Seven Scottish Trident Ploughshares activists were arrested this morning after blockading the north gate of Faslane Naval Base on the Clyde, where the UK's Trident nuclear weapons submarines are based. At 7.45 a.m. they attached themselves to a steel wire which they slung across the gateway and displayed a banner and placards reading: "Trident = Genocide". It took MOD police more than half an hour to remove them, while the queue of base workers' cars tailed back for quite a distance. Include in this traffic was the escort vehicles for the nuclear warhead convoy,currently in Coulport. No doubt this activity has delayed their departure.
The seven are: Eleanor Stobo, ( 25) a homeless resettlement worker from
Lochgoilhead; Barbara MacGregor ( 31) an artist from Glasgow; Jane Tallents
(40 ) a peace campaigner from Helensburgh; Una Campbell, retired education
worker ;Eric Wallace (60), retired businessman from Helensburgh; Brian
Quail, (60) a retired teacher from Glasgow and David Mackenzie, (54) a
former education officer from Larbert.
Jane Tallents said:
"When words and phrases such as "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" are on
everyone's lips because of the war in Yugoslavia it is vital to remind
people that Trident has been made specifically to threaten and commit
genocide. Nuclear war means millions of dead, millions of injured with no
hope of medical attention and many millions of refugees who will have no
safe zone to go to, no rescue services. As local people we have to do
something about this outrage on our doorstep."
The activists are members of the Local Heroes affinity group, one of the many new Trident Ploughshares affinity groups that are emerging all the time. So far 124 activists have pledged to engage in disarmament actions against the UK's nuclear weapons system which they regard as illegal and utterly immoral and wasteful. Major disarmament camps are planned for May, August and November and there will be other significant actions taking place in between these dates.