First blockade

This was the first time I’ve taken part in a blockade, first time locking on and my first arrest. On the Sunday we had a White Elephant parade from North to South Gate where police videoed and photographed us. This was based on the idea of Trident being like a white elephant – a useless, unwanted, expensive object. ‘Nellie the Elephant’ and other tunes played on a cycle powered sound system.

Monday just after 7am we preceded to parade again (at least the police thought so) this time as ‘Mutant zombie radioactivists’ and singing our Trident song. We aimed for the North gate but were prevented from crossing the road in front of the gate instead being directed around the roundabout by the police. At a certain point on the roundabout the 12 of us sat down and locked on together. We did it in about 50 secs and as all our lock on equipment was hidden from view the police thought we where just sitting huddled together linking arms. We had chains, and specially made lock on belts (with steel cable through the middle) around our waists, plus padlocks to connect one to another. We huddled close so the links and locks could not be seen. We felt smug as we heard police say ‘they’re not locked on they’re just pretending, just start pulling them out one after another’ - but of course they couldn’t. After sometime with the Police trying to pull one or more us away, one PC found a chain and we heard him say ‘there’s chains, oh no they’re locked on’. At this point we started to sing ‘Chain chain chain, chain of activists (rather than fools)’. It took just 40 minutes for them to clear us away, they moved on us immediately and seemed determined to clear us as quickly as possible. We were pleased with our effort as only two out of the twelve of us had done anything like this before.

Most of the Scottish police officers were friendly and didn’t use excessive force. However, we were surprised to find that some police from Staffordshire had taken the trouble to travel up to Faslane and visit us during our lock on. They weren’t as friendly and I heard afterwards that some of them had pointed and shouted very close to faces, kneeled on legs and bend back the hands of at least two of our chain gang.

I was the 2nd person to be cut away (and was pleased that the cutting team had to use 3 different tools to cut through my lock-on belt). I found the lock on experience thoroughly exhilarating. I was anxious beforehand – would we manage to get into position? would we manage to lock on? would I be the weakest link? When it happened, in an instance felt exhilarated and empowered. I sang, laughed and had jokey banter with the police. I remembered to relax and also refused to walk so four police officers had to remove me rather than just two. I even enjoyed being carried away. I had my photo taken in zombie make up (and even demonstrated a zombie pose including rolled back eyes, arms outstretched and groaning as per ‘Shaun of the dead’ - not that the WPC taking the photo was amused).

We were detained in the police minibus for four hours (men and women separate) as the police stations were all full due to a footie match the day before. The police let us use the portaloo, have a fag outside and passed a message from us to one of our support team.

We were told by two PCs that we would be released later that day as this was our first offence. We arrived at Clydebank and had to wait as we were told for our ‘en suites’ to be cleaned. We weren’t told out rights, weren't finger printed, not photographed again (so I guess it’s the zombie faces they have on file), no DNA sample, we were not told that we had been charged, just detained for hours and hours.

The acoustics were so good in the cell that I thought I had a good singing voice. I read, slept and did yoga, wrote part of this account and enjoyed the solitude. At what seemed like two hours after darkness fell through the skylight I thought a WPC had come to tell me I could go, only she said you’ll be held overnight possible until mid to late afternoon tomorrow. I felt deflated and had a brief wobbly moment. It didn’t last long. Some meditation, a bit more reading and then sleep. I’ve low blood sugar which means I feel dizzy, faint and sick if I don’t eat every four hours. Unfortunately in the station I wasn’t allowed to have access to the snacks I’d brought with me. I think they thought I might have smuggled something in the middle of my seaweed peanuts. They were only allowed to give me the station food which I could have as much and as often as I liked I just had to wait 40 mins for it to heat up – probably needed only 20mins as it always arrived burnt to the bottom of the container. The veggie breakfast was so cremated the tomato sauce on the beans had disappeared and it took a mouthfuls of water to swallow the burger and sausages.

We were held for about 30 hours in all. At one point I began to wonder how long they could keep me and was certain they couldn’t keep me this long without being charged. It turned out they could as I had been charged (though not told this) and was kept the same length of time as if I’d been taken to court. However I was released with the others at 12.45 on the Tues with a letter from the Procurator Fiscal.

Now the day after release I’m back in Staffordshire exhausted but still exhilarated, inspired and feeling empowered.