The Quakers founded Pennsylvania, Rowntree's and of course Quaker Oats, but behind these achievements lies a serious movement committed to peace building and non-violent social action. As the Government decides whether to renew its nuclear weapons capabilities, Paul Raymond attends a Remembrance Sunday demonstration and examines the group's opposition to “re-proliferation.”
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It's Remembrance Sunday, and a biting November breeze blows over the lochs of western Scotland. A group of activists are gathered outside Faslane Naval Base, some standing and some seated, all in silence as the mist and drizzle blows around them. The police are there too, at least two dozen of them, guarding the entrance to the base and chatting quietly among themselves. The silence ends, and as one band of demonstrators start quietly to sing peace songs, a small group rush to the middle of the slip-road up to the gate and plant themselves on the floor. The police gather round, they start admonishing the demonstrators.
“This is a breach of the peace. If you fail to move you will be arrested. Is this clear? You can move away right now and you will not be arrested. If you do not move you will be charged with a breach of the peace.”
Nobody moves. Those huddled on the floor look pensive; serene, determined smiles play across their faces as the voices of the singers grow louder.
The arrests are made, but the protestors refuse to move. One by one, they are carried off to the police van, until only one old man remains. This is 72-year-old Tom Jackson, a retired magistrate, a Quaker, who doesn’t want his grandson to grow up in a world where there are nuclear weapons. The police suggest that he stands, it would be easier if he walks to the van. He's too old to be carried around by police officers, he has had a hip replacement, he's not a teenager.
Nonsense. He calmly looks up at the officer.
“I’m quite happy where I am, thank you,” he says.
He crosses his arms and sits in silence, in the middle of the road, in the cold, until at last four young policemen in reflective jackets take a limb apiece and, with the utmost care, carry him off. He gives a thumbs-up with each hand, and a cheer rises up from the modest crowd of onlookers as he is gently, respectfully bundled into a waiting police van and driven away.
This, then, is Quaker protest. “It's quite an emotional experience,” says Hugh Hubbard, another Quaker and retired physicist from Leeds who worked with uranium enrichment early in his career. “Just the contrast of the space and ordinary people… the whole lot is just full of so many extreme contradictions, people just being soft flesh and blood and these huge great systems which we’ve made for ourselves.”
He is referring to Britain's nuclear arsenal, the majority of which is situated behind the vast fence and rolls of razor-wire which surround the massive Faslane base, about forty miles north of Glasgow. The contrasts are indeed impressive: Gare Loch is a huge inlet from the Irish sea, surrounded by great hills covered in trees and heather, but in the midst of this beauty lies the pinnacle of man's destructive power. This is the docking zone for the four submarines which make up Trident, a fleet carrying missiles equalling the destructive power of a thousand Hiroshimas.
The founder of the Quaker movement, George Fox, wrote in 1651 that he lived “in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars.” The declaration nine years later to Charles II that “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons”, reflects the deeply-rooted pacifism at the heart of what became known as the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers.
350 years later, the Quakers are still very much involved in peaceful activism and the anti-war movement. Government plans to replace the Trident system when it is decommissioned in 2024 are high on this year's agenda. “Friends” have been prominent among the many groups of activists who have been blockading Faslane since October 1, an action which they hope will carry on for an entire year, hence Faslane 365.
“I think this is a critical moment,” says Hubbard. “This is the first time that the nuclear weapons issue has been discussed outside the context of the Cold War, and outside the context of the Second World War, so we really need to re-look at the whole question of nuclear weapons.”
The timing is certainly important. As the Faslane protest runs its course, the Government is in the process of deciding if, and how, the Trident system will be replaced. The costs run into the tens of billions: perhaps a £25bn start-up cost, plus several times that to keep the system running for the coming years. A 2003 Defence White Paper noted that a decision would need to be taken on the replacement during the current parliament, but the Government has been accused of stalling debate on the issue. A group of junior ministers including Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary, have been campaigning to see a debate “in conference, in the party, in the country and in Parliament.” Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said that it would be unacceptable to leave the decision on Trident to “a couple of Cabinet ministers” without a full parliamentary oversight.
Some suspect that the decision has already been taken. The Independent newspaper claimed last month that work had already started on a new warhead at Aldermaston, the UK's main atomic weapons research facility. A recruitment video for the base claims that “most of our research” focuses on “the ability to provide a new warhead.” However to date neither cabinet nor parliament have discussed the plans.
If it were definitely going ahead, Trident Mark II would raise questions about Britain's commitment to nuclear non-proliferation. The Foreign Office calls proliferation “global menace,” and Britain remains a signatory to various non-proliferation treaties. The Government is, according to the FCO, “committed to working towards a world safer from global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.” However, “our minimum nuclear deterrent capability, currently represented by Trident, is likely to remain a necessary element of our security,” they say. Joanna Dales, Leeds University's Quaker chaplain, sees the irony here.
“It's nonsense to talk about non-proliferation of weapons when we have such weapons of mass destruction ourselves, it's extremely hypocritical, and wasteful of resources - it's something we need to do all we can to abolish,” she told me, standing on the muddy verge next to Faslane's main entrance. She’s dressed as a white poppy, wearing a boiler suit and a matching crown of petals, while telling me about her long-held opposition to nuclear weapons.
“I abominate these monstrous weapons and I think it's vital to deliver the world from these things,” she says.
Martin Deane, secretary of Hull green party, takes a similar line. “In the way that we hang out so closely with America, we already have an unassailable defence, and who are our enemies, anyway? We’re told that our enemies are terrorists. Well, our nuclear missiles aren’t going to stop us getting attacked by terrorists, that needs a completely different approach.”
The latter view is shared by Professor Shaun Gregory, Director of Bradford University Peace Studies department. “A nuclear deterrent is in my view not relevant to the key threats the UK faces from global warming, Islamic terrorism , etc, and the estimated cost of replacement (some £15-25 billion) would be much better spent on the equipment and personnel the UK needs to support its conventional operations overseas and the defence of the nation at home. [It would also] be against the letter and the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which committed the existing nuclear powers (at the time) to work towards global disarmament.”
Professor Cristoph Bluth, of Leeds University's POLIS department, agrees. “My belief is that nuclear weapons should be eliminated from international relations and all states should disarm. I don’t think that British security is affected by giving up nuclear weapons.” He suggests that a small stockpile of weapons could be kept under international supervision in case some state decides illicitly to arm with nuclear weapons in the future, although he is vague about how this would happen. On Trident, however, he is clear: “I don’t believe that Trident has much effect on international security.”
Martin Deane goes further. “I think we should have moral outrage across the country that we even have these weapons, let alone the contemplation of using them.”
That is perhaps a little optimistic. Polls show that 59 per cent of the British public are against replacing Trident when presented with the cost, but this can hardly be described as widespread outrage. Clearly the programme has not reached the public agenda in the same way as other major policy issues such as Iraq, schools and the NHS. This is perhaps surprising: £25bn could, according to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, pay for 120,000 newly qualified nurses every year for a decade, protect 90 million acres of rainforest, or scrap student top-up fees for the next ten years.
“It's not just a question of the weaponry,” says Hugh Hubbard. “It's going to feed through the whole of society because it's like a cancer. All these weapon systems have to be made, they have to be developed, they have to be manufactured, and they have to be understood in terms of the science, in terms of the nuclear engineering. All that takes a massive effort in terms of committing people to that type of thinking. It prevents the development of other ideas which are basically more human.”
The argument seems sound. Aldermaston's costs have increased by £278 million over the last five years. Professor Brian Jamison, at the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, calculated that while £15bn would be spent on building a new fleet of submarines to carry the replacement missiles, it would only create or preserve 3,000 Scottish jobs, at a cost of £5 million per job. The effects of Trident Mark II on the economy would be huge, and an ICM poll from June of this year shows that 81 per cent of the British public want a parliamentary vote on the issue.
But if Government's stance needs to be swayed, is blockading Faslane the way to do it? The police certainly don’t seem to think so. “Do you really think they’re going to stop Trident II going ahead?” scoffed one senior officer. 30 officers a day take on 12-hour shifts outside the base, which is obviously a strain on resources. The project has been running since October 1; since then 28 groups have blockaded the base on 37 different days and there had been, at the time of going to press, 255 arrests. PC Jane Black, the officer in charge of Sunday's policing called the protests “good-natured” and said, “generally it's been a peaceful protest, we’ve not had much bother”, reflected in the fact that in spite of the large number of arrests, there has been only one prosecution, which related to a traffic offence.
This level of arrests, however, obviously puts pressure on the police. It's also hard to see people's opinions swaying as they sit in massive rush-hour tailbacks along the A814 past the base. As the Faslane 365 resource pack says, “civil resistance works best if the local population backs it” - is this the best way to achieve that? I put the question to Martin Deane.
“It's a hard call. The point has to made as forcefully as possible that the preparations inside the base could lead to a thousand Hiroshimas. What's to be hoped through all this is that civil disobedience causes the authorities the maximum amount of discomfort so that they change their approach.”
Deane was among those arrested in the Remembrance Sunday blockade. He was not charged, and will be going back again. 30 or so Quakers made the trip up from the Leeds and other parts of Yorkshire for the blockade, at least 10 of whom were arrested. Several spent a sleepless, wet and windy night camping next to the base, some spent the night in police cells. All spent many hours standing by the main gate of the base, singing, hanging out banners, bearing witness to their slogan: “speak truth unto power.” Was it all worth it? I asked Hugh Hubbard.
“I don’t think we’ve got any choice.”
