Elected Representatives's Blockade Reports

On the morning of January 8th a group of elected representatives gathered at the North Gate of Faslane to protest the very existence of this base and its illegal activities as well as Tony Blair's proposal to spend an incredibly big amount of money on producing new submarines and nuclear warheads. The aim of their presence was to block the base, as had been done very successfully the day before by a big group of professors and students from different universities in the UK and abroad.

Following on from yesterdays protest by academics from across the world and students from Oxford, Cambridge, Sussex and Edinburgh Universities, today has seen elected representatives from across the political spectrum converge on Faslane in protest against nuclear weapons. Yesterdays protest saw academics hold seminars on papers they had researched on the subject of nuclear weapons, which started on the pavement but eventually moved onto the road. Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, with over thirty students and roughly fifty academics, the police had no option but to leave protestors blocking the main entrance to the nuclear base. When it was clear that police were in no position to clear the road any time soon, and due to the cold temperatures and heavy rain, protestors erected tents, set up a tea table with a gas powered urn and eventually brought a brazier and lit a fire in the main road. After five hours Strathclyde police managed to mobilise enough officers and along with roughly twenty MoD police officers spent a further hour clearing the road of people. Protestors managed to keep the gate blocked for just over six hours and five minutes, which works out as three-hundred and sixty five minutes, an obviously significant record for the Faslane 365 project. There was a total of seventeen academics and eighteen students arrested.