The Shapness Action was a Nonviolent Airect Action that
many people know nothing about.
Sharpness Docks is at the enterence to the Gloucester Canal.
It was there on the Fourth of July 1979 that I took part in an
action which held up the loading of low level nukiller waste
which was destined to be dumped at sea.
It was this action, and the following one in 1980,
which focused a lot of attention upon the issue of how
nukiller waste was being dumped at sea,
and helped to stop this practice.
While the action managed to generate a lot of publicity upon
the issue, there were many unplanned aspects to it.
These included:
– being held by the police on the way to the docks.
– Having no one in their pre-planned locations when the
shipment was transported in to the docks.
and
– A spontanious sit down in front of the dock yard train.
I wrote a long report upon this action which appeared in the
Anarchist paper Freedom on July 28th 1979.
The photos I took during the action are now with my archive at
the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.
I recently wrote a long analytical piece about just what
happened on the action,
or just what went wrong at the time.
I’ll write more upon this subject once this article is published