Part of the Trident: we don't buy it tour blog 
© Greenpeace/Vickers
Occasionally I wandered over to the bridge to see how the climbers were doing up the crane. At one point, a police van arrived and several men in bullet proof vests jumped out and scaled the fence on the side of the bridge. One of them told me he was glad this was happening because "it shows that people still care about the world" - then he grinned and said "but don't quote me on that!". He didn't have any idea I was with Greenpeace - he he.
On my way to the tube station I left the remainder of my leaflets in a café that MPs regularly visit and then I headed back to the Arctic Sunrise, docked on the Thames, for a much needed rest. As I was leaving, I looked up at the climbers on the crane and felt pretty lucky to be able to leave, have something to eat and go to the toilet!
Yesterday it was another early rise, and back to Westminster. To my surprise, Vivienne Westwood was also handing out leaflets with us. She stood in the middle of the pavement asking passers "Do you care about being blown up" while wearing a "Tony loves WMD" T-shirt.
Later we were joined by Bianca Jagger (Mick Jagger's first wife) and Annie Lennox. Things really started buzzing; media crews showed up and began interviewing people and I saw Ben Bradshaw and Betty Boothroyd.
In the early afternoon, I walked towards Downing Street, waving at the two climbers still on the crane as I passed. There were still a lot of police milling around but none of them seemed bothered by our continued occupation of a barge right outside Parliament! At Downing Street, there was more leafletting to MPs - and more interesting conversations with police officers. One told me that he wanted Trident to be replaced "so that if we ever got nuked by another country at least we would have the ability to retaliate". My mouth fell open in shock that someone could be so blatantly in support of genocide. He kept denying he supported mass murder but that's essentially what being in support of nuclear weapons means. Most people I met who supported the replacement of Trident seemed to think of it entirely in terms of our own safety rather than the annihilation of others. What they fail to realise is that by having nuclear weapons we can't possibly hope to make the world a safer place.
Later in the afternoon I joined other activists and cycled over Westminster Bridge from the London Eye, on bikes carrying "Tony Loves WMD" and "Trident: we don't buy it!" posters. We pedalled slowly into Parliament Square, making noise and taking up the whole road so that all the traffic backed up behind us.
In Parliament Square, we were blocked by a large number of police who told us we would be arrested if we tried to cycle any further. After dispersing for a while we came back in smaller groups and I made it around the square several times on my bike before I got pulled over by the police again. I decided to join the gathering in the middle of the square, where they announced the results for the Trident vote.
I was expecting Tony to win enough votes for his love affair with nukes but I was pleased that so many MPs voted against it in the end. I'd like to think I had something to do with that and I'm going to keep on trying to convince people to support nuclear disarmament even though I am an oceans campaigner, because people wont care about the oceans anymore if we ever end up in a nuclear war!
