Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
Jeju Island International Peace Conference
24-26 February 2012
The Continuing Nonviolent Struggles Against Military Bases in the UK
By Angie Zelter
Trident Ploughshares
The UK espouses freedom, human rights and democracy but actually undermines these by supporting repressive regimes, selling them weapons, and engaging in military intervention. It has the third largest defence budget in the world[1] and still pursues a colonialist foreign policy, prepared to use military force to gain access to natural resources[2]. We not only have many military bases of our own but since the 2nd World War we have had US bases[3]. In the 1980's[4] there were over a hundred US military bases[5].
I made a banner at that time, with the UK shape cut out of a US flag and a big runway down the middle of it with US planes taking off. I used to take it to demonstrations at Lakenheath which is still the largest US facility in the UK. Covering almost 3 square miles and with over 5,000 personnel it is larger than the biggest British Air Force base[6]. Until recently the US kept 100 nuclear bombs there. Local people sustained nonviolent resistance over many years, with demonstrations, vigils, camps and fasts – at times it felt we were getting nowhere but we continued. We regularly entered the base, cycled on the runways and reclaimed the public footpaths.
It seems likely that our actions contributed to the last of the US nuclear bombs in the UK being withdrawn from Lakenheath[7] in 2008, as a secret internal US Air Force review stated that its nuclear arsenal in Europe was 'poorly guarded'[8].
The UK's own nuclear weapons[9], based on Trident submarines, are currently being modernised in contravention of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Thus our peace movement works against both UK and US military bases and against nuclear weapons and against the current wars we are involved in. Despite our long history of nonviolent struggles and a few minor victories, we still have far to go, because we are working within a very strong war culture, backed up by a morally deficient profit-driven economic structure[10].
So what has the UK peace movement been doing over the last decades and what have we learnt?
We have been informing the public with leaflets, public meetings, street stalls, demonstrations, street theatre, petitions, letter writing, lobbies of Parliament and vigils. Some of these have been done by small numbers of people in villages and some by hundreds of thousands of people in large cities or at the bases.
The famous marches between London and Aldermaston[11] took place from the 1950s. At their height[12] they informed and mobilised tens of thousands of people and received plenty of media attention.
But I believe we have been most effective when we have sustained nonviolent civil resistance that impedes 'business as usual'. One such well known example was the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp that was set up in 1981 to protest the presence of US nuclear cruise missiles[13].
A few women camped there permanently, but many thousands visited joining the resistance. The actions were diverse, from 30,000 of us holding hands[14] around the 6 mile[15] perimeter of the base, to a couple of women cutting the fence to creep into the base, to leafleting the soldiers quarters, painting peace slogans in high security areas, or dancing on the nuclear missile silos. There were countless incursions into the base as well as blockades and hundreds of arrests each year.
The court cases were inspiring with women from all backgrounds representing themselves - polite women quietly explaining why they had broken the law; poetic women reading their verses or singing; silent women; screaming despairing women; some refusing to stand for the judge's entrance or lecturing the judiciary on the ills of nuclear weapons; some praying. Many were sent to prison for contempt of court or for refusing to pay fines. The wonderful diversity was a strength in itself. The local judges needed special briefings on how to deal with these persistent disobedient women. The last missiles left the base in 1991 after the signing of the INF Treaty[16]. Many believe this was a direct result of the sustained resistance of the women. The base was completely closed in 1993 and the land returned to the people.
During the same period, the Snowball Campaign[17]started with three people cutting one strand of the wire fence around another US base at Sculthorpe. We each committed to finding new people to join in every month so that the actions snowballed. The cutting was done openly with the press and police informed beforehand. We wrote an action pack so others could copy the idea and do it at their own local US base. The campaign continued for three years with around 2,800 people taking part at 42 different military sites in Britain, adding their voices to the growing tumult against illegal and unethical weapons of mass destruction. Alongside the actions were public meetings to debate how and why normally law-abiding citizens were committing 'criminal damage'.[18]
These actions strengthened people's resistance as they worked together to overcome their fears of arrest, imprisonment, and getting a criminal record. They also learnt to think through the connections between morality and law, and why it may be justified to destroy property belonging to the state and military when that property is protecting criminal preparations for war crimes.
However, there was a split in the peace movement between those willing to risk arrest and those who wanted to remain safely within the law. I believe our movement is now a little wiser and more able to allow room for diverse strategies[19].
The rich history of the past continues to inform us as we develop and continue the task of disarmament. Present day peace camps, like Aldermaston and Faslane[20] continue to provide a focus for protest and a steady stream of people monitoring what is going on inside the bases. They then put in objections to buildings and developments on the bases[21] and provide information to groups like Nukewatch[22] who track and block the nuclear convoys that transport nuclear warheads from one site to another by road.
Damaging military infrastructure and engaging in 'people's disarmament' is another development. In 1998 Trident Ploughshares[23] started with a challenge to the UK Government to implement international law by disarming all British nuclear weapons or the campaign’s members would do it themselves. Disarmament actions have ranged from blockades, to fence-cutting, swimming onto the submarines and destroying equipment, dismantling a research laboratory, disabling military vehicles, painting War Crime Warnings on military equipment and handing out leaflets to military base workers urging them to ‘Refuse to be a War Criminal’.
We make sure our plans, motivations and organisational structures are open and accountable to the public, the government and military through our web-site, which contains the names of our pledgers and supporters. We write regular open letters to the Government, and our Tri-Denting It Handbook[24] explains how to safely and nonviolently disarm a nuclear submarine. During the last 14 years there have been over 2,500 Trident Ploughshares arrests[25].
One of the most effective actions was that of two women who swam[26] and then climbed aboard a submarine[27] dismantling testing equipment that delayed, by several months, its departureto the US to collect its missiles[28].
Then in 1999 I joined two other women and drove a boat over a lake to the floating laboratory that keeps Trident submarines acoustically invisible. We cut electricity wires, damaged fixed equipment, and emptied computers and documents into the lake. We had cleaned out the whole laboratory before a police boat arrived to arrest us. After five months in prison we explained in a month-long court case, that we were entitled to do this under international law. The judge agreed with us and we were released from prison. The judge had not only cleared us of criminal intent but had pointed out the criminality of the British nuclear forces.
Our acquittal caused a political and legal furore that led to the High Court examining the legal issues around Trident in an attempt to prevent any other judges from acquitting in the future. This gave us an unprecedented opportunity to indict the UK government defence policy at the highest levels[29]. The debate continues to rage after an appalling opinion by the High Court that incorrectly stated international law. The legal arguments are now in the public domain and even police and armed forces personnel are beginning to question the legality of their ‘protection’ of nuclear weapons. It has been deeply embarrassing for the UK that peaceful, unarmed citizens have argued so coherently that these weapons are illegal and immoral, do not protect them, and have shown how easily they can penetrate ‘secure’ bases and damage military equipment in such an open manner.
Just before travelling to this conference I was at a meeting with the legal advisers to the Scottish Government where we were discussing how Scotland can use the law to get the UK to remove its nuclear weapons from Scotland. Similar arguments[30] might be able to be used here in Jeju to prevent the US basing nuclear weapons here.
Another recent campaign, Faslane 365, supported people to sustain civil resistance at Faslane by organising blockades on a daily basis over a whole year, to make our opposition to Trident Replacement visible and to provide the political pressure for change in a year when the Scots would hold an election that might bring an anti-Trident Party into power.
Our civil resistance helped that to happen and the current Scottish Government is committed to getting rid of nuclear weapons. Our blockades that had disrupted the submarine base for months before the election increased awareness of the financial and environmental costs of deployment and highlighted the illegality and immorality of the renewal of Trident.
We covered 192 days, mobilising many thousands of demonstrators leading to the arrest of over 1,200 blockaders[31]. As usual we had sent out Resource Packs with maps, logistical information, guidance on how to blockade and we also organised nonviolence trainings and provided legal support. But more importantly we went out to groups up and down the country encouraging them to sign the rota to take responsibility for 2 days of blockading and to link up their issues with the nuclear base[32]. Being just one part of an ongoing blockade made it easier for groups to feel it was worth the long journey and expense involved in getting to Scotland.
We had 131 civil society groups taking part, ranging from Palestinian Solidarity groups[33]; Health Professionals[34]; Environmentalists[35]; and Refugee Supporters[36]. There were thirteen international groups, [37] including Spaniards who poured red paint all over themselves, and the Scandinavians who used lock-ons and tripods. Fifteen different religious groups took part, blocking the entrances with their prayers. Musicians, dancers, actors and writers all had their special blocks, as did teachers and lawyers. Academics even held a seminar in the road and presented well researched papers to their students. The youngest to actually blockade and get arrested was 13 years old and the oldest was 89. The variety of groups showed massive public support and also kept the press interested.
The courts and legal system would have been overwhelmed by the numbers and therefore few were arrested or had to go to court.
Our blockading techniques became quite sophisticated with arm tubes of many different materials being experimented with to ensure that the police cutting teams took a long time to remove us. We have also used cars and caravans to block entrances.
We have learnt over the last few years that the active support of people from other countries[38] has increased our visibility and effectiveness, but that local support and solidarity is vital to provide logistical and longer term court and prison support. To prevent the frequent 'burn out' we were experiencing we are also encouraging more 'autonomy'[39].
There are no easy ways to prevent the continuing militarisation of our societies. It takes time, effort and long-term commitment. But many of us are now working, connecting our individual struggles into a combined global movement. This is why I am so honoured to join you here for a month to learn from your brave resistance in Jeju and to share experiences with you all.
Thank you.
1
[1] The British Armed Forces are a purely professional force and as of November 2011 have a strength of 189,560 regular and 37,600 volunteer reserve personnel. This gives a combined component strength of 227,160 personnel. In addition there were 174,800 regular reserves from all services of the British Armed Forces. The British Armed Forces constitute the second largest military in the EU in terms of professional personnel. Britain has the third or fourth largest defence budget in the world....Only the United States and China have larger defence expenditures, whilst France has a comparable expenditure.
Military Spending: the top ten :- 2010 (US$, at 2010 prices and exchange rates). 1. USA $698bn; 2. China $119bn; 3. UK $59.6bn; 4. France $59.3bn; 5. Russia $58.7bn; 6. Japan $54.5bn; 7. Saudi Arabia $45.2bn; 8. Germany $45.2bn; 9. India $41.3bn; 10. Italy $37bn. Source: SIPRI.
[2]See for instance Mark Curtis 'Web of Deceit' where he describes Britain as 'a systematic violator of international law and ethical standards in its foreign policy - in effect, an outlaw state. It is a key ally of some of the world’s most repressive regimes that is consistently condoning, and sometimes actively aiding, human rights abuses. During a so-called ‘war against terrorism’, Britain is in fact one of the world’s leading apologists for, and supporters of, state terrorism by allies responsible for far more serious crimes than Al Qaida or other official threats. And, in the era of globalisation, Britain … is championing a fundamentalist economic ideology that is promoting the increasing takeover of the global economy by big business'.
[3]The UK invited the US during the 2nd World War to station its aircraft in Britain to support the bombing of Germany. Some of these US forces remained and became part of the rapid build-up in Britain of US forces, especially nuclear bombers, during the early years of the Cold War. It was in 1946 that Britain decided without public debate to modify five Royal Air Force bases to accommodate US nuclear bombers.
[4]At the height of the Cold War.
[5]There are still US bases in the UK as well as sites for missile defence, communications and spying operations. According to Hansard, 5 January 2004, US forces were based at 35 sites in Britain in 2004, occupying about 10 square miles. Of these sites, six are one square mile or larger and four host more than 1000 US personnel each. All US bases in Britain are advertised as Royal Air Force facilities. In addition, two large US bases on British island territories provide the US with a presence in strategically significant locations – the South Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean.
[6]At Brize Norton.
[7]
[8]US says its nuclear arsenal in Europe is poorly guarded. Air force finds inadequate security at most bases. Most American bases in Europe where nuclear weapons are stored have inadequate security, a secret internal US air force review has found. The report, which was ordered after the US air force lost track of six nuclear cruise missiles last August, found that "support buildings, fencing, lighting and security systems" were in need of repair. The Guardian, Thursday June 26, 2008 -
[9]The UK started its nuclear weapons programme in 1940 and tested its first nuclear weapon in October 1952 becoming the 3rd nuclear weapon state. We now have around 200 nuclear weapons, based on a nuclear powered Trident submarine system. They are based at Faslane in Scotland.
[10]See the introduction on page xvii of 'Faslane 365 – a year of anti-nuclear blockades' edited by Angie Zelter. ISBN-1-906307-61-X. The military-industrial complex is causing the break down of many of the planetary ecological and biological systems – and these are issues that need our urgent attention too but which are inextricably linked.
[11]Aldermaston is the place where UK nuclear weapons are made. The distance from London to Aldermaston is 52 miles, or roughly 83 km.
[12]In the early 1960s .
[13]See
Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was a peace camp established to protest at nuclear weapons being sited at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire, England. The camp began in September 1981 after a Welsh group, Women for Life on Earth, arrived at Greenham to protest against the decision of the British government to allow cruise missiles to be based there. The first blockade of the base occurred in May 1982 with 250 women protesting, during which 34 arrests were made. The missiles were removed in 1991 and the last woman left the camp in 2000 when it was transformed into a park and a commemorative site was set up.