I’m in the process of writing my PhD thesis on the samba-fusion activism movement, a loosely connected global network of community bands that support protests with samba-inspired percussion music. I’m sure I’ll write a lot about how and why they do that in future posts. Something that comes up again and again in my research on UK activism is peace camps, in particular the women’s anti-nuclear peace camp at RAF Greenham Common.
But despite decades of activism against nuclear weapons – including some significant wins like at Greenham Common – there’s still nukes in Britain. I don’t want to treat resistance as a thing of the past for academics to endlessly debate over what worked and what didn’t. So I’m interested in contemporary British peace camps, and decided to join Lakenheath Alliance For Peace’s blockade demo, which was part of their weeklong camp. From the 1st April until the 6th, Lakenheath Alliance For Peace held a 24 hour vigil outside RAF Lakenheath. RAF Lakenheath is a Royal Air Force base, but is staffed almost entirely by the United States Air Force, who are likely to be storing their nuclear bombs there, and are using it to launch attacks against Iran.
This is not a time when we should be trusting a foreign government to keep their weapons in our country, especially not nuclear weapons. We have world leaders like Donald Trump, who behave like kids playing war games on their iPads, treating real lives like NPCs on a screen, and other world leaders who politely let them get on with it. Keir Starmer, according to his social media activity, hasn’t been taking the threat seriously. He didn’t feel the need to address the president of the USA threatening the entire country of Iran with destruction, but did tweet about a music festival.
Last year, I went to the Lakenheath camp the day before to join the morning meeting and vigil at the base. This year I’d been busy with an unrelated week of workshops for the samba-fusion bands, so decided to just go to the mass protest day on 4th April that would involve a pre-planned blockade of RAF Lakenheath. I joined a coach from London, organised by the Lakenheath Alliance For Peace so that people without cars could get to the protest. As soon as we got off the coach, people began filling the road in front of the base where there would be a programme of speeches and performances. For the rest of the week, the vigil had been held in a fenced-off designated protest area, that activists had covered with banners. There were banners and art all along the fence of the base, most beautifully handmade and all communicating heartfelt messages.
All the photos in this article are my own.
The Red Rebels made an appearance during the blockade.
We blockaded the gate for around three hours, before the police began to tell us our time was up and usher us off the road into the fenced-off designated protest area. According to the CND, they were threatening people with arrest before the agreed time is up. This was while the band Seize The Day was singing, and police tried to interrupt them in the middle of their performance.
Most people slowly moved out of the road after the speeches and performances were over, and I headed down the grass verge to play with the samba-fusion band. I later found out that two people from the blockade were arrested and released the next day.
I recently read a paper by Alexandre Christoyannopoulos debating the popular argument that World War II was necessary to stop the Nazis. The paper argues that the threat of military retaliation didn’t stop Hitler’s rise to power, and that when the Allies went to war, it wasn’t to end Nazism or try to prevent the Holocaust, but to prevent German political expansion. Christoyannopoulos suggests that nonviolent civilian resistance that made invaded populations ungovernable and spoke to the humanity of German soldiers could have been an option. This reminds me of Iran’s response of asking people to form human chains around infrastructure in response to Trump’s threat (although it’s not reported how coordinated this was or if many people did it).
The peace movement is still alive and well in the UK. Following the Lakenheath Alliance For Peace week, independent groups got together to blockade the base themselves on the 7th. Right now, it’s really important that British people do what we can to demonstrate that we don’t want to help the USA sacrifice people for oil or help Israel sacrifice people for land. Israel in particular is committing the worst atrocities of our time, I think equal to those committed by the Nazis. Extremist Israeli officials are literally clapping and laughing over their death penalty law for Palestinian hostages, and warning Christian and Druse people not to protect their Shiite Muslim neighbours in Lebanon like Christians protected Jews from the Nazis.
Christoyannopoulos’s paper adds that nonviolent resistance isn’t guaranteed to be effective always, but that research does seem to show it’s more effective than violent resistance and results in less casualties. Artistic mass protest like this blockade is part of the nonviolent resistance we need, to make sure that the issues are at the forefront of everyone’s mind and that decision-makers know they’re being seen and judged. But it’s just as important to do the “becoming ungovernable” bit. This can be grassroots direct action, but it can also be being a nuisance to politicians who don’t put life before money, and using our own money wisely by boycotting those who profit from war.
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