There are parts of Suffolk that feel like they belong in another country. Sometimes they do. As Sue Wright, a retired Norfolk primary school teacher, drives along a road bordered by bracken and conifers and gorse, she asks me if I know about the white line.
“We’re not allowed to go over it,” she says, turning the car so that we can park on a grassy verge beside the airbase. “If you cross the white line, you’re in America. It’s just scary. That’s a small word for a very horrible feeling.”
In April, she was one of 300 who blocked the road into RAF Lakenheath’s main gate and sat right up to the white line. But back in March 2024 there were just 12 protesters from Lakenheath Alliance for Peace (LAP), an umbrella coalition of various activist groups and disarmament organisations. Wright, also Chair of Norfolk CND, walked into America to hand-deliver a letter to the Base Commander informing him that his country was in breach of international law.
“We wanted to know that he'd got it,” she tells me. “They explained that we shouldn't be there. We said we'd go as soon as we'd handed this over. We were there for quite a long time in the end. Ever since then, they've said, no: if you go over that white line you can be arrested.” And people have been.
Three LAP cars have permission to park by the roadside. We get out. Gunshots crackle above the traffic noises, but Wright assures me these are meant for clay pigeons. It can be neither confirmed nor denied, as per US and UK defence policy, but we’re most likely standing less than a few kilometres from the first American tactical nuclear weapons on British soil since 2008. Up to 110 bombs were moved from this base then as part of a post-Cold War roll-back from Europe, leaving this part of the country officially nuke-free for the first time since 1954.
Things have taken something of a Cold War turn again. In 2022, RAF Lakenheath — leased by the United States Air Force — became the first European base to receive nuclear capable F-35A “Lightnings”. The following year, a US budget report earmarked funds for a “surety mission” at RAF Lakenheath — surety being defence-speak for nuke handling, nuke storage. It also forecast new additions to the more than 5,000 enlisted personnel, to be housed in a 144-bunk “surety dormitory”. And in July this year, The Times reported a C-17 transport plane had been tracked here from the US’s main nuclear storage site in New Mexico. The route bore hallmarks of a “one-way drop-off”.
Since then, LAP has organised demonstrations and peace camps of various sizes. Today’s monthly vigil numbers eight, plus me. Brightly coloured banners tied to fences mingle with military warning signs: No justice, no peace. No drones. No US nukes in Britain. No unauthorised access. Disarmament is the only defence. Ministry of Defence Air: This is a prohibited place within the meaning of the Official Secrets Act.
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