At 4am in Edinburgh today around 200 activists climbed on board four coaches to join the attempt to blockade Faslane nuclear submarine base on the Clyde.
This is just a small contingent of the numbers organisers are hoping will be travelling to west Scotland for the 7am blockade of the base, with more arriving from the campsite in Sterling, from Glasgow and from Dunbarton.
Their aim is to stage a mass lie-down-in-the-road outside the north and south gates of the Royal Navy base in an attempt to shut down, or at least hinder, the military personnel arriving or leaving from their shifts.
None of this has the element of surprise – it's all on their website and on the leaflets given out to activists – although there are only a couple of police officers overseeing the Edinburgh departure.
Mass arrests are clearly expected, however. The organisers – including Scottish CND and the Trident Ploughshares Group – state: "The plan for the blockade is to close all of the gates of the Faslane base from 7am by non-violently using our bodies either lying or sitting on the roadway in front of the gates. Past experience has shown that you will not risk arrest by coming to the blockade. Usually the police only arrest people who refuse to move from the roadway so it is quite safe for you to come if you want to support but not risk arrest."
The also issue non-violence guidelines urging "sincerity and respect", and a legal briefing for those who do get arrested.
This is the eighth sit-down blockade of the Clyde submarine base, which is 30 miles to the west of Glasgow, since 2000 and according to the organisers more than 1,200 people have been arrested in that time.
Today's event has an ecological "theme", with each of the four access gates to the base having been given a name corresponding to the elements: the north gate is "land", the south "sea", the oil depot gate one "air", and the second oil depot gate "space".
The more serious underlying purpose of today's protest is to highlight the £48 a second the organisers claim the UK spends on nuclear weapons. They state:
"The British government is saying the G8 is about poverty and climate change. Faslane is the largest military base in Scotland and home port for all four British Trident nuclear armed submarines. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate expression of militarism. By blockading Faslane we're striking at a key part of the British military establishment and building on a history of highly successful and peaceful mass blockades.
"This will be the biggest and most effective yet."
