ARRESTED IN SCOTLAND

Dave Webb (Chair of the Global Network) and I were arrested yesterday for blocking the entrance to the British Faslane Trident nuclear base in Scotland as part of the year-long Faslane 365 campaign against the government's decision to build a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Dave drove us to Scotland, a five-hour ride, from Leeds early Saturday morning. After speaking to those assembled at the gate we held our banner directly in front of the gate blocking traffice from coming or going into the base. We were taken to a nearby jail in Clydebank and held over night and released at 10am this morning. Normally if people are arrested on the weekends they are detained until Monday but we told the police I was set to fly back to Maine on Monday morning from Manchester so they let us out early.

We drove back Leeds just in time to go and listen to a talk by former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney who just happened to be speaking in Leeds this evening. Cynthia and I had just exchanged emails a few days ago so she was quite surprised to see me in the audience.

Below is the news release issued about the arrests:

GLOBAL NETWORK LEADERS ARRESTED AT FASLANE NUCLEAR BASE

Contact: Brian Larkin 07760 401267
Dave Webb 07717 606189

U.S. peace activist Bruce Gagnon and British activist Dave Webb were arrested today blockading the entrance to the Faslane Trident nuclear submarine base in Scotland. Gagnon is the Coordinator of the Global Network against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space and lives in Maine in the U.S. Dave Webb is the chairperson of Yorkshire CND and also chairs the Global Network.

Gagnon has been on a speaking tour in England, Wales, and Scotland for the last 10 days talking about the nuclear hypocrisy of the U.S. as it lectures the restof the world about the evils of WMD while at the same time building new generations of nukes and now planning to move the arms race into space.

“It’s clear to me that the U.S. and Britain should be held to the same standard they are claiming that Iran should be held to. If Iran should not have nuclearweapons then why should the U.S. and Britain be jointly building new generationsof nuclear warheads,” Gagnon said.

Dave Webb said, “It’s time for people to make a stand and show where their priorities lie. Do we really need nuclear weapons when there are so many other real problemswe need to solve together?”

The protest is part of the ongoing yearlong Faslane365 blockade and brings the total number of arrests at Faslane since October 2006 to 944. People from at least twelve countries including Japan, Australia and the United States as well as several European countries have travelled to Faslane to participate in the protests.

There will be a Big Blockade of the Faslane base on 1st of October with more thana thousand expected to attend.

For further information on Global Network see http://www.space4peace.org/ For further information on Faslane 365 see www.faslane365.org