Anna's Big Blockade

You probably saw it on the news, but this is a peace camper's experience... the camp was getting busier from Saturday (10/2), but noticeably so on Sunday evening. I'd been at work all weekend and so hadn't noticed if any above-average-hecticness was occurring, but for me it all kicked in at about 7 on Sunday evening. Some helpful visitors had got dinner on the go on the rayburn, and the beds were all getting full up. Our cunning system of allocating spaces had somewhat fallen apart as more & more "unbooked" people arrived and half those who had "booked" didn't.

Anyway, we had dinner and held a short legal briefing - you'd be likely to get charged with B.o.P. if you were arrested, held in a police cell for the day (and fed veggie sausages), then let out, maybe to receive a letter at a later date from the courts asking you to an "intermediate diet", where you state your plea (not/guilty), and then later to a "trial diet" where your case gets heard.

Some of us went for a walk to discuss some plans...

The tripod was due to arrive at 1am in a van. People (us) were needed to hang around the tripod and protect it from then on till 6 or 7am when more folk from Glasgow arrived for the blockade.

We ended up with two groups - one to tiptoe around with 3 spare scaf-poles to make a back-up tripod, in case the one coming in the van got spotted on the way and confiscated, and one to wait at camp till 1am when the van arrived. Some of our group had d-locks to put around our necks and lock ourselves to things if needed.

We walked through the woods back to camp where all hell was breaking loose - LOADS more people, and where to put them all? And I still had to get my extra warm clothes and waterproofs on, and my "arrest kit": a good book to read in the cell, my tooth brush, my recorder, and a bottle of water. And still to get to grips with the d-lock. Pandemonium! We hid in the flush loo to practice with our d-locks... by this time I knew that I was not going to bed that night and gave my bedspace to someone else...

Along comes little Aaron running down the path towards the communal - "the van's arrived! Get down to the South Gate!" Off we trot at a fair old pace, to find one tripod already erected in the approach road, just past the taxi lady's house.

"Whoo-oo-oo-ooop!" "Owa-owa-owa-rrreeh!" Ian & J are up the tripod, just hauling up a big rucksack full of provisions. We throw more blankets and stuff up.

Then there is a brief pause, the police are there but not really doing a lot, just looking, casual like... People begin to get comfy.

Jenny's up a tree on one side of the road. Jo's up a tree on the other. A rope gets passed between them so that it's tied from tree to tree across the road. Then it's all hectic again, as I've to go back to camp, climb a tree and cut some rope ("I'm very tired" I think, wrapped around the tree), and then take the rope back to the South Gate Road. This rope gets tied a bit lower than the other one to make a walkway. Jenny & Jo walk along one rope, holding the other, and take up residence dangling in the middle of the road.

The polis still don't really care. It starts raining, P & I head back to camp to get waterproofs for the walkway women and other defenders of the tripod.

Just as I collect the much-needed flapjack from the office, Alex is on the phone from the South Gate saying "they [polis] are moving in. Flapjack, raincoats, and d-lock back in place, we're back down to the South Gate, P with his vid camera too. It's typical! We were just too late! The polis have blocked off the tripod, its defenders sitting around the base, and the women in the air. So sorry if you got rained on - we couldn't get anywhere near you after that.

Now the polis were serious. They made a "stairway to heaven" up to the guys sitting in the tripod, out of very shiny scaffolding, with a platform in the centre under Ian & J in an attempt to remove them...

J was in a hammock type affair, hanging from the joint of the tripod, in between the legs, and I think they cut the hammock off to get him down, then they had to remove him from the tripod leg that he'd attached himself to, limpet-style.

Ian was above the crux of the tripod so was much harder for the polis to remove. It made a grim theatre. Jenny & Jo on the walkway were the running commentary - one would shout "nuclear weapons are already killing people" and Ian would yelp from the top of the tripod, in pain from the polis' moves to get him down.

I was reminded of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, peoples killed and dying, nuclear test zones and jellyfish babies, nuclear waste, and generally the pain and destruction caused by nuclear weapons and their industry...

We, the audience, were prevented from participating by the heavy police line. They all looked bored. Polis climbers tried to remove Ian for quite some time. I tried to sneak along the beach to lock-on to the tripod or the "stairway to heaven", but got spotted just as I was nearly there. I had been spotted earlier when I was having a piss on the beach, but for embarassment's sake the copper decided not to notice me. I was sent back onto the road, they'd seen me being mischievous before and told me to stop being naughty or they'd arrest me.

The pantomime went on, I was pretty much dead on my feet. I felt disempowered, seeing my friends being handled roughly by polis, and not being able to run up and see if they were OK.

The rope walkway was sagging more and more, which in effect was good as it meant that even if the tripod was removed the walkway women were blocking the road. A "cherrypicker" (hydraulic lift on a truck) was waiting further back to remove them... A-ha! I thought. I sauntered to the bushes where I had stashed my d-lock earlier, after giving up all hope of using it, clunked it round my neck, hopped onto the back of the wagon and locked my neck to the lift - just as a precaution against the walkway women being picked off with it.

"Would you get down please?" said PC Polite. "No, sorry" I replied. After my d-lock had been cut off: I was arrested, nearly fell off the van as I went limp, and was carted off to the pig-van by my collar, indecently exposed(?) by polis who couldn't carry me properly whilst telling me to get 'decent' - I couldn't bloody see, my jumper was over my eyes instead of my body!

Got to polis 'meat-van' with Jenny & Jo the Walkway Women - they'd been sort of pushed of the rope by polis climbers, climbing inwards and along the rope, and dropping them onto mattresses below.

Folk had arrived at the South Gate to block the road by people power - dawn arriving, people arriving, we're away in a police van... the wrong way! We drive up a "no through road", a track near camp that goes up to a farm, then back and around past the NORTH GATE where bus loads of hundreds gather to block the base... A dome for tea, bright colours, banners... We bang on the inside of the van, and hoot as some way of communicating our support, then away, past the queue of traffic for the base, over snowy hill and sunny dale to Clydebank Police Station, to sleep for the day...

Goodnight,

Anna