TWO
OLD ABCERS VISIT THE LAND OF THE GREAT WHITE DOME
Warren
And MelanieThomson Visit Menwith Hill
- Warren Thomson
Warren and Melanie are both veteran ABC
activists. Warren has worked as a teacher in Bangkok for several years; his
daughter Melanie is spending a couple of years teaching in London. Ed.
The CAAB – Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases – organised a protest at Menwith Hill, near Harrogate in Yorkshire, on October 13, 2001. The aim was to publicise the developing British involvement in Star Wars Part Two. The Rambo zealots* who control policy under Bush need Menwith Hill as a vital spybase for targeting missiles which they believe will one day be dispatched to Washington from evil Third World empires. And some of the hardware is already in place. The events of September 11 changed the emphasis of the protest but CAAB proceeded with the central message that Vice President Blair was secretly and dangerously involving the UK in schemes that had no proper relationship to its security. Melanie and I drove from the wonders of ancient Cambridge and York to be confronted across the hills and valleys of rural Yorkshire with lines of the ultra-modern alien white radomes that Menwith Hill parades so arrogantly across the horizon.
At the entrance to the Royal Air Force base a huge American flag was flying. Friendly local cops in luminescent jackets were lounging about; inside a few considerably less friendly-looking Ministry of Defence police ostentatiously paraded with automatic weapons loaded and in hand. Near the gate 200-300 people were listening to speeches about Star Wars, and the Afghanistan War. The audience was the same as in New Zealand; the middle aged grey haired and bespectacled members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a few young teenagers eating lunch, some stalwarts from the old Left, and a few young anarchists saving the parade from geriatricity. When a speaker finished by mentioning international links, I went to the microphone and announced our New Zealand presence, explained briefly about our two balls in NZ (Waihopai. Ed.), the spy work that these bases would be doing with the current situation, and the hope that Menwith would not be here if I managed to get back to this country in another ten years. In the course of the afternoon several people approached us and talked about their connections with New Zealand.
We ate a small lunch and survived a short, cold, wet shower before the small but committed drum group temporarily ceased their rhythmic call to action, and we marched off around the base. Six miles. The first part cut through wet grass where little was to be seen, but it was close to the (historic?) site of the old Women’s Camp, and a place where large numbers of orchids had been planted. The sun came out, and the accompanying policemen had to discard their flak jackets as they began to drip with sweat. The walk, after a few unexplained halts, became a pleasant stroll up the country road, with occasional stops to glimpse the rotten 29 balls that have been strewn across the land. Most were large size – 80-100 feet high, and nearly all the radomes were not smooth like Waihopai but in geodesic patterns. Two exceptions, on smaller size domes, were the radomes covering the new dishes allocated to the developing Star Wars programme, using infra-red systems for the programme to provide anti-missile defence, a hugely expensive and probably impossible objective. Why the British government has gone along with this is difficult to say (although their virtual Tory postures on a range of matters reflects some pretty daft ideas across the board). Britain cannot expect to get much in the way of defence from this exercise in science fiction. Indeed, the British Chief of Defence Staff has expressed doubts that the project is feasible! From the road along the back of the property one can see the large and rather sinister underground bunker that is the centre of the base. We were told how veteran anti-bases activist, Lindis Percy, on one of her many forays into these super-secret bastions, had confronted (peacefully) a half dozen Americans working in the guts of the system. Incidentally, the planning for the day was a bit in disarray due to the fact that Lindis, a key organiser, had been arrested yet again on the day previous to the protest. (Big thanks to the women who carried the organisation on regardless).
US Spybase In Germany To
Relocate To Menwith Hill
We learned that the Bad Aibling base in Germany is to close down much of its operation, and the credit has been given to German people who demanded the removal of the foreign-run spy base from their land. This seemed a major victory for local democracy and peace, and the story needs to be more widely known. An unfortunate downside is that much of the German operation will be transferred to Menwith Hill and the local people fighting the base expect it to hugely grow in size over the next few years.
When Melanie and I drove off at the end of the day, we could see the massive base straddling the countryside from several miles away. It seemed a little astounding that the British public could drive past here in such clear view of the base yet leave it to carry on its nasty furtive operations unquestioned. Currently in England and Scotland, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is having one of its periodic revivals as people muster against bombings in Afghanistan. There is also continuing effective action against nuclear submarines as Faslane, in Scotland. But Menwith Hill, like Waihopai, seems to be a firm part of the Establishment, accepted by locals and largely ignored by the public. It will be need a long campaign to bring effective opposition to the insidious nature of the Echelon system, the Star Wars developments, and the arcane activities of the secret agencies so deeply insinuated into the central organs of the body politic in the countries that comprise the top secret UKUSA Agreement (US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ).
* It is alarming to see that key decisionmakers are Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense) and Richard Armitage (Deputy Secretary of State) – young anti-Red fanatics in the 1980s’ Reagan years - and that a senior advisor is Richard Perle, a former Harvard professor who urged President Reagan to nuke the former Soviet Union.
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