Feeling the heat at Faslane

by JULIA GUEST

<*> The cry on the loudhailer to "feel the heat, hear the screams, remember the terror at Nagasaki" united 150 people from all over the country who gathered at Faslane on 9 August.

A die-in outside the North Gate of the Trident nuclear submarine base successfully kept the gates to the base closed at the time when, 50 years earlier, the second US atomic bomb was dropped.

Four days of direct action kept the base on constant alert. The first night, during a fire-lit vigil, a section of fence was damaged by fire. The next morning, just after the die-in, 19 people were arrested for running through the open South Gate: one activist sought sanctuary in the base's chapel but was dragged out and arrested. Later in the day, 13 people were outnumbered by police as they attempted to block the North Gate; all were quickly arrested. Several times the fence was cut and the alarms triggered, keeping the Strathclyde police busy.

Security at the Faslane base has been routinely breached by peace protesters. In March this year, four women spent four hours inside the Trident secure area, the highest-security compound in Europe. Greenpeace has been injuncted to stay away from Royal Navy submarines after they disrupted the second patrol of HMS Vanguard by snaring it in weighted ropes and nets.

A leaked Royal Navy document described an exercise based around the shooting of two peace campaigners at Coulport (the storage site for Trident's nuclear warheads). The Faslane peace camp, established by local people 13 years ago, continues to defy the authorities. Their magazine Faslane Focus exposes some of the navy's activities and describes the camp's actions. Send a large stamped addressed envelope (and an extra 25p stamp to help with costs) to the address below for a sample.

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