11 March 2001 Womens Peace Camp Occupy French Warship

A group of seven women occupied a French destroyer today to protest against war. They used D-locks to lock-on to the ships superstructure and fixed a banner to railings on gantry 50 feet from the deck saying "Women Unite for a World Without War". The warship which was docked at the Garelochhead fuel depot adjacent to the Faslane Naval base had been taking part in exercises with the Royal Navy. The women gained access through a hole in the perimeter fence and ran up the gangplank onto the ship. It took almost 5 hours to remove all the women, some of them having to be lowered on ropes from the superstructure.

The international group of peace women spanning generations from 10 days to grandmother gathered at Faslane Peace Camp this week-end to mark International Womens Day. They said "We welcome women to unite and take action as we feel this is a time when the global military machine is conspiring to spread their power through fear and violence and we reject this as a future."
Contact Faslane Peace Camp 01436 820901
 

Women unite for a world without war ....
The first women's weekend organised in Scotland since over two years has taken place this last weekend at Faslane Peace Camp, to celebrate International Woman's Day.

Originally planned for Coulport, plans had to be changed due to foot and mouth disease and after some intense talks it was agreed we could have a woman's space here at Faslane. Saturday saw us going on subwatches; driving to the other side of the Gareloch and spotting the 1 Trident, 1 foreign, and 3 Hunterkiller submarines. Later on all of us had a great time weaving our 3 feet high slogan: "women unite for a world without war", into the fence. Tabitha, this being her first women's weekend at only 10 days old joined in as well. Then in the evening we discussed our plans for the next day.

Getting up early in the morning, nine of us managed to drive off without the police noticing. After cutting a hole in the fence, seven women ran for the jetty where -as we knew- a French Destroyer was berthed. A surprised engineer and some sailors saw us boarding and tried to stop us; some woman were held, others were able to start climbing the first ladders, and two of us actually managed to pull loose and started climbing as well.

After the first exciting minutes, the balance was that 3 of us were arrested quite soon; leaving the other four to place themselves strategically high up on the Destroyer. Two women were on the central part of the ship and managed to unfold and hang the banner, that was ripped off after only a few minutes by some MoD police men that had followed them up. Refusing to then move all four could breath a little and enjoy the beautiful hills on the background.

By this time at least a hundred or so sailors had gathered around and were watching interestedly. One woman who cleverly negotiated to come down by herself after a certain time, climbed down. And then there was only three........ But these three had already locked themselves on and were refusing to move, so some tactics were tried by the French: bringing out watercanons, waving tranquillisers, coming up to one woman and wanting to lower her by a rope around the waist! The MoD then talked to the captain, and made clear they didn't agree on the methods and that it would have to be either them or the French, running the operation of getting us down.

Luckily for us it was the MoD, who actually had a newly trained team of climbers ready to take us down. But first there were still the D-locks! Sending up a wpc to search us for the keys, two of us both threw away the keys; one bouncing into the Loch, the other falling on another ship. This meant one of the women was "de D-locked", but still refusing to move, with the other two still in position as well.

Then slowly but gradually work was started on the first woman: cutting her D-lock, putting her in a climbing harnass, lowering her down three ladders, carrying her into a police van ..... The same procedure was then done to the last two remaining on the 50 feet high middle part of the Destroyer.

We were all charged with Breach of Peace and Byelaws, the 3 locked on were also charged with resisting arrest. After a few hours spent in custody inside Faslane all of us were released and driven back to camp.

All Stars: * for continuous support outside: Jane,
* for driving back the van: Olivia,,
* for media work: Roz and Fungus,
* for minding camp and all the left behind dogs: Wendy and Laura,
* for making us food: Lynn
* for boarding the ship: Ulla, Anna and Barbara,
* for climbing somewhere high up: Sylvia, Jenny, Mary and Marjan.
And everyone for painting the banner, and everyone for the action!
And for once a special mention for the way the MoD dealt with us, and especially a thank you to the climbing team!

David Mackenzie Trident Ploughshares 15 Broomhill Avenue Larbert FK5 3EH
tel + 44 (0) 1324 880744
fax + 44 (0) 1324 562719
davidmc@enterprise.net
Trident Ploughshares e-mail: tp2000@gn.apc.org
Web: tridentploughshares.org