Lon­don — Par­lia­ment Square: block­ade, Crit­i­cal Mass, inside House of Com­mons, demo & celebs ral­ly»»»»»»»»»

14.03.2007
Anti-Tri­dent pro­tes­tors today shut down Great George Street in Par­lia­ment Square at around 11:45 am today for about 15 min­utes in protest over the government’s plans to renew Britain’s nuclear capa­bil­i­ty. After police picked them up and moved them to the side, two of five lanes were reopened to traf­fic.

9 peo­ple who have chained them­selves togeth­er using a mod­el of a Tri­dent Mis­sile and con­crete blocks, block­ing the roads around Par­lia­ment Square just hours before MPs are to decide on the replace­ment of the Tri­dent nuclear mis­sile sys­tem.

One of the pro­test­ers, Mell Har­ri­son from Bun­gay said “we were told that there would be a full and open debate but this has not hap­pened. Even some peo­ple who are cur­rent­ly in favour of Tri­dent are not hap­py about the way the debate has been con­duct­ed. This is an issue of inter­na­tion­al impor­tance and will not just affect us but leaves the spec­tre of nuclear holo­caust over gen­er­a­tions to come.”
She went on to say: “what we need for our secu­ri­ty is not a so called ‘inde­pen­dent’ deter­rent but an inde­pen­dent for­eign pol­i­cy”.

This action comes dur­ing an upsurge of anti-nuclear protests with near­ly 580 peo­ple arrest­ed since last Octo­ber, includ­ing 30 from the east­ern region, in a year long block­ade of the Faslane base where the nuclear sub­marines are kept and reg­u­lar actions at the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment at Alder­mas­ton.



they were strewn out across the whole road while sup­port­ers held a ban­ner ‘no tri­dent replace­ment’. traf­fic was redi­rect­ed and the road cleared of vehi­cles, and then police moved in and, despite the risk of caus­ing injury, man­han­dled the heavy blocks along with the pro­test­ers to the side of the road.

a spe­cial­ist team arrived and start­ed cut­ting away at the ‘tri­dent mis­sile’, while the activists were hand­ed notices by police telling them that they were tak­ing part in an ‘unau­tho­rised protest’ under the ‘seri­ous organ­ised crime and police act’ (soc­pa).

after about half an hour, two lanes of traf­fic were opened, and the three activists attached to the mis­sile were freed and arrest­ed. one of them had been slight­ly cut on her right hand dur­ing police attempts to release her.

a huge ham­mer drill was used on the first of the con­crete blocks. the block was mould­ed in a plas­tic bin with the paint­ed words ‘bin tri­dent’. press were moved well away and offi­cers blocked sight-lines. they claimed it was for health and safe­ty rea­sons, but con­tin­ued to allow traf­fic to pass by with­in feet of the oper­a­tion.

each block took a fur­ther twen­ty min­utes or so, and it was past four ‘o’ clock when the last of the pro­test­ers were removed. it is believed they are charged under the soc­pa leg­is­la­tion and for obstruc­tion of the high­way.

‘block the builders’ stage reg­u­lar block­ades at the alder­marston weapons lab­o­ra­to­ry and the next is planned for 19th march. they believe that the build­ing work at the lab has already start­ed for the next gen­er­a­tion of nuclear weapons and that today’s tri­dent vote is a sham.

more details avail­able at www.blockthebuilders.org.uk

Crit­i­cal Mass

The arrival of crit­i­cal mass livened things up and gave the legions of bored cops some­thing to do, albeit for a short time. At least two cyclists were told that if they ped­dled round the square again they would be arrest­ed. Sad­ly the sight of David Cameron being nicked on his bike as he cycled home was not to mate­ri­alise. He was far too busy show­ing off his green cre­den­tials by help­ing the gov­ern­ment make enough weapons to kill the entire plan­et twice over.

Inside House of Com­mons

As MPs debat­ed today over the UKs strate­gic nuclear deter­rence pro­gramme in the hours before a final deci­sion was made 3 peo­ple were arrest­ed in the House of Com­mons. They were just a few of the many across Britain who placed them­selves in the hands of police offi­cers to make their mes­sage, and that of the nations heard. Risk­ing their careers and their free­dom for their prin­ci­ples. Read more .…

3 peo­ple were arrest­ed yes­ter­day (13th march 2007) in the House of Com­mons, where from 1pm MPs were gath­er­ing to debate the issue of the UKs strate­gic nuclear defence pro­gramme and the replace­ment of Tri­dent, our cur­rent nuclear weapons sys­tem.

The debate may have opened with a pathet­i­cal­ly weak, lame dog of an argu­ment from Mar­garet Beck­ett, how­ev­er some inspir­ing speech­es were giv­en by the likes of Jere­my Cory­byn, Micheal Meach­er, John McDon­nell, Nigel Grif­fiths and many, many more.

At approx­i­mate­ly 6pm, 5 hours into the debate, two peace pro­test­ers in the view­ing gallery stood up hold­ing a peace flag. Though they remained both silent and sta­t­ic they were imme­di­ate­ly noticed my MPs, some of whom point­ed (and even smiled). The two pro­test­ers (one 18 year old girl and 21 year old guy, both stu­dents from Berk­shire) were jumped on imme­di­ate­ly by guards and escort­ed out. The 18 year old being car­ried by out secu­ri­ty. They received much applause and sup­port from peo­ple in the gallery and sub­se­quent­ly a gen­tle­man was arrest­ed for clap­ping.

One woman raised objec­tions as to the rough treat­ment the two young peo­ple received; thank­ful­ly she was not also arrest­ed for doing so.

Once removed from the view­ing area they were escort­ed to the police rooms where they were informed they had no right to a solic­i­tor or deten­tion review as would be the case out­side of par­lia­ment.
How­ev­er they were only detained for under 2 hours and were let out short­ly after the vote results was announced.

Twelve minute film shows celebs’ press-call in the morn­ing, the lock-on and par­lia­ment square block­ade of the after­noon, and the cyclists’ ‘fish on bicy­cle’ demo in the evening, fol­lowed by police harass­ment as the ‘offi­cial’ cnd protest fin­ish­es:
Video wmv ver­sion — video/x‑ms-wmv 17M
mp4 ver­sion — video/mp4 15M

Scot­land — Faslane nuclear base»»»»»»»»»»

There were four arrest­ed blockad­ing Faslane this morn­ing and a good pres­ence with ban­ners. Mean­while Faslane Peace Camp hung a ban­ner say­ing “What­ev­er the vote Tri­dent is still wrong” on the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment build­ing. 5 were arrest­ed.

I’m sure there will be more to come today and if the Par­lia­ment vote to con­tin­ue with nuclear mad­ness then Direct Action will only increase until they see sense.

Scot­land — Scot­tish par­lia­ment»»»»»»»»»»»>

At 8 o’clock this morn­ing activists attempt­ed to occu­py the roof of the Scot­tish Par­li­ment at Holy­rood. Whilst four activists were arrest­ed before they could reach the roof a lone activist man­aged to reach the canopy over the front of the build­ing. He unfurled a ban­ner read­ing, “WHATEVER THEY VOTE TRIDENT IS STILL WRONG”.
At around one o’clock the Police brought in a cher­ry pick­er and a spe­cial­ist police climb­ing team. They pro­ceed­ed to cut the ban­ner down whilst the coura­geous climber did a flit accross the roof. He was unfor­tu­a­nate­ly arrest­ed at the back of the Par­li­ment build­ing.

A sup­port­er on the ground was also arrest­ed for shout­ing sup­port to the activist, appa­rant­ly he was “incit­ing a breach of the peace”.

All those arrest­ed are to be held over night to appear in Edin­burgh Sher­riffs court tomor­row.

And from last few days:

Scot­land — MP’s office»»»»»»»»»»»>

9 Mar 2007

This morn­ing at 9:30am, pro-dis­ar­ma­ment activists occu­pied Alis­tair Darling’s (MP Edin­burgh West) con­stituen­cy office on Rut­land Square with a life-size inflat­able Tri­dent mis­sile. The mis­sile was inflat­ed as much as it could be giv­en the con­fined space, and left no room even to get to the door. The activists then, after they felt their voic­es had been heard, attempt­ed to deflate the mis­sile and get it up the stairs.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Alis­tair Dar­ling was not in his con­stituen­cy office (although Sarah Boy­ack MSP was)- con­ve­nient giv­en the fact that it should have been the last oppor­tu­ni­ty for con­stituents to lob­by him ahead the Tri­dent replace­ment vote. Very demo­c­ra­t­ic, Dar­ling. The activists then demon­strat­ed out­side the office with the mis­sile ful­ly inflat­ed, block­ing off the entrance to it.

The pur­pose of the action was to high­light the MP’s irre­spon­si­ble sid­ing with Tony Blair on the issue of replac­ing Tri­dent, and an attempt to put pres­sure on him to vote accord­ing to his con­stituents’ wish­es, as opposed to tow­ing the par­ty line.

The activists cov­er a broad range of anti-Tri­dent groups and hoped to influ­ence the par­lia­men­tary vote on Tri­dent replace­ment due to take place on Wednes­day 14th March. One activist has said: ‘If MPs are unwill­ing to acknowl­edge the opin­ions of their con­stituents, then con­stituents must make it a pri­or­i­ty to express their views to their MPs – through direct action if nec­es­sary.’

Anoth­er activist com­ment­ed: ‘The issue of Tri­dent replace­ment is big­ger than any MPs polit­i­cal agen­da or careerist aspi­ra­tions and big­ger than Tony Blair’s lega­cy. Dis­ar­ma­ment starts right here in the UK, we should be an exam­ple to fol­low not inter­na­tion­al bul­lies using nuclear weapons as bar­gain­ing tools.’

Join us at Faslane, 8am, Wednes­day 14th March to demon­strate against Tri­dent replace­ment and all nuclear weapons.

NO NEW NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

http://www.tridentvoteday.org.uk
http://www.faslane365.org

Lon­don — by Big Ben»»»»»»»»»»»»»»


13.3.2007

PRESS RELEASE

Green­peace vol­un­teers have scaled a crane next to Big Ben and hung a huge ban­ner from it declar­ing ‘TONY loves WMD’.

The protest comes as MPs pre­pare to vote tomor­row on whether to renew Britain’s nuclear weapons sys­tem and com­mit Britain to nuclear arms for the next 50 years. The four vol­un­teers aim to occu­py the crane until the vote takes place. They hope to tele­phone as many MPs as pos­si­ble urg­ing them not to sup­port new weapons of mass destruc­tion.

One of the vol­un­teers on the crane, Cat Dorey, said:‘Trident is a cold war rel­ic designed to destroy Russ­ian cities. If MPs buck­le under pres­sure from Tony Blair and vote to renew it, the reper­cus­sions will be felt around the world. We can’t oppose pro­lif­er­a­tion of WMD if we’re build­ing them at home.’

She con­tin­ued: ‘The gov­ern­ment promised a nation­al debate on Tri­dent but this is being rushed through quick­er than a shot­gun wed­ding. The real threat is cli­mate change and the bil­lions ear­marked for Tri­dent could help make Britain the world’s first low car­bon econ­o­my. We’re phon­ing MPs from the crane and ask­ing them to respect the will of the coun­try and vote against Tony Blair’s WMD pro­gramme.’

A recent poll com­mis­sioned by Chan­nel Four found that three quar­ters of the pub­lic oppose gov­ern­ment replac­ing Tri­dent now.

A report from Green­peace released last week esti­mat­ed the true cost of build­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear weapons to replace Tri­dent will be at least £76bn and could rise as high as £100 bil­lion. These fig­ures con­trast stark­ly with the £15–20bn fig­ure the gov­ern­ment has pre­vi­ous­ly stat­ed will be the cost of Tri­dent replace­ment. The report details how gov­ern­ment has spun the fig­ures by only includ­ing the design and build­ing costs of the sub­marines and not the far high­er price of main­tain­ing and devel­op­ing the nuclear weapons sys­tem over its life­time.

The cam­paign to oppose new nuclear weapons sys­tems has received sup­port across the polit­i­cal spec­trum

Kofi Annan says of Tony Blair’s pol­i­cy: ‘They should not imag­ine that this will be accept­ed as com­pat­i­ble with the Nuclear non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.’

For­mer shad­ow defence sec­re­tary Michael Ancram says: ‘The threat of using nuclear weapons is not only illog­i­cal but incred­i­ble’ ‘the need for gen­uine­ly inde­pen­dent alter­na­tive and flex­i­ble non-nuclear deter­rence is if any­thing greater.’

Pro­fes­sor Stephen Hawk­ing says: ‘To replace Tri­dent would make it more dif­fi­cult to get arms reduc­tion. It would also be a waste of mon­ey because there are no cir­cum­stances in which we would use it inde­pen­dent­ly.’

Mohammed ElBa­radei, the head of the UN nuclear watch­dog said in Lon­don recent­ly: ‘Britain can­not expect oth­er coun­tries to refrain from acquir­ing nuclear weapons if it upgrades its tri­dent nuclear weapons sys­tem.’

»»»»»»»>demos in oth­er parts of coun­try too — see indymedia.org.uk or else­where