Podium: Should armed police guard BAE?

Ellis Butcher

PERSONALLY, I can’t quite get my head around why this is an issue.

What do people want at the shipyard?

Cops wielding feather dusters? The main gates left with only the sneck on?

Given that you can’t board a plane with mineral water these days, having a few police patrolling a nuclear facility doesn’t seem like too much of a leap of imagination.

Providing you’re not doing anything wrong, you won’t end up in any crosshairs - it’s that simple.

These days, people enjoy complaining for complaining’s sake. Most importantly of all they want to be ‘seen’ to be complaining.

May be I should be breast-beating about civil liberties and hand-wringing about the ‘message it sends out,’ but I really don’t see the big deal.

Many years ago, my dad worked for a short time as a security guard at Vickers, complete with uniform, but it bored him to tears.

By all accounts, he spent most of the nightshift walking around in the dark, smoking cigarettes.

He soon left for the thrill of Glaxo.

But that was in the 1980s when the threat was perceived to be from Russia or the IRA.

While times have changed, they have stayed the same. The current ‘threat level’ of terrorism to the UK, as defined by MI5, is ranked “severe” – one down from critical. While some believe this all a Government conspiracy to keep us all down, I tend to respect the literal meaning which is that an attack is ‘highly likely’ on UK soil.

I could understand this moral panic if it they were knocking up gun towers on Michaelson Road Bridge and sticking snipers on the DDH, but they’re not.

Nick Donnelly

There are many things about living in the UK for which we can be proud, and high on this list is the fact that our police, for the most part, go about their duty of protecting us without firearms.

It can be quite a shock when visiting abroad seeing police patrolling ordinary streets carrying firearms, including weapons that we associate with the military.

The fact that the British police are unarmed is testimony to the resilience of our society that enables them to police by consent of the public and not by force of arms.

We are rightly opposed to the ‘militarisation’ of the British Bobby.

Having said this, there are exceptions to this principle of UK law enforcement that require certain police units to be routinely armed.

We accept the presence of armed police in our airports as a necessary response to the threat posed by terrorists.

The same proportionate response to terrorism informs the decision to task Ministry of Defence armed police officers to patrol areas of Barrow Island around BAE Systems.

There have been previous times when Barrow Island required armed protection. My grandmother told me that as a young girl growing up in Egerton Court she could see soldiers patrolling the shipyard during the First World War.

A hundred years ago armed soldiers protected the Yard from German sabotage, now armed civilian police will protect it from the threat of terrorist attacks.

One of the fundamental principles of Christian morality is love of oneself and love of neighbour, which gives us the grave duty to protect our lives.

Therefore, it is legitimate for armed police to use lethal force to protect their own lives and the lives of the public from terrorists.

We owe them our thanks and support.

Louise Allonby

FEW of us want to see armed officers in our communities but when it comes to the defence of the realm – and the protection of those people who work towards protecting Queen and country – then, unpalatable though it may appear in a free society, it is something we must accept.

There can be no compromise over our national defence, and the Trident programme lies at the heart of it.

Of course, therefore, those engaged in the Trident programme need protecting.

That is a given, especially these days when, sadly, sabotage is the calling card of people who wish to make their feelings known.

As we have all seen during the Extinction Rebellion protests in London recently, putting a spanner in the national works, and stopping people going about their legitimate business, is the modus operandi of the growing army of protesters.

And with the nuclear defence industry attracting more than its fair share of detractors, it would be remiss of the authorities to overlook the genuine possibility of some sort of “direct action”, be it from our enemies abroad or from closer to home.

Officers such as those who MoD officers who will be deployed in Barrow are to be found at strategic sites all over the country – including just up the road at Sellafield.

Unwelcome though it may be to think of armed officers among us, there would quite reasonably be very loud cries of protest if an incident of sabotage or, God forbid, terrorism took place at this incredibly important nuclear defence site which just happens to be in our midst.

It may be unpalatable and it may offend a lot of people’s sensitivities – but the protection of our workforce, our people and our country trumps everything.