AS ‘stop the war’ placard-waving demonstrators have been marching against recent military action in Syria, it brings back memories of ‘Ban the Bomb’ protests back in the Spring of 1960, which took place right here in south Essex.

In April 1960, Foulness Island near Southend became the location for a series of passive resistance protests which resulted in dozens of people being arrested and sent to prison.

Hundreds of police had to be drafted into the scene as members of the ‘Direct Action Group against Nuclear Armament’ tried to stop lorries and vehicles from reaching the Atomic Weapons Research facility on Foulness.

The men and women - aged from their twenties to their seventies - showed their ‘passive resistance’ by laying down in the road at Wakering in an attempt to blockade access to Foulness Island, where they feared nuclear weapons testing was taking place.

The Southend and County Pictorial newspaper covered the largest of the protests, which occurred over several days in late April 1960. The headline was “21 jailed after no-bomb protest”.

“The first vehicle that came along was a Royal Mail van being driven by Mr Ernest Croft of Droitwich Avenue, Westcliff,” said the newspaper report.

“The group refused to move and the policemen carried them into waiting vans and drove them to Southend where they were charged.”

Despite many of the protesters forming the ‘human barrier’ having to be forcibly removed, a police inspector at the scene told the Pictorial that it was the “most friendly obstruction” he had known in his 30 years service.

He said there was no violence and that the group “kept their intentions informed with police at all stages”.

Echo: bombing memories

The protest was part of number of wider national demonstrations by the the ‘Ban The Bomb’ movement at this time.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which had been founded in 1957, was galvanised by concerns that Britain had become the third greatest atomic power, after the USA and the USSR, and had recently tested an H-bomb.

The largest demo took place in May 1960, at the Atomic Weapons Research facility at Aldermaston in Berkshire and saw 100,000 protesters walking from the site to Trafalgar Square in London. It was the largest demonstration the capital had seen for a century.

As for the Foulness protestors, most of them refused to pay a £2 fine or to enter into £50 ‘recognisances’ to be of ‘good behaviour’ when they appeared before Southend judges.

Repeat offenders were sent to prison for six months. Several others were jailed for a month.

The sentences, however, were quickly branded “barbaric and savage” by Southend Trades Council which criticised them for being “more like those meted out in South Africa than in a civilised community”.

The protests led to the lid being slightly lifted on what was a very secretive operation at Foulness when chiefs from the site assured the public that no dangerous nuclear materials were being used at facility and certainly, no H-bomb was being developed there.

The July 15, 1960 front page of the Pictorial read: Foulness: Reassurance over Nuclear Material”. The report stated that no nuclear devices, apart from atomic trigger mechanisms, were still in use or kept at Foulness. It added that ‘firing was carried out with conventional explosives only’.

The island has been used as a weapons testing facility and military research site since the First World War, when it was acquired by the War Office.

During both World Wars the island was used for storage and ad hoc weapons testing.

The site was massively extended during the Second World War when numerous temporary operational structures were built. This included the ‘Atlantic Wall’, a stretch of reinforced concrete wall built purposefully to practice breaching German defence lines before D-Day.