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Overview :

I was asked to make a work for Peace as for an art exhibition called Peace Camp in Brick Lane Gallery, London. Peace is quite a big subject to tackle, particularly with the current state of international affair, and I had been a little unsure of where to start with it. What do I know about the meaning of peace? I am a middle class bloke who lived most of his life in a back waters of rural England far from the terrible wars other have seen.

After a little research into peace I discovered there was once a Peace Camp in Lakenheath. I do have a lot to say about Lakenheath and the surrounding area as I used to live nearby and still visit often. I have even written stories and songs about the place. Lakenheath is in a remarkably peaceful area of the countryside if you should ever pass through it, except for the airbases full of American nuclear weapons and some dead children buried in the woods.

This is the story of my personal journey to Lakenheath. It a bit like Heart of Darkness except it is not down a river in the Congo but down the A11 to Barton Mills roundabout

4pm 16th December 2006
PEACE CAMP
Brick Lane Gallery
196 Brick Lane, London, E1 6SA Tel: 0207 729 9721
info@thebricklanegallery.com
www.thebricklanegallery.com

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PEACE CAMP : LAKENHEATH

A script for a performance by Frog Morris

Hello, my name is Frog Morris. I am an artist, poet and performer. I was asked to write a piece for an art exhibition called Peace Camp. Peace is quite a big subject to tackle, particularly with the current state of international affair and I was not quite sure how to approach the whole thing. I certainly think war and violence are bad things, but that is probably because I have spent too much time hanging around hippies and art students. What could I say about peace? I have grown up in rural England far from the terrible war and suffering others have seen, how could I really understand what peace really means?

I became very anxious about this whole performance. What could I say? I sat for days not really having anything to write. Paced up and down in my studio. I did a peace pace peace pace peace pace peace pace.

My sleep became disturbed.

I kept having this strange dream I was trying to smuggle nuclear weapons across the dessert except I wasn’t very good at it because an art school education doesn’t really prepare you for that kind of work.

I decided to do a bit of research. I typed Peace Camp into Google and I discovered that there was once a Peace Camp in the town of Lakenheath in Suffolk. Though I wasn’t really sure what I had to say about Peace, I did have something to say about Lakenheath.
I know the area well and I decided I would return in the hope that I might find peace there.

This is the story of my Quest for Peace in Lakenheath.

Lakenheath is about 75 miles from here if you take the A12, A11, M11, A11 to Barton Mills roundabout then the A1065. It’s not that far, about 1hour 45 minutes.

I used live near Lakenheath and passed by there often for work. Lakenheath is located in a peaceful area of the countryside surrounded by open areas farmland and forests.

Being a poet doesn’t pay very well. There isn’t much demand for the skills of a performance artist in small rural villages. Like most other artists I had to take on another job to make ends meet, but I did find some inspiration in the working in local countryside. Here is a poem I wrote about it.

My driving job regularly took me through the Lakenheath area. Though what I did sounds odd, it wasn’t a bad job rattling round the countryside, taking in the scenery. Some people spend their holidays driving round those little country roads, except maybe without the bags of animal semen.
As I explored the countryside I Norfolk and Suffolk, I used to find some quite peaceful spots and look out across the open fields, forest and heathland with nobody else around and stop and have a pee

…and maybe a sandwich.

I came to know those roads well. I was once told a story that the A11 road was haunted. The high number of accidents on the straight open stretch of road past Elveden junction were rumoured to be caused by a leyline, a path of mystical power, running under the road.

I found time for peace and quite reflection alone behind the wheel of my automobile. I had many special memories about the area and wrote many songs and poems about my time there. I remember one event in particular. It was early one boxing day morning as the sun was rising over the heathland at Knettishall… I hit a munkjack deer with my car as I was driving to work on the early shift… memories…

I killed a lot of rabbits too, but that wasn’t so harsh because they are smaller.

I had a friend once who used to eat road kill. He used to see a lot of it on his way to work and as he did the route twice a day he knew it which bits were fresh and started eating it. He ate birds, squirrel and badger and all sorts. He didn’t do it because he liked eating fluffy animals, he did it because he was just trying to make the best of a tragic situation. He once said he like a poem I did because it was about animals getting some revenge.

It’s a funny relationship we have with animals. It’s not very peaceful but they are tasty.

There is a lot of open flat countryside around Lakenheath which makes it perfect for laying runways and building airbases. Lakenheath is home to an U.S. Air Force base and nearby Mildenhall and Feltwell have Royal Air Force airbases.

The Americans mostly keep to themselves. I have never got on the base and I rarely ever met Americans who dared venture off the base and talk to the locals.

Most people didn’t mind the airbase because it provided jobs for local people. A friend of mine from the pub helped build a new gymnasium on the base last year. He said he you would never believe a gym needed such thick concrete walls.
It is claimed that by CND literature that over 100 nuclear weapons are held at the American Airbase in Lakenheath. I’m not quite sure what they were going to do with quite so many.

It is Government policy is to neither admit of deny that nuclear weapons are there. Estimates on the number vary between various agency, CND say 110 but other say only 30, but 30 nuclear weapons is still more than most people could think what to do with. I can not prove the nukes are there. However the 48th Fighter Wing of the USAF stationed there received several prestigious awards and commemorative plaque for its contributions for nuclear security and munitions in the 1990s and more recently leaflets have been leaked from the base containing instructions on what to do if you set off a nuclear device… which leaves little to the imagination

There have been two known accidents involving the weapons at Lakenheath. There is a story told in local bars that once a fire broke out in one of the storage areas for nukes. The Americans ran, but the British stood there because they knew running wasn’t going to help.

There have been Peace Camps protesting the Nuclear Weapons at the site since the 1980s. Peace Camps have been going on since the 1920 but were made famous in the 1980s by the Greenham Common Womens Peace Camp. The non-violent protest against RAF Greenham began in 1982 and the last protestors did not leave the Camp until 2000. During that time the Greenham Common Womens Peace Camp saw the removal of both cruise missiles and the Americans from the military base at Greenham.

The Peace Movement at Lakenheath is still active. The most recent Peace Camp at Lakenheath was in August this year when 30 activists camped out for at least two weeks.

Some other people came too but they didn’t want to camp out.

I would have gone… If I had known… It wasn’t really in the press very much.

I wrote this song, which I might have done if I had been there.

I remember I was working at Center Parcs Holiday Park in Elevden, only a few miles from Lakenheath, when the attacks on New York happened in 2001. I used to wash up in the kitchen during the holidays season. It was a few days after 9/11 and I was taking the bins full of leftovers and scraps from the kitchen out to the compactor in the yard as I did every morning. I was standing in the yard with the wheely bin watching fighter planes from the American base flying over, more than I’d ever seen fly out before, and wondering where they were going and what they were about to do… and what that nasty looking stuff strapped to the bottom of the was. I stood there with my wheely bin wondering what on I could do about it… what could I really do?

Go back in side to finish the washing up I suppose.

Shortly after that a fire broke out in the kitchen where I was working and Center Parcs burned down.

I went on the Stop the War March in 2003. I tried to do my bit. For what good it did. For a long time afterwards I couldn’t understand why the Tony Blair didn’t listen to all those people. What was it that was said in those final cabinet meetings before the war vote in the Commons on 18th March 2003 that swung the vote and sent us into that war? What could have convinced those MPs to back the American Invasion of Iraq? I just could understand it.

We were there, outside Downing Street, saying “Look, Tone, this war thing is a bad idea. We may be a just bunch of hippies and art students but, come on, war and violence is a terrible thing. Don’t do it. Peace.”

He must have seen that, why didn’t he listen?

I was thinking about this again after my visit to Lakenheath to research the project. I imagined Tony sat in Westminster in those days before the war, looking out the window and seeing us marching past with out banners and plaquards. People who even voted for him, trusted him as our representative. He must have seen us all outside the window carrying our plaquards and thought about what we were saying and weighed it up against what George Bush and the Americans were saying, with their nuclear weapons. And us with out plaquards, on sticks. And Bush with his nuclear weapons, maybe 100 of them, on our soil. And us with our plaquards on sticks, you could have an eye out with one of those sticks if you are not careful … if we ever got past the big gates and the Metroplitan Police… probably wouldn’t be easy … especially if you only have some sticks and cardboard and some old blankets decorated in the paint, probably left over from when you redecorated your bedroom. And Bush there with his Nukes, 75 miles away, something kicks off with those you’re going to know about it even in your Downing Street bunker. And us with our bits of stick. Who would you decide to back? I wonder.

There were 75,000 Peace Protestors at the Stop the War March in London in 2003. Or 2 million, estimate vary.

There were 30 protestors at the Peace Camp in Lakenheath this summer.

Most of the activities in Lakenheath are carried out by two old ladies from Norwich who regularly break on to the base and get arrested for chaining themselves to the nuclear bunkers.

Two old ladies from Norwich. Our last great hope for peace.

After 2 weeks of non-violent workshops, poetry reading and watching airplanes fly in and out, the peacecampers at Lakenheath decided to stand down. Mell Harrison, who organised the protest, said: "We have decided to leave now while the camp is strong and successful." Mell also said the 2 new youth groups had been set up in the area to continue monitoring planes which they suspected of carrying weapons to the Middle East.

I guess the Peace Campers ended up like all the other plane spotters you would see hanging out by the gates of Lakenheath watching the planes go in and out. The peace protestors were just more ethical about it.

The only other Plane Spotter at Lakenheath I know much about is Ian Huntley because he was involved in the most publicised missing persons case in British History.

Huntley was a school caretaker who killed two school girls at his home in the sleepy East Anglian town of Soham, not far from here. Huntley was a keen plane spotter. He had a favourite peaceful spots amongst the trees and open farm land some where near here where he would go to watch the fighter planes fly in and out from the bases. In this quiet peaceful spot in the East Anglian Country side also made a convenient hiding place for the bodies.

 

Funny place sleepy little Lakenheath

 

Well, Huntley is not that funny.

 

And I am not comparing his actions in anyway to the actions of the Peace Protestors. His press coverage was just better. For some reason.

 

Maybe it is a little bit easier to have an answer to Huntley, he is a bad man. You can’t really condone what he did.

 

Sorting out those nukes is a much bigger problem to get your head around.

 

School girls are a bit easier to comprehend, you see them most days, you can imagine them going missing, and what you would do if it happened on your street. The complete destruction of humanity is a bit harder to comprehend. Better not to think about it seriously.

 

There isn’t any easy answer.

 

Do some silly poems I suppose.That might fix it.

 

There isn’t really any simple answer to these problems

 

I couldn’t find any answers or conclusion when I went looking for Peace in Lakenheath.

 

There no really end to this performance either,
I couldn’t really write it

 

We are all just stood here.

 

 

You could be checking the messages on you mobile phones while you are stood there

 

 

Maybe you could sneek out for a cigarette

 

 

You could be checking your diaries for appointment later on, maybe you have somewhere to be.

 

 

Your drinks looking empty, maybe you could sneek off and fill it up.

 

 

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