Press Releases & Updates 1998

Overnight TP2000 women activists who take their name from Aldermaston, Britain’s secret bomb factory managed to cut their way through an outer and an inner fence at the Coulport base before being apprehended. Following vigils at the Coulport gate and at the Faslane North Gate at in the early morning, at 11 a.m. three Swedish Ploughshares disarmers, from a group called Corpus Christi, cut a large hole in the fence at Faslane Naval Base in an attempt to disarm the Trident nuclear submarines, before being arrested by a police dog handler.

One of the Swedish activists, Fredrik Ivarsson, a priest in the Swedish Church, was wearing his dog collar and carrying his Bible. He said: "After the Cold War Nuclear Weapons seem to have been forgotten but they’re still there and now is a good opportunity to get rid of them for good. With the action I wanted to remind the British government that nuclear weapons are illegal according to International Law."

Ironically Corpus Christi is also the name of a US Nuclear Submarine. But the body of Christ cannot, according to the Ploughshare group, consist of Nuclear Weapons but of human beings who follow Jesus’ message of love, as they claim to do in disarming the subs in a non-violent way.

"What kind of morality do we express by possessing nuclear weapons or by not resisting them?" asks Klaus Engell, another member. "Love your enemies!".

Betacam SP TV footage and stills of the Swedish action are available

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