|
|
 |
| |
 Roger Lloyd Pack
|
Why are we still sinking money into submarines?
Spending billions on a nuclear programme is an outdated approach to defence policy, argues actor Roger Lloyd Pack
THE name Faslane has been a scar on my brain for some time. In the same way that the upgrading of Trident has been referred to as “son of Trident” (how obscene, the attempt to anthropomorphise this weapon of destruction and make it seem lovable and human), then its predecessor, Polaris, could be deemed to have been “father” of Trident, and that’s the weapon whose name dominated my consciousness as a young man when I walked on early CND marches from Aldermaston to London.
Polaris used to live in Holy Loch (another obscene juxtaposition of names). But I’d never been there, to Holy Loch or Faslane.
So when Angie Zelter, the inspiration behind it, asked me to go up there and attend the Power of the Word group as part of the year-long Faslane 365 Protest Blockade, I decided it was time to visit.
Faslane is on the upper Clyde. I went up with a friend on the Monday night to attend a workshop relating to the following day of action.
Learning the practicalities of civil disobedience and peaceful direct action was helpful and instructive.
There were a modest few of us, eight or nine in all, including Angie and Rebecca Johnson, former adviser to Hans Blix, a poet, two singers and a representative from the Gandhi Peace Foundation. We would be joined on the day by a couple of dozen more seasoned campaigners.
We stayed the night in Glasgow and took the 8.25 train to Helensburgh and connecting bus to the North Gate for the 10am start of the demonstration, passing the 25-year-old peace camp of highly coloured caravans on the way.
Two or three years ago I visited Auschwitz concentration camp. The effect on me was oddly grounding, as if witnessing the actual place somehow enabled me to acknowledge what had taken place there. It’s hard to explain, but it felt better to have been there.
I felt the same about Faslane. Though its gates were as ugly and as scary as you like, the place was, at the same time, curiously mundane.
When we arrived there was a disparate group clustered round the tea urn, and another group attending to the PA system. The entrance was lined on either side by about a dozen policemen and women.
Four more vans arrived during the next half hour so that there were, in fact, more police than protesters.
We entertained them and each other for three hours, until lunch.
Allan Cameron and Gerry Loose read some of their poems; A L Kennedy did a very funny stand-up routine about lies used to justify the nuclear deterrent; Theo Simon from folk group Seize the Day sang some of his songs, as did several other singer-songwriters, including a version of Dylan’s Masters of War by Paul Baird.
I performed a Joni Mitchell song with Rebecca Thorn; John Rowley spoke on behalf of the Gandhi Foundation and Sean Legassick read a poem about Hiroshima.
At 1pm we broke for lunch. So did the police.
After lunch, Leon Rosselson started singing and, at a pre-arranged signal, it being Angie’s birthday, a cake was produced and as we sang Happy Birthday four of our company rushed to the gates and lay down in front of them, blocking the entrance, to be joined by Angie, of course. It was her birthday, after all.
The police moved in quickly to remove the protesters, who were released that evening without charge.
After the event, three of us were taken on a tour of the beautiful local highlands. From the other side of the loch we could see the vast grey hangar, suspended above the water, where Trident comes in for maintenance and we saw where the warheads are stored, stacked up a sheer rock cliff in case of accident.
The thing is, Trident is going to cost upwards of £76 billion. We could do a lot of good with that, rather than spend it on something that is highly dangerous and can never be used.
New schools and hospitals, for example, care for the weak, the ill and the elderly.
We could combat climate change and global poverty. We would have the moral authority to encourage other nations to stop developing nuclear weapons.
Just now there is an alarming escalation of hostile words and a return to the days of the Cold War, as a result of the US wanting to construct a protective shield over Poland.
Whatever Europe feels it owes America for its help in the Second World War, I’d like to think that debt has been repaid many times over.
If Britain thinks it’s worth bigging itself up by owning deadly weapons, do we really think any the less of countries that don’t have them? Sixty-five per cent of the country doesn’t want Trident. Many politicians don’t. Even a lot of the civil service. We’re trapped in outdated patterns of the past.
On October 1 there will be one large final Faslane 365 demo. If you care enough about the health of the planet and can make the time, log on to www.faslane365.org and get along.
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
