Press Releases & Updates 2000

Friends and supporters will meet Tommy outside the prison in Inverkip Road in Greenock at 8.30 a.m. tomorrow. Tommy has added his five days in Greenock to the 860 days already spent in jail by activists during the 30 months of the Trident Ploughshares campaign. There have been 782 arrests, 94 trials and a fines total of £12611.

The number of arrests is likely to increase significantly on 12th February 2001 as activists from across the UK and beyond gather at Faslane for the Big Blockade. Current indications are that over 600 people will be there to confront Trident, including six members of the Scottish parliament, one MEP and twenty-seven Scottish church ministers who have said that they will be willing to risk arrest.

Two other Trident Ploughshares activists are still in prison after their disarmament action last month at RAF Wittering. Catholic priest Martin Newell and Dutch Catholic Worker Susan van der Hijden entered a transport hangar and disarmed one of the trucks which carry Trident warheads from the bomb factory at Burghfield to Coulport in Scotland. They will be in Peterborough Crown Court on 5th January, charged with criminal damage to an estimated value of £32,000.

A Trident Ploughshares spokesperson said:

"What kind of society is it that criminalises and imprisons the folk who try to do something about illegal and inhumane weapons of mass destruction? It is shameful that among the police, the prosecution authorities, the courts and the prisons in Scotland only one person, Margaret Gimblett, has had the guts to say: ’These people have done nothing wrong.’ Sadly, the rest all line up meekly to support the Trident crime."

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