Krista van Velzen's Report

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.

Just weeks ago I received a letter from 2 Labour MP's inviting me to join this days blockade. It seemed to me that having loads of elected people standing up and blocking this base would be a very powerful statement. After all, the possession and threat of use of nuclear weapons is violating international law (opinion of The Hague International Court of Justice 1996) and none of the countries hosting nuclear weapons or possessing them have ever done anything with this opinion except for writing up mind boggling letters explaining why they have a clear right to ignore this opinion. So having elected representatives visiting Faslane and protesting these illegal activities happening on the base seemed like actually taking our work as MPs seriously. I was happy to see the invite was signed by Labour MP's, as after all this plan to spend 40 to 76 billion pounds on nukes was proposed by their own Labour colleague Blair. I do hope they manage to convince the rest of the MP's that this idea is not only insane but also illegal and this money could be spent on so many necessary things other than creating new subs and nukes.

The Scottish parliament doesn't officially have any influence on defence policies, but wouldn't it be great if they decided there is no place in Scotland any more to have this base?

I arrived a day early, so took the opportunity to join in the blockade of the academics. Having seen they were able to block the base for hours I assumed they would let us do our thing for quite a while as well. Some speeches were delivered by different MP's on the reason they joined in and trying to convince the police to join in, after which we walked onto the main road in front of the maingate in an attempt to block it. As soon as we headed for the gates however, the policemen started running after us and had already stopped a couple of MSP's, picked them up and dragged them to the police van. Soon enough I was picked up and dropped in the same van as well. Pity that again the police decided to uphold some national law but ignored the violation of international law.

The police officers that arrested me and accompanied me to the Clydebank police station in Glasgow, Alain and Alistair, were quite gentle with me. We had a good talk on the problems a police officer from Glasgow has to deal with. Glasgow is facing a lot of unemployment and drug abuse, and basically their job was to arrest people taking drugs in public places, knowing that after these arrest there is no good system to make sure these people are being treated for their drug problem and receive help rebuilding their lives. We had a lengthy conversation on how to deal with drug addicts and how having extra money to deal with these problems would really help to reduce the crime rate in Glasgow. Money now being spent on Trident.

I was charged with breach of the peace and something called disorderly conduct but after having spent a day in a cold and noisy police cell (loads of shouting probably drunk people in other cells) they decided not to send me to court after all. Seems like Faslane 365 has had so many people ending up in police cells that charging them and properly processing them would clog up the courts.

That's the first step, not having people come to court any more, next step should be not arresting people any more, then arresting those responsible for the illegal activities at Faslane. Could you please do that on the next blockading day, it would save us all some time.....