A Grand Day out for Bristol Peace Pirates

bristol | peace | news report Tuesday August 22, 2006 22:06 by Bristol Peace Pirates nicefella at tesco dot net

On Friday 18th August, a group of Peace Activists and members of Bristol CND went out for a day trip in BANGER, the campaign mini-bus.

Peace Camp at RAF Brize Norton

On our way out of Bristol, we stopped off to support the picket at Raytheon’s offices opposite UWE. The turnout was good, considering menacing weather. The previous week the cops had been a bit over-excited - threatening arrests for wearing skull masks or displaying pictures of civilian atrocities in Lebanon. But this time they remembered their manners and the approach of Halloween, and stayed in their riot transit out of the wind.

After an hour on the picket, we piled back into the mini-bus, having picked up a couple more supporters. We set off for RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire where nice Mr Blair has been allowing the Yanks to refuel their planes, which are gunrunning Raytheon’s missiles to Israel. We parked near the end of the runway to endure the spectacle of VC-10s doing landing practice, and mysterious transporters planes taking off. We hoped we might catch a sight of the “rendition” flights that nice Mr Blair also allows on our soil, but not today.

Next we visited the Peace Camp - located on the village green next to a church, in one of the villages near the runway. Something of a moral dilemma for the vicar and his congregation, apparently! The camp was well organised comprising several campaigners from the Faslane Peace Camp in Scotland. We took a walk around the fence. Two painfully young squadies, who came to shoo us away, ended up having to listen to our advice on conscientious objection for so long that they had to retreat and call in reinforcements.

Finally we unloaded our banners and placards and vigiled outside the main gates of the base. Despite Carterton being a garrison town, it was surprising how many supportive waves and toots we attracted. We even met youngsters who remembered our Peace Camp and demo last year. They got very excited when they heard there will be an even bigger one this year.

Driving back we were in high spirits, feeling we had contributed our numbers and energies to several useful actions in the same day. We christened ourselves the BRISTOL PEACE PIRATES and vowed to do it again, maybe monthly. For info of future trips, and the National Demo and Peace Camp at Brize Norton on December 2nd
– watch this space.

Vigil at main gates of RAF Brize Norton