Jubilee Ploughshares Action

In the early hours of November 3rd Trident Ploughshares pledgers, Susan van der Hijden and Father Martin Newell entered RAF Wittering in Cambridgeshire. Calling themselves Jubilee Ploughshares 2000 they disarmed the convoy truck that was being made ready to take nuclear warheads up to Faslane for the Trident submarine. As a result of their actions they are now in prison awaiting trial.

Since their arrest, Susan and Fr. Martin have made several appearances at Peterborough Magistrates Court and, on January 5th they made their first appearance at Peterborough Crown Court. Susan and Martin are now facing 3 charges; burglary with intent (ie entering the building); criminal damage of £27,000 on the convoy truck; criminal damage of £4,000 for spray painting on other trucks and surroundings.

Fr. Martin and Susan are being represented by Gareth Pierce, who was part of the trial team for the recently successful Trident Ploughshares action by Sylvia Boyes and River.

The defence has requested that the venue for the trial be shifted from Peterborough to London, and this request is currently going before a circuit judge. As we write, it is anticipated that the trial will take place some time in late Spring/early May and that it is likely to last 10-12 days.

Supporters have held vigils at all of Martin and Susan’s court appearances. At the first Crown Court appearance on January 5th, supporters used the image of the epiphany and dressed up as the three kings bringing gifts of life, love and peace as opposed to the gifts of Trident: death, hate and war. It is hoped that many more supporters will come along for their trial later in the year. Watch this space for more details.

Prison Letter from Susan

Prison is a strange place and I still don’t know what to make of it. On the surface it is just like any other institution and because I prepared for prison and losing my freedom I found myself very accepting and obedient in my new state of prisoner. I integrated into this society very quickly, not questioning the rules at all. It did make life very easy for me - and the guards - but now that I have settled in I am starting to wonder about my obedient behaviour.

As a prisoner in danger of becoming institutionalised I need to re-find my freedom, my right to rights, my self-confidence. In the same way as I have had to overcome obedience and fear of being arrested and put in prison, I now have to overcome fears of being punished in prison. Anyway, enough theory, let me tell you what life in HMP Brockhill is like in practice.

Brockhill has 160 women and is very full as all English prisons seem to be. Everyone has their own cell with a bed, table, chair, cupboard and TV Getting a job also gets cell-promotion. I have been working in the kitchen but just yesterday quit, my first little resistance act. Nothing has happened yet, besides the threat of losing my nice cell and being moved on. That is the way the powers in here use your earned privileges; as a way of blackmailing you into staying obedient, by threatening to take privileges away if you misbehave.

The days start at 8am when the cell doors are opened. You then have about five minutes before breakfast is called. We eat in a big dining hall altogether. At nine work or educations starts. On some days you can go to the gym, but if you’re jobless you are mostly locked in your cell till 12pm when it is lunch time. After this everyone is locked up till 2pm, then it is either back to work, more lock up or occasionally association, with tea at 5pm. In the evenings there is association twice a week, bingo, karaoke or just watching TV. Other evenings we are locked in on the wing until 8pm and then locked in our own cells again. Through an ingenious computer system we can press a button in the cell to go out to the toilet. We can do this 3 times and a maximum of 6 minutes per go each night. On C wing a lot went on after 9pm, everyone using their 6 minutes very efficiently, borrowing fags, sugar and the occasional drugs smuggled in by the new girls. People are very inventive and even managed to borrow squash through the closed doors.

Getting a parcel can be very nice or very frustrating. You are called to reception where the parcel is opened by a guard. You then see all the wonderful things that have been sent to you and then packed up because you are not allowed to have them. Things like chocolate, soap, T-shirts with anarchistic prints, magazines and Trident Ploughshares handbooks are all considered dangerous!

On Saturday there is Mass. Last Saturday there were 9 nationalities in the chapel so I felt very at home! The sermon was about how God tries to make our roads easy to walk on. That certainly was true in my case, once on my way, God literally opened doors for me and Martin and prison life has also been made fairly easy for me. The challenge now is to stay loyal to God’s ways, to stick to justice here in prison just as much as out there.

Dear friends, I wish you all the strength and courage to follow your own respective roads, hoping they will lead us to a just and peaceful world.

Susan, HMP Brockhill, Dec 2000

Susan has now been moved to HMP Holloway.

Prison Letter from Martin

I’m quite happy to be here. Daniel, Jesus, St Paul and St Peter. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Mandela. Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy, the brothers Berrigan. We have a venerable list of ancestors a veritable cloud of witnesses.

Nelson Mandela refused to recognise the authority of the apartheid state. Why should we recognise the authority of the nuclear state? It is the same British state that rampaged across the globe, conquering and pillaging until its Empire covered a third of the planet It’s legacy has included slavery (USA), apartheid (South Africa), whites only policies (Australia) and inter-religious hatreds (India and Pakistan). Not that I hate my country: "Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it" (Mark Twain)

This nuclear state is the same one that pushes forward with support for GM crops, that lives off the fat of thin Third World lands by means of "debt" interest payments, transnational dividends and unequal trading relationships. The same state that condones and finances and even promotes so much of the "culture of death", and neglects the poor at our own gate. I want no part in the benefit of this system. I am withdrawing my co-operation. I register my conscientious objection now that all that is needed to wage war is our silence and our taxes. I can’t say that I’m paying a particularly high price for it. I’m not saying that prison is easy. It’s not. But the loneliness is in fact the hardest part. Nelson Mandela in prison had physical hardship. But he had the greater strength of companionship from fellow travellers. Here the hard things are always being with someone else: being the only one in here for matters of principle and one of the very few around the world for the cause of nuclear peace: being a stranger in a fairly close knit community which this place certainly is. Most of the my "brother" prisoners know each other, either from inside or outside. For many of them this is just part of their lives. About half the prison is from Luton and a fair number from the Peterborough area. On the whole, they are a sub-section of particular communities: White working class, Asians from Luton, Jamaican "yardies" from Luton. And not only from Peterborough or Luton or wherever, but from the same postwar London exodus estate, and the same few schools. So basically, this is a male working class community, possibly the most alienated and difficult group in society.

In many ways, for me, the experience feels like a share in reality that many of these "brothers" and their families and communities have to survive, day to day, in their lives on the outside. A lack of respect, being bounced to-and-fro by an unaccountable officialdom, boredom and unfreedom, powerlessness and frustration. Survival takes most of the energy and resourcefulness that I can muster, unsure whether and when to be generous for fear of being taken advantage of and being spotted for being weak: unsure whether to go to officialdom and ask for something that seems quite reasonable, but may well be refused, because I don’t like the anger and shakenness that results; I prefer not to ask, not to protest, until I’m absolutely sure of my ground.

Still I have a purpose in being here and as long as I can focus on that (which can be difficult) I feel happy and confident. And actually, I’m not alone, because I know I have an unseen group of witnesses out there, praying for me an supporting our hope and our purpose - God’s purpose. And I know as a parishioner reminded me, that "one with God is a majority".

Martin

Martin is currently in HMP Bedford. He has requested a move to a London prison in order to better prepare for trial. So far the request has been refused.

What Happened to the Convoy?

The vehicles that Fr Martin and Susan disarmed were part of a convoy that were due to transport nuclear warheads to RNAD Coulport. As a result of their actions the convoy was delayed for a fortnight, and when it left it did not contain the vehicles they disarmed. Barbara Sunderland relates what happened next:

On Monday 13th November, three carriers and escorts left RAF Wittering for RAF Honington, arriving at AWE Burghfield (where nuclear warheads are assembled) the following day. These carriers and another returned from AWE Burghfield to Wittering on 17th November where they rested overnight. Three were loaded with the final batch of warheads for the Trident submarine. The convoy left the next day staying at Albermarle Barracks in Newcastle overnight and on 19th November was tracked by Scottish Nukewatch up the M74 to Stirling and then to Balloch on the lakes of Loch Lomond.

Despite a large police presence, and police helicopter overhead, two members of Scottish CND were able to stand out into the path of the articulated lorries as they arrived at the first roundabout in Balloch. The convoy was brought to a halt and the protesters were arrested. After safety checks the convoy moved on only to be halted a few minutes later by five members of the Faslane Peace Camp where it was stopped for twenty minutes and they too were arrested. There were seven arrests in all, four men and three women. The convoy eventually arrived at RNAD Coulport later that day. It returned to AWE Burghfield a few days later loaded with warheads returned for their "mid life attention" check.

Future convoys will be departing from AWE Burghfield transporting warheads that have been checked. Nukewatch in England and Scotland will continue to monitor their activities so that the public know about these deadly cargoes and activists have enough information to stop them.

Printer friendly version

Home | Top