The story is, on 6 August 1984, Glasgow district council and various anti nuclear types planted a cherry tree near Kelvingrove Art Gallery and installed a plaque saying "Glasgow Remembers Hiroshima". 17 years on and Glasgow has obviously completely forgotten Hiroshima, as the plaque and its stob are in a bad state. So we decided to renew it. This was a really positive bit of direct action.
Monday 6 august, in the wee hours of the morning, Paddy, Digger, and Tim 'planted' the prepared cherry log by the memorial tree. Imagine that - 3 blokes digging a hole in the park in the middle of the night... luckily they weren't apprehended by any other sketchy figures hanging around in the night or any plods!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch (Crusty Mansions in Glasgow) we were painting cardboard coffins with 'HIROSHIMA 140,000', 'NAGASAKI 70,000' and 'GLASGOW ?', to signify the amount of people immediately killed by the nuclear blasts, and pasting images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after nuclear attack onto card for use the next day.
08:15 mon.6 aug : WHOOMF! A big mushroom cloud of fire is breathed into George Square to resemble the H-bomb being dropped on the people of Hiroshima at 8.15am in 1945, and the ensuing fireball that engulfed the city. So begins a morning peace vigil, with accompanying info boards and a peace camp stall. Brian and Babs had made beautiful headbands with the Japanese enscription for 'peace' painted on which we all wore. Many people were interested in what we were doing, and stopped to find out more. It was a good chance to talk to people about nuclear issues, including a local (unsympathetic) radio station and some local press (who somehow managed to get us to pose for cheesy staged photographs, what media sluts we are).
11:30 : we packed up and made a procession with drummer, coffins, images, and info to hand out through Glasgow to the site of the cherry tree (via the M.O.D. building but not to a welcoming reception!)
12:30 : arrival at the 'Glasgow Remembers Hiroshima' cherry tree by Kelvingrove Art Gallery. And Lo! There on the other side of the tree from the existing rotting plaque was a lovely new log ready to have a lovely new plaque screwed on, thanks to our pixies on their midnight mission earlier. Gathered around, we placed the plaque and screwed it down... then the guerilla gardening began! Kids and grownups joined forces to dig a circular garden around the log with the plaque, and plant a beautiful selection of flowers and plants. The park keeper was not amused, "Digging without permission?!" he said, "we'll have to come along and rip it all up you know!"
"Well why don't you just wait and see what it looks like?" we said. And what did it look like? Totally stunning. Well done to Fungus for getting the plants together.
We re-fixed the old plaque onto its log , and I don't think anyone would dare touch the new garden and plaque. We have been back since, and it is still beautiful.
Possibly the best action organized by Faslane Peace Camp... ever... We started on the Saturday before with a beautiful cherry log, at the camp, cutting it to size and rubbing linseed oil into it, and drilling holes in the plaque we'd got engraved that read:
WE RENEW OUR PLEDGE
HIROSHIMA
NAGASAKI
NEVER AGAIN
TRASH TRIDENT AND THE WAR MACHINE
LET JUSTICE AND PEACE FLOURISH