Academics and Scholars's Blockade Reports

It makes a change from windmills…..
About 40 academics from several countries gathered outside the north gate of Faslane Base on the Clyde to hold a conference on Trident and to blockade the base. Surrounded by the magnificent scenery of lochs and mountains, our makeshift conference hall was a barricaded corner of pavement with a few rocks to sit on and a small ‘audience’ of police guarding the gate.

Faslane, near Glasgow, June 27, 2007

Over 40 academics and students gathered today at the nuclear base of Faslane in Scotland in a bid to convince new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to scrap his plans to renew the Trident nuclear weapons system. The conference and blockade combined academic discussion with non-violent direct action blockading the base[1]. The academics insisted Gordon Brown justifies his commitment to Trident to the intellectual community, as well as to his deputy leader, Harriet Harman, as he has so far failed to do so. The conference and blockade was especially timely, occurring two weeks after MSPs voted overwhelmingly against Trident’s replacement, at odds with Westminster. There is also increasing public disquiet about the cost to UK tax payers exceeding £50 billion[2].

Press Release: Faslane, January 7, 2007

More than 70 eminent academics and scholars held a seminar blockade on the insanity and illegality of nuclear weapons at the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland. After four hours, seminar participants, which included students from the Universities of Oxford, Sussex and Edinburgh, as well as professors, lawyers and lecturers, decided to conduct the rest of the seminar in front of the North (main) gate of the base, where it continued for a further 6 hours in pouring rain. Altogether 34 professors, lecturers and students were arrested, charged with “breach of the peace” and detained at several police stations in and around Glasgow.