TRIDENT THREE DISARMAMENT ACTION: On the evening of June 8, 1999, three Trident Ploughshares 2000 activists, Ellen Moxley, a retired zoologist and peace campaigner from Scotland; Ulla Roder, a shop assistant from Denmark and Angie Zelter, a potter and activist from Norfolk, England, disarmed a vital part of the Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system when they disabled “Maytime,” a floating laboratory barge in Loch Goil, Scotland, which is used to check on the ability of individual submarines to avoid sonar detection. The Floating Lab Complex is run by the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA), a prime supplier of technical advise to the U.K. Ministry of Defense.

           Using an inflatable boat they made their way from shore to the Maytime. Once aboard, they unbolted a loose window and cut their way into the lab with chisels and wrecking bars and damaged 20 computers and other electronic equipment and circuit boxes, cut an antenna, jammed machinery with superglue, sand, and syrup and tipped logbooks, files, computer hardware, and papers overboard. They draped banners over the lab, reading “Stop Nuclear Death Research,” and “TP2000 Opposes Research for Genocide.” They then had a picnic of sandwiches and grapes. They were on board for four hours before MOD police, apparently alerted by a media inquiry, took them into custody. They were charged with malicious damage and theft. Authorities estimated the value of damage worth 80,000 pounds.

           In their collective statement the women said: “Our actions are based on the legal and ethical premise that the U.K.’s Trident nuclear weapons system is a system preparing for the mass murder of innocent civilians over untold generations. As loving, feeling human beings, we feel responsible for trying to do everything in our power to prevent the system from being able to operate, providing that our actions are safe, nonviolent, open and accountable.”

            They were jailed for nearly four months before facing trial in October.  Their trial in Edinburgh, Scotland, resulted in an acquittal. Of her acquittal Ellen stated: “For me what we did… was the culmination of a whole life-time of campaigning. I felt as if I was doing something worthwhile and acting for the 80 per cent of people who don’t want Trident in this country.”