Newly-released British state documents have revealed that soldiers were ordered to shoot suspected intruders at a naval base after activists managed to break into the control room of a nuclear-powered submarine.<\/p>\n
The so-called \u2018Faslane Five\u2019 anti-nuclear protesters snipped a boundary fence and managed to sneak their way all the way into the control room of a submarine at Clyde Naval Base in 1988, leaving then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher \u201cutterly horrified.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three of the activists reached the control room of a ballistic missile submarine, \u2018HMS Repulse\u2019<\/a>. Another one of the intruders, wearing only a swimsuit, swam 150 meters out to a floating dock which she spray painted with anti-nuclear slogans. The report concluded that the aim of the break in was to graffiti the floating dock and the men who boarded the \u2018Repulse\u2019 did it to act as a diversion for the swimmer.<\/p>\n \u201cExamples of slackness in sensitive matters keep coming to light,\u201d Thatcher said in papers which are among records filed in 1989 and 1990 and released<\/a>\u00a0by the UK\u2019s National Archives on Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got into the control room and we could see an official with his feet up on the console, smoking a fag, drinking a can of beer and reading his book. He spun around and looked at us and panicked,\u201d one of the protesters, Ian Robert Mills, told<\/a>\u00a0the Times.<\/p>\n Thatcher demanded \u201can urgent report\u201d<\/em> on the \u201cgrave danger\u201d<\/em> posed by such a significant security breach.<\/p>\n A Ministry of Defence (MoD) memo said \u201cthere was absolutely no risk of a nuclear explosion or radiation.\u201d<\/em> It listed a catalogue of failings at the facility \u2013 a \u201csorry succession of security lapses\u201d<\/em> \u2013 including that the alarm system on the outer fence had been switched off, the police patrols were on an unauthorized break when the break-in happened and the floodlights were not working properly.<\/p>\n As a result of the intrusion, sentries were ordered to shoot anyone suspected of trying to sabotage a submarine or nuclear weapon \u201cas a last resort.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The submarine\u2019s quartermaster saw the intruders, according to the documents, but \u201cinitially thought that the three men were personnel from a Royal Maritime Auxiliary Service (RMAS) craft\u201d<\/em> and did not immediately raise the alarm.<\/p>\n When the intruders turned and ran down the gangway, \u201cthe Quartermaster shouted to the Royal Marine armed sentry on the jetty, who raised the alarm by radio, but did not open fire because he did not consider the intruders to be hostile within the definition of his Rules of Engagement.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Thirteen Royal Navy personnel were disciplined after the inquiry. The activists went on trial for the intrusion, however, the case collapsed in September 1989.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Newly-released British state documents have revealed that soldiers were ordered to shoot suspected intruders at a naval base after activists managed to break into the control room of a nuclear-powered submarine. The so-called \u2018Faslane Five\u2019 anti-nuclear protesters snipped a boundary fence and managed to sneak their way all the way into the control room of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":287817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-287816","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}