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Let's be friendsLook Back At Faslane 365
Ric Lander, formerly of York Uni P&P fame and now part of Edinburgh Uni P&P, offers his take on the Faslane campaign, as well as some video:
Still from video taken by Will Standish
In October 2006 a year-round blockade of the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Strathclyde, Scotland was launched. The base is the home of the Trident submarines, which carry Britain’s nuclear “deterrent”. Building on previous protests and blockades, the campaign — dubbed Faslane 365 — had the practical aim of forcing the closure of the base and to draw attention to the farce of nuclear proliferation. Politically, the timing could not have be more crucial: in February 2007 Parliament was to vote on creating a new nuclear weapons system to replace Trident — that would cost £76 billion over its lifetime (Freedom of Information Request, Liberal Democrats). So what happened?
Thousands have taken part in over a hundred separate groups, almost one thousand have been arrested, and People & Planeters were there in force. Members from groups across the country organised and participated in blockades and protests throughout the year including those from the cities of Birmingham, Dundee, Durham, Edinburgh, Leeds, Nottingham, Oxford, Sterling and York. Groups typically arrived in the early hours and blocked access to the two main gates of the base for periods of up to four hours at a time.
Trident was nevertheless renewed by Parliament earlier this year, with support for the “nuclear deterrent” from all three major parties. Yet this was the first time such a decision had been put before Parliament and support for more debate on the decision came from many back bench MPs, often thanks to lobbying by P&P groups. Petitions and demonstrations such as those at Faslane ensured the issue was being debated seriously for the first time in many decades — and the battle is not yet over. In the parliamentary debate on Trident, Margaret Beckett, then Foreign Secretary, insisted that there was still time to turn away from a replacement nuclear weapons system. We can build on the success of Faslane 365 to keep nuclear weapons on the agenda and off the party manifestos at the next General Election.
Video of the York Vikings at Faslane 365
