|
|
|
Home |
Is there anybody listening? Sarah Caraher Faslane, the British nuclear submarine base. It is situated about 70km from Glasgow on the shores of a fjord surrounded by beautiful a landscape of rolling hills blanketed in purple heather. You could easily mistake the area for a tourist region and you couldn’t be further from the truth. The British government hold 4 submarines there, each submarine armed with 14 missiles and forty-eight 100-kiloton warheads, just in case there might be a war! The missiles form TRIDENT, an intercontinental ballistic missile defence system. Each warhead has eight times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Every hour of every day one submarine is on patrol, with two others ready to rumble if needed. That means Tony Blair has 42 missiles sitting pretty, waiting for action at any one time, so if the Faslane base is ever attacked between 14 and 42 missiles could be unleashed, that’s a devastation scale from 112 to 336 Hiroshima bombs. And like Sellafield the majority of locals don’t mind it there because it gives employment. Yes that is always a fundamental issue even if there might not be anyone left to employ. It took us roughly 5hrs travelling time, by bus and ferry to get to Glasgow from Dundalk. It takes about the same time from Middlesbrough; it took the people travelling from Manchester 7 hrs, from London 9hrs. There is a disturbing reality that the British government place everything that they feel they need but don’t like enough to have on their own doorstep, even though it allegedly poses no threat (to Mars), as far away from them as possible. Take Sellafield as another example, while staying in Glasgow and then in Chester, Cumbria on route to the plant I talked to Scottish and English residents from various places all over the country who were not aware that it existed. There are people in Cumbria who are unaware that there are two nuclear reactors devastatingly close to where they are living, one in Sellafield and another in Chapelcross. Sounds a bit ominous and very dodgy to me. To intrigue you further about these 4 submarines in Faslane. The HMS Vanguard, HMS Victorious, HMS Vigilant and HMS Vengeance are on lease from America. Making the British Government a puppet on string for the USA, as their weapons are indistinguishable in the case of a “first strike” situation. The consequences of any retaliation would be dire for us, so in the hope of a nuclear free environment (which is our right as an Irish citizens because we live in a nuclear free country.) we went protesting. I started my “gap week” of protesting on the10th of February when I travelled over to Glasgow for the Big Blockade, a three-day protest outside the gates of Faslane Naval Base, and then down to Sellafield on Thursday to meet up with the 120 students that travelled from all over Ireland. It was a week unlike any other I’ve ever had. I came home exhausted due to the fact I had been sleeping on a wooden floor for four nights, and with a dog wondering around the hall for two of the nights in Kinning Park, the community centre we stayed in throughout the Faslane protest, I was guaranteed no sleep. However I came home totally enriched, enlightened, empowered and enknowledged as a person thanks to the amazing people I met, the generosity we were shown and from the influence of the resilient trident ploughshares members and their followers. Their relentless totally non violent direct action against Trident and the imagination they use in trying to outwit the “polis”(police in Scottish) in order to keep the gates of Faslane blocked for as long as possible is inspiring. Since 1984 there have been people protesting outside Faslane, but in recent years the blockades have started to amalgamate into substantial protests with large followings. Each day of the three-day blockade was completely different to the next, which added to the fun. On Monday we spent most of the morning, from 6 until 12, at on oil depot gate. We danced and chanted, played drums and tin whistles and even did a few ceil dances in order to entertain the police, keep ourselves warm and keep the gate blocked, but in a different order of priority. The critic was mighty and the gates stayed closed. On Monday there were 113 arrests as so many people came to the protest with the intention of Locking on. Pipes were disguised as submarines, in rucksacks, or just shoved under jumpers, and when the opportune moment arrived hands were locked together by chains or handcuffs inside the pipes. The only way out was to be cut out, and this takes a bit of time so the objective of keeping the gates blocked is achieved. There is a strange irony in protests when sometimes the police actually have to block the gate, for the security of the plant, when the protesters outnumber them. On Tuesday this happened outside the North Gate, which is one of the main entrances. The police did our job while joined by the Jericho Rumpus drummers we were brewing up a storm. The rain poured down but we were oblivious shouting “nuclear weapons are insane, shut down Faslane” and “ Ireland says no, Faslane must go” or else dancing, slightly alternatively, to the beat of the drums. Tuesday was the longest blockade; we were there from 6 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. A guy called Ian, climbed onto the gate, which was about 9 foot high, and stayed there for 4 hrs surrounded by razor wire. This type of wire is so lethal it is banned in many countries. Before the police brought him down they had to construct scaffolding each side of the gate then play cat and mouse as he climbed over and back along the gate through the razor wire. Dedication to the cause or just plain mad, his unorthodox methods certainly worked. Wednesday turned out to be the more reflective day. The numbers had decreased and the Swedish groups plan to block the gate failed to materialise as their mini bus broke down. The highlight of the morning was “Four Weddings and millions of Funerals”. A sardonic skit on the state of world affairs. We witnessed the marriage of George Bush and Kofi Annan, The world banks and the arms makers of the world, NATO and the UN and Private Enterprise and Public Services. The moral of the story was that each collaboration would ultimately result in millions of deaths. Harsh but True. The protest ended with a Christian service for it was Ash Wednesday after all. One thing that amazed me throughout the protest was the wide range of people that attended. There were students, people of every career from all over Britain and Europe, some local residents, street theatre performers, priests, vicars, socialists, anarchists, a group of socio-anarchist ministers! And two Buddhist monks, both ladies, from Milton Keynes. It was the most surreal, eclectic situation but it managed to seem normal and right. We were all people there to protest for the right to live in a safe environment free from the threat of nuclear warfare. “ we were shouting , screaming making noise, Everything to cause deploys. We have to tell Tony Blair, We detest his toys” |