Report to the People
15th January 2007
Nuclear
Waste
As someone who has, over
almost 40 years, marched, sat-in and protested against everything from job
losses, to threats to our hospital, to trouble at Morton, I’m firmly in favour
of demonstrating on matters about which you feel strongly.
And, even when I disagree
with someone’s view, I defend their right to hold and express it.
That, at the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, is democracy.
This cherished right, though,
does not give protestors the green light to trample over everyone else’s
rights and put communities like ours in danger.
Last Monday’s demonstration
at Faslane, for example, featured a group of politicians lying down for the
cameras and being arrested. You
might think this is just a harmless, if cynical, publicity stunt of the type on
which certain politicians have built their careers.
But nearly 200 police
officers from across Strathclyde had to waste their time covering it.
These officers should be patrolling our streets and protecting our
communities, not acting as extras on some political photo-shoot.
This is just the latest
example of our community being put at risk by the year-long campaign of
disruption which is being run from a quiet Norfolk seaside town by Faslane 365.
Not that the Oxbridge toffs, chin-stroking academics and middle-class
politicians who back the campaign let this bother them - it’s not their houses
which are getting broken into while they’re playing at revolutionaries, after
all.
We might not have their
background or bank balances, but that doesn’t mean their rights take
precedence over ours.
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