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
It was cancelled just after I turned off the A303 on to the only road in and out of the site. A road that is over a mile long and which had to be cleared in order to begin the process of evacuation.
By Mark Lynas, Telegraph Online, 24/5/07
In 2005 the American environmental writer Bill McKibben issued a challenge to the artistic community to start engaging with global warming.
"Where are the books? The plays? The goddam operas?" he demanded. "Art, like religion, is one of the ways we digest what is happening to us, make the sense out of it that proceeds to action."
McKibben might also have asked where the songs and songwriters were: music which in any way engaged with this issue - even then acknowledged as the most pressing challenge to face humanity - seemed just as thin on the ground. The climate crisis, it seemed, had hit us in the head, but had failed to engage us emotionally, in the heart.
Through a concerted effort and in a very short time AliB managed to rally the troops to release a new website !
The video of Shannon's song "Flying", from the album "The Tide Is Turning" is being shown online as part of the "Alive Earth - Performers against a climate in chaos" website.
The band are off to Glastonbury festival for the week - if you can't catch us there, why not check out our new "BURNING BUSH" video, at the following link.
I love Glastonbury Festival...don`t get me wrong I`m as worried as the next person by the fact that the proportion of tattoos and facial piercing to trainers and cagoules has been steadily declining for the past ten years...since the double fence in fact...but I simply can`t get away from what an incredible event it is.
Media in Wales predicted a summer of Climate Change protest actions, as singer Theo joined protestors and locked onto machinary at the Aberthaw coal-fired power station near Cardiff. The blockade of the power station on April 3rd followed a similar action at Ffos-y-Fran opencast coal-mine near Merthyr Tydfil on Fossil Fools Day April 1st. The protests were to highlight the apparent hypocracy of the UK government, which claims to be taking climate change seriously, while approving new coal-mines and coal-powered power stations.
Returning from the climate camp in Kent, singer Theo says he’s been inspired by what he sees as “the birth of a new climate change movement”, following a week of discussion and protest action at Kingsnorth, where the government plans to build a new coal-fired power station.
Back to news