The very first article in the very first issue of Bella Caledonia, was by Brian Quail [read Ross Ahlfeld’s tribute here]. It’s reproduced below. Later, we would meet in Glasgow to discuss plans to disrupt the live-bombing of Cape Wrath. Brian would carry out such interventions with great courage.

In this instance we had been in communication with peace activists in Vieques, in particular, Alberto de Jesús Mercado, known as Tito Kayak, a Puerto Rican environmental and peace activist who used kayaks in nonviolent actions to protest the U.S. military presence. Brian was inspired and when the US were kicked-out of Puerto Rico we reckoned they were now using depleted uranium-tipped shells in the live bombing at Cape Wrath. We’d already proved they had been doing it at Dundrennan.

Brian was keen to replicate Alberto Mercado’s strategy of putting his body on the line, and that’s what he did. In early 2000, Brian travelled to Cape Wrath and walked across the bombing territory only to appear at the control tower and startle the military inhabitants who promptly stood to salute him. They assumed that this man in civilian clothing must be the top brass making an inspection. Brian recounted the story in a letter to the Herald in March 2000:

“AS one who recently made a dramatic and unwarranted visit to the control tower of the Cape Wrath firing range, may I heartily endorse the concerns expressed by Donald Morrison in his letter today? After getting over the shock of seeing two elderly peace protesters appearing out of the blue in their midst, the officer in charge was kind enough, over several cups of tea, to engage in a friendly dialogue. In particular, he earnestly assured me that there was no question of depleted uranium shells being used. He even produced the official papers specifying that firing be limited to high explosives.
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Now the Americans were shelling Scotland because they had been chased out of Puerto Rico. The appalling environmental damage – pools of toxic waste, metallic debris, ruined landscape, etc, not to mention a fatality – had finally exhausted the patience of the local inhabitants, and the Americans had been told to go. Having been chased out of one of the last remaining colonies in the world, the only road is down, so – naturally – HMG offered Scotland as a suitable place to bomb.

A History of Violence

38 men were murdered in Glencoe on the 13th February 1692. Another 40 women and children died of exposure after their homes were burned. By modern standards of human carnage this is, in truth, relatively minor. This approximately equals the daily toll of deaths in Iraq, an occurrence which now doesn’t even rate the headlines any more. At the time what was particularly horrific about the massacre was that it involved such a breach of the laws of hospitality. Under old Scots law there was a special category of murder known as “murder under trust” which was considered to be even more heinous than ordinary murder. The Glencoe event was a clear example. After the Second World War, the victorious allies put those Nazis who still survived, on trial at Nuremberg. Much importance was attributed to the so-called Nuremberg Principle which was established there – that it is illegal to carry out an illegal order.

This is “exactly the principle which emerged in the aftermath of the Glencoe massacre. Though the command of superior officers be very absolute, yet no command against the laws of nature is binding; so that a soldier, retaining his commission, ought to refuse to execute any barbarity, as if a soldier should be commanded to shoot a man passing by inoffensively, upon the street, no such command would exempt him from the punishment of murder.

The callous disregard for basic humanitarian law has always characterised the attitude of the British state towards Gaelic Scotland. Hence the sheer butchery after Culloden, and the proscribing of the highland dress, language and music. But how much has really changed over the centuries since Glencoe? Scotland is still a convenience to be exploited and abused in the interests of the British state. Hence, the bizarre catalogue of superlatives Scotland can now claim – superlatives you will not find in the Guinness Book of Records.

• We have the biggest dump of nuclear bombs in Europe, at Coulport. 25 miles from Glasgow
• We have the longest runway in the world (now mothballed) at Machrihanish in the Mull of Kintyre, built to allow fully-loaded B52 bombers take of to incinerate Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, St Petersburg, Moscow, and dozens of other cities
• We have largest dump of conventional high explosive in Europe at Glen Douglas near the not so-bonny-bonny banks of Loch Lomond.
• We have Britain’s largest base for cluster-bomb carrying Tornado war planes, at Lossiemouth on the Moray Firth
• We have the UKs only outdoor Depleted Uranium weapon range at Dundrennan on the Solway Firth
• We have Europes largest live-firing range at Cape Wrath, the only place in Europe where NATO air-forces can drop live 1,000 Ib bombs on land.
• We have virtually all the UKs Ultra Low Flying areas, where military jets can fly at roof top level.
• We have the most radioactive polluted coastal waters of any nation in Europe thanks to Sellafield

The fact is that Scotland is a country that has been brutally militarised by the British State.

The amount of land the MoD currently controls in Scotland is four times greater than at any point during the Cold War. In 1980, the MoD owned or leased 24.8 thousand hectares in Scotland. Yet by 2003, land available to the MoD had risen over four times to 115.2 thousand hectares. This is the price we pay for being part of the Great British state.

The fact that we have all Britain’s nuclear weapons dumped on us is only to be expected. The Gare Loch is a fiord, a sea-loch surrounded by mountains. So any accident there would only affect the natives in the Clyde valley, or Central Scotland. It is not as if real people might get killed.

In the light of these facts I was horrified to read recently that 40% of the people in Scotland have not even made up their mind whether to vote or not in the elections in May. Do they not see what an historic opportunity we have?

An independent Scotland is a nuclear free Scotland. And a nuclear-free Scotland means freedom from nuclear weapons not only for Scotland but for England as well. Because Trident is not like a taxi; you cannt simply move it from Faslane to Portsmouth or Plymouth. It requires a massive support system, principally storage for 200 atom bombs. These are at present kept in a hollowed-out mountain at Coulport. There are no mountains near Plymouth or Portsmouth. There is nowhere to store 200 atom bombs nearby.

So our message to our friends south of the border is this: Our fight is for our freedom and yours. An independent nuclear-free Scotland will free our brothers and sisters in England from the delusions of Britishness, from the fantasies of great-power chauvinism.

An independent nuclear-free Scotland means a UK free of nuclear weapons. A nuclear-free UK is a hugely significant step in the international struggle to free humanity from nuclear terrorism. We would then be in a position to exert great moral pressure on France to abandon her nuclear weapons and thus make the whole European Union a nuclear free area. Europe would join the African Continent, the Pacific and South America as part of the growing global nuclear-free areas.

Clearly, people in Scotland do not yet see the potentially enormous outcome to the Scottish elections in May. My friends, let us redouble our efforts to open the eyes of our fellow countrymen to the moral and political significance of the truly historic opportunities that lie before us in the these elections.

The greatest and most honourable testimonial we can pay to the murdered victims of Glencoe is the creation of a nuclear-fee, independent Scotland.

SAORSA AGUS SUAS LEIS AN ALBA

You can read all of Brian’s writing for Bella here.