Robin Hood blockades the Base

On Sun­day April the 1st, a team of out­laws from Not­ting­ham block­ad­ed the main gate of Faslane Nuclear Sub­ma­rine Base for 4 hours.

This was just one day of the 365 day block­ade of Faslane that was start­ed in Octo­ber in response to our gov­ern­ments plan to replace Tri­dent despite agree­ments signed in inter­na­tion­al law in the Nuclear Non-pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.

On Sun­day April the 1st, a team of out­laws from Not­ting­ham block­ad­ed the main gate of Faslane Nuclear Sub­ma­rine Base for 4 hours.

This was just one day of the 365 day block­ade of Faslane that was start­ed in Octo­ber in response to our gov­ern­ments plan to replace Tri­dent despite agree­ments signed in inter­na­tion­al law in the Nuclear Non-pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.

After months in the plan­ning, over 50 peo­ple from Not­ting­ham and Der­by head­ed up to Scot­land over the week­end. It was an incred­i­bly mixed bunch of peo­ple, aged from 14 to 76, and includ­ing sea­soned peace cam­paign­ers as well as peo­ple com­plete­ly new to protest­ing who felt impas­sioned into act­ing by the threat of new nuclear weapons.

After a day spent march­ing around the nuclear base on the Sat­ur­day, final plans for the block­ade were put into place that evening. It was a daunt­ing task. The main gate was expect­ed to be com­plete­ly held by police, and we need­ed to be there by 6.30am! Nev­er­the­less, despite a tyre blow­ing out just a few miles from the base, block­aders took the police by sur­prise and man­aged a full take-over of the space in front of the main gate sec­onds after arriv­ing. A mix­ture of tried and test­ed con­crete lock-ons, and inno­v­a­tive new meth­ods (plas­ter­cast­ing our­selves to each oth­er) were used by the 15 peo­ple who locked down in front of the gate.

The suc­cess of the oper­a­tion was amaz­ing, and the sup­port from rest of the 50 or so peo­ple was bril­liant – from a con­stant bar­rage of noise and chants, to bis­cuits and cig­a­rettes being lobbed over police lines and screens to the block­aders. The last peo­ple were car­ried off by police at around 11am. Every­one was jubi­lant with suc­cess!

But it wasn’t over yet! The Rebel Clown Army was arriv­ing and mak­ing a real nui­sance of them­selves… one was arrest­ed when found in a vehi­cle he shouldn’t have been in, and oth­ers lat­er locked the police in their own com­pound, mak­ing them look even more like fools than they nor­mal­ly do, when after 20 min­utes of head scratch­ing and call­ing the cut­ting team they found the key just near by!

More mem­bers of the Robin Hood team then stood in front of the gates and sang Palm Sun­day hymns. When threat­ened with arrest, one woman refused to move to allow access to the gates. She was quick­ly joined by a man inspired by her actions who stood with her in sol­i­dar­i­ty and they were both arrest­ed.

So, out of the 50 strong Robin Hood team, 17 were arrest­ed. They were all held for over 24 hours. Yet spir­its were still high when they were all released with only a writ­ten warn­ing. On a per­son­al note, I found this event real­ly inspir­ing. Lots of peo­ple who have nev­er done any­thing like this before came togeth­er to pull off a real­ly suc­cess­ful block­ade. Hope­ful­ly it won’t stop there, and we will con­tin­ue to work togeth­er.