Interfaith Peace Walk Towards a Nuclear Free Future
Dublin to London, April-June - 2007
Day 18 - May 30th, 2007: Day 2 at Faslane
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We men who were arrested at the gates of Faslane yesterday were released from jail at about 9:30 in the morning, about the same time as the women, and we were all re-united back at the Peace Camp, where all the others had spent the night. What a joyful greeting we all received and then getting to walk through the Peace Camp for the first time was great. Everyone is so welcoming and gracious in sharing their space with outsiders like us. They provided us with hot tea and toast, then we filed into one of the empty caravans to debrief yesterday’s events. We all felt pleased with the way things went as everybody got to do what they hoped for. We then set about planning today’s action. People were keen to lock-on.
Locking on means attaching people together in such a way that it takes the police a long time to separate them, making the blockade last that much longer. A common method is to join hands using a carabineer concealed inside a plastic pipe going from elbow to elbow. The police then have to use a saw (the type used to cut off casts that won’t cut soft tissue like skin) to separate the hands. All very time consuming. The problem is concealing the lock-ons. The police have in the past arrested people for just having lock-ons in the vicinity of the gates before they were able to do their action. So we decided two of our non-violent co-conspirators would hide in the woods adjacent to the road leading to the south gate with the lock-ons hidden under ponchos. The rest of us would walk in drumming and chanting, and they would join us when they heard us approaching.
With all our plans made and lunch in our bellies, we set off on the short walk to the south gate of Faslane. Our plans worked perfectly. Once we all were on the road that only leads up to the gate, it was only a matter of timing as to where to do the action since all traffic had to be to the base. As soon as we realized there were two police cars behind us, the people doing the action put on their lock-ons, spread across the road, and laid down. There were several cars already emerging from the base who were stopped in their tracks, and their occupants were pretty angry, but after some discussion with us and the police, they all turned around and headed back into the base.
Word must have gotten back to the base because no more traffic came out except pedestrians and bikers who we cheered as they passed. It took the police a long time to assemble enough forces to be able to subdue us in case we decided to storm the gates or something, so we had plenty of time to celebrate another successful action. They finally got their act together and with great care not to injure anybody in the process, separated the criminals and hauled them off to their paddy wagons to great cheers from us. After they left the rest of us decided to walk down to the north gate for more vigiling, and we were excited when we got to see the van full of our comrades pass by again after being booked in. We stayed a while longer, said goodbye to Gillian who had joined our blockade yesterday, and walked back to the Peace Camp feeling satisfied that another Footprints for Peace blockade at Faslane had been successful.
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