BY NORM DIXON
The Scottish Socialist Party's member in the Scottish parliament, Tommy Sheridan, was among the more than 370 anti-nuclear weapons protesters arrested at the Faslane navy base near Glasgow on February 12. Scottish Labour MP George Galloway and Greens MSP Caroline Lucas were also arrested.
Faslane is where Britain's Trident nuclear-armed submarine fleet is based. Around 1200 protesters attempted to close the base for the day. The protest was organised by the anti-nuclear weapons group Trident Ploughshares and Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Large numbers of Scottish Socialist Party members mobilised.
The SSP, which held its third annual conference in Glasgow on February 11-12, has decided to place the issue of nuclear disarmament, abandoned by the Labour Party in the 1980s, at the centre of the political agenda in Scotland. All Britain's nuclear bases are located in Scotland. Polls have shown that a clear majority of people in Scotland are opposed to the bases.
Many members of the SSP were arrested including Alan McCombes, editor of the party's paper Scottish Socialist Voice, parliamentary candidates Rosie Kane, Les Robertson, Keith Baldassara, Kenny McEwan and local councillor Jim Bolan. One SSP member, Morag Balfour, was arrested in her wheelchair.
Sheridan and Galloway shouted defiantly as police removed them from the protest. Protesters came from all over Europe. Hundreds of people have been arrested at previous protest actions at the Scottish base. The moderator of the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Right Reverend Andrew McLellan, joined the action. The press has reported that "dozens" of ministers of the Church of Scotland were arrested.
"The world is against nuclear weapons and today proves that the time for talking is over and demonstrations throughout the world should start against nuclear weapons", declared Sheridan.
Sheridan is no stranger to activism. He became famous for leading the opposition to Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's poll tax in the early 1990s. Sheridan spent five days in jail last December after he refused to pay a fine arising from his participation in another anti-nuclear protest at Faslane.
Demonstrators waved banners, banged on drums and chanted slogans. Police had to use power tools to cut through tubing which protesters had used to tie themselves together. They had to dismantle the costume of a woman dressed as a silver nuclear missile before they could arrest her.