As one of the many people taking part in the protest against Trident at Faslane on Monday, let me make some observations. The protest involved perhaps 1000 people and succeeded in blockading the two main entrances to the base. After leaving the blockade and returning home I watched the coverage on the Scottish news. Both main evening news programmes featured it as a major item. The next day all the quality Scottish papers gave it widespread coverage, with a resulting and ongoing debate. Given that the main aim of the blockade was to generate this kind of publicity and make people aware of the issue, one would have to say that it was a great success. If this and other protests had not taken place there would simply be no coverage and the government would take the lack of opposition as acquiescence.

The disruption to the local community was surely exaggerated, as was the use of police resources highlighted by Labour politicians. What they really meant to say was that you can have your protest as long as it is ineffectual and doesn't achieve anything.

The blockade once again highlighted the obscenity and absurdity of nuclear weapons. Labour politicians will argue, "of course we are all against nuclear weapons but the issue is complex". No, it's not. It's very simple. You are either for or against nuclear weapons and if you are against them you should campaign for their abolition, and in Scotland that means campaigning against the renewal of Trident. Nuclear weapons are not and never were a deterrent to anything; rather a reflection of Britain's Great Power status in the world. They are obscenely expensive and in Scotland have little support.

The government and Ministry of Defence will no doubt breathe a sigh of relief that the year-long protest at Faslane has come to an end. This is simply the end of round one. There will be much more to follow.

William Bonnar, 129 Ardmory Avenue, Glasgow.



Thank you for your balanced piece yesterday on the anti-Trident protest at Faslane. It was unfortunate that it was headlined "Faslane: paying the price of protest".

Of course there is a price attached to protest, in terms of policing (estimated at £6m), disruption to people's lives and, in some cases, imprisonment, but the price attached to Trident is much higher: £76bn. And, as long as we have Trident, our ability to criticise and stop other states possessing weapons of mass destruction is undermined.

Several doctors and an international group of medical students from International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War were also present at the demonstration. They were there because part of our professional role is the protection of the public health, and nuclear weapons constitute a major threat to the health of our patients and the public, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

Dr Lesley Morrison, 14 Kingsmeadows Road, Peebles.

The Faslane 365 protest did nothing but antagonise locals and allow some MSPs to posture. It had no effect on RN operations and in the end cost £6m in policing by officers who could have have been better deployed elsewhere.

Letters of protest to elected representatives would have been much more productive and not caused the upheaval to the rightly-furious local people.

While accepting their right of protest to be as sacrosanct as my right to criticise, surely our First Minister was unwise to have written to the protesters, saying that he shared their objective.

Alex Salmond, it seems, simply cannot shake off the image of the opportunistic opposition politician, attempting to cash in on a passing bandwagon.

A First Minister of any stature would have let that one pass.

Alexander McKay, 8/7 New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh.