Hundreds of anti-Trident protesters descend on Faslane for blockade

 

13 April 2015

 

Hun­dreds of anti-nuclear activists have descend­ed on Faslane naval base to take part in a block­ade to protest against Tri­dent.

The Bairns Not Bombs demon­stra­tion from Scrap Tri­dent Coali­tion aims to see the clo­sure of the base, home to the UK’s nuclear weapons sys­tem.

Pro­test­ers began gath­er­ing out­side gates at the base from 7am on Mon­day in an attempt to stop work­ers from enter­ing, with the block­ade due to last until 3pm.

Patrick Harvie, co-con­ven­er of the Scot­tish Greens and MSP for Glas­gow, is among those tak­ing part.

He said: “Tri­dent is an obscen­i­ty. Through direct action and through the bal­lot box we can make the case for the UK to play a new role on the world stage.

“By pur­su­ing peace, a glob­al deal on cli­mate change and end­ing the arms trade we can stand tall rather than cling­ing to out­dat­ed and dan­ger­ous sta­tus sym­bols.

“By choos­ing to dis­arm Tri­dent we can re-skill work­ers on the Clyde to pro­vide defence of the strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant north­ern seas, and diver­si­fy our econ­o­my for social good.”

The group met with police on April 1 to ask them to not make arrests in what they argued would be a “peace­ful and law­ful” protest.

How­ev­er a few hours into the demon­stra­tion police offi­cers began mak­ing arrests of those in the block­ade, with a spokes­woman con­firm­ing 15 pro­test­ers had been appre­hend­ed.

The cut­ters are out, arrests being made https://t.co/k5VbKRcZkv

A Faslane spokesman added: “The MoD recog­nis­es the demo­c­ra­t­ic right of indi­vid­u­als to par­tic­i­pate in law­ful and peace­ful protest activ­i­ties.

“The MoD police and Police Scot­land are seek­ing to facil­i­tate safe and peace­ful protest activ­i­ty but any breach­es of crim­i­nal law will be dealt with in an appro­pri­ate man­ner.”

He also said the oper­a­tional out­put of the base was not orig­i­nal­ly affect­ed by the protest activ­i­ty with con­tin­gency plans in place, how­ev­er some staff were lat­er sent home.

Let­ter

The block­ade comes after a large ral­ly in Glas­gow’s George Square on Sat­ur­day April 4, which was attend­ed by around 5000 peo­ple, at which First Min­is­ter Nico­la Stur­geon spoke.

In a nation­al news­pa­per on Sun­day, come­di­an Frankie Boyle and Nobel prize win­ner Pro­fes­sor Peter Hig­gs were among lead­ing fig­ures who have made a new call for the nuclear deter­rent to be scrapped.

Launched by polit­i­cal group Com­pass, the let­ter claimed polling data sug­gest­ed nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment is a “major­i­ty pop­u­lar demand” across the coun­try.

For­mer Roy­al Soci­ety pres­i­dent Sir Michael Atiyah, design­er Dame Vivi­enne West­wood, Mas­sive Attack and US lin­guist Noam Chom­sky were also among the 70 sig­na­to­ries to the let­ter.