Singer Theo was arrested while blockading the Gate to the Faslane Trident submarine base on Tuesday. He had joined the 2nd "Power Of The Word Blockade" with other performers and writers supporting the Faslane 365 campaign to close the nuclear misslie facility..
"Under cover of an impromptu birthday party for Angie zelter from the Faslane Peace camp, we ended our 5 hour concert at faslane by occupying the road in front of the gate, and lying down with our arms linked together. The cops, who had been listening to songwriting legend Leon Rossellson on the small stage outside the North Gate, were slow to react and in a very soft mood. At one point I even managed to escape and rejoin the blockade!
They were short of numbers and had to carry each of us to the vans some distance away, although I got up and walked the last part of the journey because my trousers had come down! We were held for 6 hours then released without charge - that's how easy it can be up there at the moment, and it's a small price to pay for the very real possibility of winning an epoch making victory over Nuclear Arms.
It was a real buzz to see the face of "Trigger" from "Only Fools and Horses" giving his support, although as I said to the coppers when I played, famous faces turn out be just ordinary human actors underneath, and I know that each of those coppers is also another person out of uniform, with a life and mind of their own. The Scottish people are in a really strong position now to push for the policy they voted for in the recent election - to remove Trident Warheads from Faslane.
I sang them a new song I wrote about being a police officer at the North gate who decides to lock onto a lorry himself! They liked it, but probably won't be blockading any day soon. But they will have to think seriously about which parliament to obey, when the Scottish parliament finally confronts Westminster with the illegality of Nuclear Weapons.
In the meantime, it's up to the rest of us. Check out the faslane site to see where you could join the Blockade rota this summer, and start planning now for the really big blockade to end this years campaign on October 1st.
See a full report below:
http://www.faslane365.org/en/blog/41
View the news archive