Inside the Torness nuclear power protests, 50 years later

The Herald Scotland

a day ago

Yet, the plant, first mooted in the early 1970s by the South of Scotland Electricity Board (SSEB), has long been a lightning rod of controversy.
Anti-nuclear activists waged a futile battle to prevent the station from being built, with thousands of campaigners famously occupying the site in May 1978.
Pete Roche is one of the founders of the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace, or SCRAM, a radical group who fought against the construction of Torness.
'I came to Edinburgh from Birmingham in 1974 to study ecology,' he tells me. 'I started going to Friends of the Earth meetings. That's when I first heard about the plans to build a nuclear power station.
'The public inquiry lasted seven days, and in the wake of that, a group of us decided to form SCRAM in 1975."
Police remove a protester from a bulldozer in November 1978. (Image: Newsquest) 'I was supposed to go to the inaugural meeting but ended up in a car crash. Perhaps it was divine intervention…'
Roche laughs. 'I'm only partly serious', he quips.
'We decided to camp for a weekend on the site in April 1976 - the campaign was still quite small. Then, we returned to the same field in 1978 and had a much bigger protest. More than 5000 people attended.
'We wrote to every organisation listed in the back of Peace News, slowly building up the anti-nuclear movement in Scotland,' Roche recalls. 'SCRAM had quite a sympathetic hearing in East Lothian. I would routinely cycle out from Edinburgh and help facilitate community meetings in all the small villages.'
In 1978, a group of campaigners occupied 'Half Moon Cottage', a 'ramshackle and bleaky exposed' building on the site of the proposed station.
Roche tells me: 'I stayed for around two weeks, but others stayed on longer. When the board wanted to start construction, they got harassed by the cottage people so they went down to demolish the cottage and arrested the activists.'
Activists vowed to do everything in their power to stop the plant from being built, and would regularly throw themselves in front of bulldozers to prevent construction.
A strong police presence stopped 200 Scottish students entering the Torness site. May 1980 (Image: Newsquest/Duncan Dingsdale) A November 1978 report, published in The Scotsman, states: 'The power game took a nasty turn when anti-nuclear protestors packed into pits, threw themselves in between the tracks of huge bulldozers and scrambled into mechanical shovels at Torness.'
Roche looks back on those heady days with fondness. He remarks: 'We had a very active phone tree at the time. I remember we got 400 people there to block JCBs from digging sewage pipes.
'They started work at four in the morning but we were there to stop them.'
A 1983 pamphlet entitled 'From Folly to Fiasco' illustrates the strength of feeling among campaigners.
One excerpt reads: 'Controversy surrounds the Torness nuclear power station being built, just 30 miles from Edinburgh. Scene of numerous direct actions, Torness is a monumental example of corporate obstinacy.
'At every stage, independent voices have spoken out against the reactor on the grounds of excessive cost, surplus generating capacity, job losses in the coal mining industry, and the unsolved problem of radioactive wastes.
'Conventional protest, sound argument, and majority public opinion have, so far, proved fruitless.'
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Dr Ewan Gibbs, who lectures on energy politics at Glasgow University, says the protests were a 'significant moment' in Scottish energy history.
He tells me: 'At the time, the prevailing distinction between nuclear weapons and nuclear energy was being challenged. There was a growing environmental movement against the nuclear industry throughout the 1970s.
'The SNP were anti-nuclear power while Labour and the trade union movement was divided. They were able to draw on a cohort of young people, mainly university graduates, who had increasing suspicion about nuclear power.'
'Their opposition was partly apocalyptic but also more practical, as fears over the impacts of nuclear waste and radiation grew.
'Of course, it's interesting to see how much the environmental movement has changed since Torness. Right now, it is driven by carbon. But this was not always the case. In the 1970s, coal miners and anti-nuclear campaigners were allies.'
Demonstration at Torness. May 1980. (Image: Newsquest/Duncan Dingsdale) Gibbs argues that the relationship between Scottish nationalism and nuclear energy 'flows through Torness'.
He notes: 'Torness shapes the energy policy of modern Scotland. We've had a nuclear moratorium for years now, which is very much seen as an SNP policy, but was actually shaped by Jack McConnell's Labour government.'
Asked why he joined SCRAM, Roche, who would go on to work for Greenpeace, says: 'My reasons have probably changed over the years. I was motivated by fears of radiation at first, but then I started to engage with all these groups and I began to realise how autocratic the nuclear process was. It wasn't the sort of government I wanted.'
Ultimately, the campaign could be dismissed as a Quixotic remnant of a bygone era. Activists didn't stop the bulldozers. Torness was built, and still stands today.
Since 1988, the plant has produced 290 TWh of zero carbon electricity. Station owners EDF Energy proudly state this is enough energy to power every home in Scotland for 29 years, and that the use of the plant has avoided 101m tonnes of carbon emissions.
Torness rises over the East Lothian coast. (Image: EDF) Yet, the 'Torness Alliance' casts a shadow of radicalism which remains relevant today, as Just Stop Oil and pro Palestine activists block roads, throw paint, and march in the streets.
SCRAM will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its founding this autumn, at an event in Edinburgh. I'm told an archival film will be shown.
Greying activists in the twilight of life will come together to remember a time when the world seemed on the brink of collapse, and all that stood between nuclear armageddon was a group of radicals camping in a field near Dunbar.
Indeed, the legacy of these men and women will live on, long after the reactors of Torness power down for the last time.