💾 Archived View for splint.rs › peacecamp_protest.gmi captured on 2024-08-25 at 00:12:13. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A Day at Faslane

I spent a lot of my childhood at Faslane Peace Camp, where my parents would protest against various points, such as:

The UK keeps nuclear arms.
All the nuclear arms are held in Scotland.
Nuclear arms are a waste of money.

In my early twenties, Faslane held a 365 day protest, so I went along to take part in family tradition. The lot of us were put up by the Salvation Army, in their church, and the night before, a workshop was held.

In the workshop, the speaker asked us if setting light to a police car was useful, and if it was violent. If we thought it was violent, we’d go to the top of the room (otherwise, go to the bottom), and if we thought it was useful, we’d go left.

People scattered, with some dead in the centre, others top left, bottom right, top right, and so on. I thought it obvious that setting light to a police car was rather violent, but when the speaker asked at the other side of the room, Kyle (we met shortly afterwards) said this:

Violence means violence against people. Even if you blow up a whole building, it’s not violence unless you hurt a person. Setting light to a police car is ‘vandalism’, not ‘violence’.

Knowing I’d gone to the Peace Camp, someone put me in charge of getting the bus there, despite my protests, as I have never driven a car, and couldn’t find my way out of a car park. I slept about 2 hours, and we got up, Kyle passed me a joint, and on the bus we went, where someone informed me they’d found a navigator. This decreased my heart-rate a good deal, and left me and Kyle to plan our actions.

Many protesters were chaining their arms together, inside a plastic tube (which was the style at the time). Police couldn’t take people away in bunches, but only one-by-one, so they had to cut through the chains before removing us. The tubes were made of different materials, forcing the police to obtain different cutting instruments - one for plastic tubes, another for metal, et c. Some protesters made tubes out of layers of plastic, mixed with metal mesh. Our own tube was cardboard, and it was so small that when we put locked our hands in, I instantly felt a cramp, and had to take my hand out. To solve this, we ditched the chain, and decided to just hold hands.

At the gate to Faslane’s military base, all the buses vomited out the protesters, who began making lots of nice (which is always the style for protests), and Kyle and I merged through the crowd to get to the main entrance, jumped in front, and lay down with our tube. Kyle pulled out his camera, as he was a photographer.

The police started the show with the group behind us, consisting of about seven people, all tied together. One inquired:

Could you move?

And the Norwegian man responded, with the standard downward tones of the Norwegian accent.

I am sorry officer, but my conscience will not allow me to move from this road, as the base is in breach of international law.

Another police officer came to me and Kyle, asked us to stop smoking as this was technically his place of work (we agreed), started sawing at the cardboard tube. His saw ran out of battery, he left, replaced it, and returned to finish the job. Once he’d made a hole in the middle, he peered in and said ‘you two aren’t chained together!’. We pulled out hands, laughed a bit, said ‘nah, just pulling your leg’, then refused to move. It took four police officers for each of us, one per limb.

They asked for my name, but criminal background checks always came up empty after that. I suspect they didn’t believe me, and simply binned the paperwork.

Jumping back to 1986, everyone in the Peace Camp used to give the police the same fake name - ‘Freeborn’ - to show they were part of one big, happy, hippy, family. My dad wanted me to have his name, but my mother had just discovered Feminism, and wanted me to take her name. They settled on the name of the Peace Camp.

My dad then had his name changed to Freeborn, so he could win the argument.

Back to the 00’s protest, the police put us all in a van, and off we went to cells. I got nine hours of boredom, but at least they had vegan food. This all started back in the late 70’s when the first protesters requested vegan meals, so the police were well equipped by this point.

Despite my hunger, I felt so bored I played with my food for some time before eating it. I’ve always found boredom worse than hunger.

Once I got home, Kyle sent me his pictures, I sent them to my mum, and she printed them out, and proudly showed everyone at the village pub that her son had been arrested protesting.

Kyle and I

The Norwegians

Also, here’s a picture of the Clown Army. They tried to de-escalate situations to stop police becoming violent.

At one protest they all held mirrors up, so the police could see how angry they looked. At another, they went around rating police officers’ bums on a scale of 1-10; eventually one officer protested his rating was too low as he had a fantastic arse.

The Clowns