Our aim is to immobilize the base." They also announced plans for a march from London to Holy Loch between the holidays of Easter and Whitsun. The US proposed that the Proteus should arrive Saturday, 4 March, but British authorities insisted that the date be advanced to Friday the 3rd, in order to minimize the number of demonstrators.Īfter these initial protests, the Direct Action Committee for Nuclear Disarmament (DAC) organized a direct action campaign, warning US President Kennedy in a telegram dated 22 February that their supporters "would occupy non-violently the submarines, the Proteus depot ship, and land installations.
The next day a march led by piped bands in Glasgow attracted a large crowd of 4,000 to 10,000 people demanding that the Macmillan government repudiate the agreement with the United States. They handed a declaration of opposition to an official from the Ministry of Defense. Believing the Proteus's arrival was rescheduled for 18 February, 5,000 staged a sit-in at Whitehall, organized by the CND. The issue became a rallying point for the pacifist left wing of the Labor Party, and local officials in addition to Scottish trade unions participated. Protesters set up a tent camp at the base in Holy Loch, holding protest meetings and dispatching telegrams to the Prime Minister. In the meantime, the British Royal Navy made detailed plans for the tender's arrival, press coverage, and control of demonstrations on both land and sea. The US Navy decided to delay the arrival further until after Christmas. The protests in Glasgow, anticipation over promised protests by the CND, and continued nuclear safety concerns sparked internal debate in the government of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, which, in addition to a strike in the US affecting the manufacture of spare missiles, delayed the Proteus until at least mid-December.
Protests followed the announcement, including a December rally attended by 2,700 protesters in Glasgow organized by the Glasgow District Trade Council. As of November 1960, public opinion in support of nuclear disarmament was only at 20%. Community members also feared that the base left itself and thereby the local community at risk of a nuclear attack. military would Americanize the local culture, undermine the local shipyard business. The issue was both national, with aims to achieve unilateral nuclear disarmament in Britain spearheaded by the CND and DAC, and local, with opposition from local Scottish communities in Glasgow, the lower Clyde, and elsewhere who believed the arrival of U.S. The agreement sparked concern from various organizations in Britain, most notably the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War (DAC), the Scottish wing of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), the Committee of 100, various leftist and trade unions in Scotland, and members of the Labor, Communist, and Scottish Nationalist parties. Submarines equipped with the new Polaris ballistic missiles (A-2) were scheduled to dock thereafter. Holy Loch was deemed a defensible and secure location in the advent of Soviet attack or a nuclear accident, and plans were made for the housing of crew and family in communities near the base and for the arrival of a submarine tender, the USS Proteus (AS-19), on 1 December.
military required an overseas nuclear base for refit and crew overturn for its new Polaris missile submarines, built to serve as a deterrent to Soviet military might. In November of 1960, the United States and British governments reached an agreement on the use of the Holy Loch in the Firth of Clyde, Scotland as an overseas base for the US Navy.
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