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Press Releases & Updates 2000

23rd July 2000

Ploughshares Challenge to Civil Police as Blockade Looms

Chief Constable Asked To Uphold the Law

The nonviolent direct disarmament campaign Trident Ploughshares has issued a strong challenge to Strathclyde Police to support peace activists at the joint Scottish CND/Trident Ploughshares blockade of Faslane naval base on 1st August.

The base, 30 miles from Glasgow and home to the UK’s four Trident nuclear missile submarines, is seen by the campaign as a key part of the criminal conspiracy by the British government to have in constant readiness a weapon of mass destruction that breaches the basic principles of international humanitarian law.

The letter to the Chief Constable says:

"Since our campaign began in 1998 Strathclyde Police have been professional in handling our actions and the force has publicly supported the right to peaceful protest. Liaison with your officers over the planned blockade on August 1st has been positive and constructive. We do not take all that for granted but we are asking now for another essential step. On the 1st of August we will be upholding the law, not breaking it. We call on you to give us the support that is our due from a civilian police force with an avowed commitment to preventing crime and enforcing the law on its own patch. At the very least, so that we can maximise disruption of the illegal work of the base, you should not arrest us or move us forcibly from the scene. Ideally you will now set in motion a genuine and thorough investigation of the criminal conspiracy being perpetrated at Faslane and Coulport. It is time to act on the full implications of your professional ethos and to stop pretending that nuclear crime does not exist."

MPs John McAllion and Harold Best will join the blockade and have said they are prepared to risk arrest. Also present will be Scottish author A.L. Kennedy. She said: "Even if Trident were not both illegal and immoral, as a weapon of mass destruction it would still make no sense, politically, socially, economically or militarily. There should be no place for it in modern Scotland."

The blockade will begin at 7 a.m. on 1st August.

A more detailed briefing on the Blockade is available.


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Tel: 0845 45 88 366
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