Pop Singer Billy Bragg Arrested For Cutting Through The Fence At The Bawburgh Command Bunker

Musician Billy Bragg is arrested taking part in a Snowball Campaign protest.

Billy Bragg approaches the perimeter wire at a radar and operations station housing a nuclear command bunker at RAF Bawburgh, Norfolk. He is wearing a decorated blue denim jacket, jeans and a baseball cap. The people around him include photographers and police. After Billy Bragg moves to cut the fence wire as part of the Snowball protest, he and other protesters are led away by a police officers. View of the assembled crowd. This short video was made to be shown in a news story on Anglia Television early evening news / magazine programme About Anglia.

Keywords

Nuclear weapons; Nuclear bunkers; Protests: Snowball Campaign; Wire cutting; RAF bases; Musicians

Additional Description

The Snowball Campaign against nuclear weapons was founded by Angie Zelter of East Runton, Norfolk. Its protesters aimed to cut the fence wires at military installations and were often arrested to draw attention to illegal aspects of nuclear weapons. Billy Bragg was fined for attempting to take part in the wire cutting protest.

There is an additional short film of Billy Bragg on the same ENG 595 video compilation of news stories, but without accompanying metadata (it was probably intended to be 595/17). This may have been shown for a subsequent news story in the About Anglia programme eleven days later, on 14 November 1986, perhaps when Billy Bragg appeared in court and was fined. The location is not known, so has been identified as Norfolk. The 3/11/86 story starts at 00:28:17, the 14/11/86 story starts at 00:47:38.