Detention for 30 hours and released with no charge

When ten women had been arrested and the police van was full, we were driven to Clydebank police station and taken in to be processed two-by-two. While some of us were still waiting in the vans, another police van arrived with two more women who had been doing the 'conga' in front of the North Gate.

Clydebank police were going 'by the book'. They took virtually all possessions away, including jewellery (though one woman negotiated to keep her ring). Belts or draw-cords had to be removed from trousers, though negotiating with the custody officer could get that varied if the cord was integral to the trousers and would have to be cut. I gave my word as a practitioner of nonviolence with no intention of harming myself or anyone else, and thus managed to avoid the options of wearing paper trousers (!) or having the cord cut out of my trousers. Footwear and jackets had to be left outside cell doors.

Unlike my incarcerations in the 1980s, they took away our watches, claiming that some people had used 'sharp edges on their watches to cut themselves'. Time gets very distorted when you are in heavily soundproofed cells with daylight penetrating only very weakly and indistinctly through thick pebbled glass in the ceiling.

Apart from the custody sergeant telling me I was charged with breach of the peace, nothing was written down and I was never given any chance to reply formally to the charge. I was not once questioned about the circumstances of the arrest or given any formal interrogation.

It appears that some women had been charged more formally and had their replies recorded before being put into the vans at the base, but this did not happen to all of us. To my knowledge, in the police station, no-one was interrogated or formally questioned. I wasn't even fingerprinted and photographed until around 10.00 pm, though a few women were fingerprinted earlier and one said that she thinks the machine broke down, which might have accounted for the delay. Vegetarian, vegan and halal food was made available and various cups of tea, but no coffee. Most of the cells and blankets were fairly clean, but a couple of women were put into cells with blood and faeces dried into the walls. Each cell had a toilet with no seat in the corner, with toilet paper provided on request. There was an instruction list for prisoners in my cell which informed me of various rights, including the right to request writing materials. I did, and was given a blunt pencil and some sheets of paper. As I was in the middle of breakfast and was not prepared to be arrested quite so early, I hadn't properly equipped myself with a book and toothbrush etc. So the lesson is Always Be Prepared (and take a book)!

The cells were very hot and stuffy, so take moisturiser which they will let you use if you pester enough! On the positive side, they brought paper cups with water whenever I asked, which was often. The acoustics in the cell are brilliant if you want to sing, but the echoes make it very difficult to hear what anyone else is saying or singing in their cells, though you can hear a bit of what happens in the corridors. I sang periodically, interspersed with lots of quiet, managing as much of Camilla's Trident oratorio as I could remember and some other beautiful songs, and then made up Faslane-related words to various songs of protest (mostly from Greenham) and songs of incarceration. The other women said it had been helpful to hear the singing, even though they couldn't generally make out the words.

Around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, a lovely Scottish solicitor called Claire Ryan came by. We had to talk to her separately in a room in a different part of the station from the cells. She was strongly of the opinion that for some of us at least (including me with my cocoa), there had been no grounds to arrest and detain us for breach of the peace.

She told us that we would probably be held overnight to be taken to court on the following day. That came as a surprise - we had been arrested so early in the morning that we assumed they would charge and bail us or deal with us that day. However, we have been advised that in Scotland they are more likely to hold people overnight for court the next day than they do in England or Wales. The night was long, but next morning I received a lovely chorus of happy birthday from the other women, which I could hear echoing harmoniously and in several different tempos down several corridors, though the weird cell design meant that the women singing couldn't hear each other. Cards of paper towels and a bouquet of white toilet-tissue roses were pushed under my door.

We were allowed out to wash, and could briefly communicate then with other women. We were still expecting to go to court, but the morning dragged on. Then suddenly, around noon on Tuesday, we were told we would be released. When being processed out, I was given back my belongings and a letter from Andrew Miller, the Procurator Fiscal, which instructed the custody officer to please deal with the above person(s) held in custody following report for today's custody court as follows:- liberate on the above case only, following service of attached warning letter.