Fairford's a half hour away from me...and this just goes to show what i always knew...
It's a free country... isn't it?
When Jo Wilding went to RAF/USAF Fairford to protest against the use of British bases to bomb Iraq she found our much-talked about freedom in short supply
Guardian Tuesday April 8, 2003
You don't see the B-52s when you're underneath them in Baghdad. I saw them earlier this week at RAF/USAF Fairford, on a gorgeous sunny day in bright green English countryside. This is where someone loads the bombs onto the planes. This is where someone climbs into the cockpit of the plane, amid the birdsong and the daffodils, and sets off to drop bombs on people in their lives.
People had consistently been stopped when they arrived at the Fairford protests and refused access to the peace camp and the protests against the use of British bases for the bombing of Iraq. We arrived on bikes and rode down towards the base, where we were stopped and searched under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which allows the police to stop and search anyone within a designated zone, for no other reason than being there, though being there is not in itself illegal.
We were allowed to continue but were again stopped a few minutes later and told we couldn't go along the track we were cycling on because it wasn't the designated procession route. There were small clumps of people being escorted by an equal number of police as they marched towards the base. More clumps of people sat defiantly picnicking having not been let near the march or the peace camp.
Stopping for a drink of water at a quiet pub in nearby Kempsford, we were approached by a policeman who read us section 14 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, whereby we could be arrested for "demonstrating" anywhere other that along the designated route. We asked for a definition of "demonstrating", because at the time we were only drinking water, but none was given.
Further towards the base we were stopped again and given a further search under section 44 of the Terrorism Act. Two of the lads were also given a warning under section 69 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, the aggravated trespass provisions, which prohibit trespass on land in the open air with the intention of disrupting a lawful activity. The warning states that if you return within three months you can be arrested for aggravated trespass, regardless of the fact that you had not in fact disrupted anything at all, never mind the fact that the land you were "trespassing" on was a public footpath.
The nine of us were attended during the search by around 35 police officers, five vans (with a sixth stopping to offer assistance), a police CCTV van, a police helicopter and two police dogs. Police had been brought in from Yorkshire, Cumbria, Devon, Wales, Gloucestershire and London constabularies for the weekend.
We were then treated to a further reading of section 14, after which we attempted to go via the direct route (ie a few hundred metres along a public road) to the peace camp. Two officers were sitting, one either side of the road, playing catch with a plastic water bottle as we rode up. They were terribly sorry, they said, but we couldn't go into the peace camp. They had been instructed that the road was closed.
No, they didn't know why. No, they couldn't tell us what law gave them the authority to close it, but they could get their sergeant to come and tell us it was closed. No, they couldn't tell us what offence we would be committing if we tried to walk up the road, but we would definitely be arrested. And while we were there they were going to have to search us under section 44 of the Terrorism Act.
Surprisingly we still hadn't picked up any dangerous terrorist-assisting items in the brief interlude since the last search. No rocket launchers, no aircraft capable of killing civilians in their beds in the middle of the night, no cluster bombs in our pockets, although someone came down from the peace camp to see us and said they'd just seen cluster bombs being loaded onto an aircraft inside the base. Does that give anyone a clue as to where they might find the offensive weapons they're so diligently hunting?
The peace campers have been refused vehicle access to the site for some days. They have been refused visitors this weekend and have been forced to provide a list of residents, with a maximum of 20, who are the only people allowed in. For a time the press were refused entry, until a law lecturer convinced the police of the illegality of the restriction. They weren't allowed to take in a wooden trolley which a supporter built for them to carry water in. The reason, apparently, was that they might use it for firewood.
I know, of course, that in Iraq the freedom to protest would be considerably more interfered with. But that's not the point. The lack of civil and political freedom allowed to the Iraqi people is not a reason to bomb them, especially given that the lack of freedom is in part a result of CIA assistance to the Iraqi government when it was an ally. In any case, there is little triumph in comparing ourselves with one of the worst systems and concluding that we come out better.
Where is our democracy? Where is our legitimacy to impose change on others with bombs when we use terrorist legislation to prevent ordinary, democratic, peaceful protest? Where is our moral high ground when we create a Human Rights Act which allows freedom "within the law" and then uses the law to take away that freedom? Freedom of assembly within the law becomes a mere placebo when, within the law, as amended to deal with the Human Rights Act, the freedom to assemble can be taken away at the whim of a few police officers.
