Peace Campers Celebrate 25 Years of Resistance to Trident with Blockade of Faslane

Having recently returned from Glastonbury where they helped decorate the fence with banners celebrating 25 years of resistance to UK nuclear weapons Faslane Peace Campers established a blockade of the Faslane Naval Base today. Three peace campers were arrested and charged with a “Breach of the Peace” after they “locked on” to create a human blockade of the nuclear weapons base in opposition to Trident. Displaying a banner which read “Trident: Illegal, Immoral, Intolerable” and one panel of the colorful “Smash Trident” Triptych which they had painted for the Glastonbury fence in celebration of the FP|C birthday the trio blocked the road to the South Gate of the base using heavy concrete reinforced pipes. One of the lock-ons used had become affectionately known as “the mother of all lock-ons”, and had been carted from one training to another but not used until now because of concerns that its prodigious bulk would prohibit fast action. But when the cutting crew chipped away the top layer of concrete and revealed a rusty saw blade Matt and Squeaky immediately unlocked. Allaying the concerns of the cutting crew for their safety Squeaky, one of the blockaders said “I am a nonviolent person. The next time I do an action I don’t want these guys to think I might do something that might harm someone.”

Despite unlocking so quickly from the monster lock-on the protesters succeeded in closing the entrance to the base for 45 minutes during the peak shift change. One of the protesters said “Trident is illegal under international law because its very existence threatens the indiscriminate slaughter of millions of people. Gordon Brown should scrap Tony Blair’s plan to upgrade Trident. It is a vast waste of resources. Just think how much more sense it would make to use the £76 Billion earmarked for Trident replacement to address the real issues facing us today like climate change. At Glastonbury last week we talked to hundreds of people. None of them supported Trident.”

One of the organizers of today’s protest said “British foreign policy is hypocritical. Tony Blair supported the disastrous American invasion of Iraq claiming Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But Bush and Blair and Brown are the real terrorists. The US continues to deploy thousands of nuclear weapons and is developing biological weapons while the UK plan to upgrade Trident violates international law. The UK is obligated under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to negotiate and complete nuclear disarmament. Replacing Trident makes the world less secure. Now it looks like we are facing a new arms race between the US and Russia. When will the governments learn that weapons of mass destruction are not the way to peace?”

Groups have come from all over Europe. Next week a group of hibakusha, survivors of the atom bomb blasts, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, will travel to the base and participate in the blockade.