of non-vio­lent direct action train­ing in prepa­ra­tion for this action on 20–21 Sep­tem­ber in Lon­don. New­com­ers are warm­ly invit­ed to attend (it is also pos­si­ble to attend the train­ing just for one day).

Main­stream media cov­er­age of Devon­port block­ade:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7576964.stm (video)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/7576219.stm
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Nuclear-protest-dockyard/article-283835-detail/article.html

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Non-vio­lence train­ing work­shop 20–21 Sep­tem­ber

There will be a week­end work­shop of Tri­dent Ploughshares non­vi­o­lence
train­ing, focussing on prepa­ra­tion for the Octo­ber 27 Alder­mas­ton Big Block­ade at Waltham­stow Friend’s Meet­ing House, 1a Jew­el Road, off Hoe Street, Waltham­stow, Lon­don E17 4QU on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day 20th and 21st Sep­tem­ber.

The full week­end is pri­mar­i­ly for peo­ple think­ing of becom­ing mem­bers of Tri­dent Ploughshares and mak­ing an ongo­ing com­mit­ment. Peo­ple just wish­ing to pre­pare for the block­ade are wel­come to attend for the full week­end, but may also choose to attend on the Sat­ur­day only.

There is no charge for the work­shop, but par­tic­i­pants are asked to con­tribute towards expens­es if they are able to.

Con­tact Ali­son to reg­is­ter and for more details:
E‑mail: alison.crane [at] ntlworld.com
Tel: 01785 611 768 or 0845 4588 362 or 07886 972 319