If it's Tuesday, it's peace protest time as campaigners keep up their long crusade

Most of the time, there's little reason to stop at the entrance to the American airbase at Menwith Hill.

With its electrified fence and security barriers, it isn't a place which welcomes uninvited visitors and the best view of the site's now iconic golf ball radomes are from a mile or so away.

However, every Tuesday evening the armed guards are joined by a group of now familiar protesters, who for two hours plant their upturned stars and stripes and peace flags into the roadside, politely smiling and waving at those who come and go.

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They arrive on the dot of 6pm, leave shortly after 8pm and the hottest topic of debate is usually centred over the thin yellow line, recently newly painted across the base's tarmac and over which they're not allowed to cross.

They've been coming for 10 years now and this week their number included a doctor, a full-time mother, a bus driver and a retired sales-rep. Sometimes they are joined by a Liverpudlian nun and occasionally a passing car will pull over and its passengers will spend a few minutes standing amid the banners which read Whistleblowers Wanted and Rogue State.

The one constant in all of it is Lindis Percy, retired health-visitor, pin-up for the peace movement and full-time thorn in the side of the authorities which attempt to curtail her right to protest. It was Lindis who began the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases with fellow campaigner Anni Rainbow and she who has been responsible for keeping the weekly protest going – in the last decade there has only been three Tuesdays where there hasn't been a presence from the group.

"Incredible really," she says, fixing the CAAB banner to a near by lamppost. "There's a lot of talk about apathy, but once you spread the word about an important cause, amazing things can happen. Anni and I picked Tuesdays because it was the day most convenient for the both of us. I don't think either of us thought about how long it would last, I guess we just decided that we would be here as long as the base is."

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For many, Menwith Hill is little more than the space age landmark which one day landed on the rolling hills of Nidderdale. For those like Lindis, it's a symbol of dark forces, human rights injustices and the very real cost of war.

A few miles from Harrogate, the base became operational in September 1960. Today it's the largest intelligence gathering and surveillance base outside the US and while it's not known exactly how many people are employed there, estimates suggest upward of 2,000.

While much of the work which goes on inside the giant radomes is secret, the information gathered at Menwith has played a crucial role in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts – it won an award for its support of the Desert Storm operation in the first Gulf War.

For the protesters, its involvement with global wars is reason enough for their weekly demo, but they also claim that while the site is based on UK soil, the US Air Force which runs it, remains dangerously unaccountable to the British government.

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"It's impossible to find an MP who knows anything about what goes on here," says Martin Schweiger, a consultant at the Health Protection Agency in Leeds, who first joined the protest four years ago. "I had a spell working as a medical advisor out in Bangladesh and what I saw out there had a profound effect.

"At its very simplest, the more money you spend on armaments the less you have for other things. We mask the reality of war by using phrases like 'collateral damage' when what we really mean is innocent people dying.

"I follow the Quaker principles of peace and non-violence and when we still have children in this world going to bed hungry it seems immoral to be spending billions on missile defence.

"Sometimes I think, 'What good is simply standing on a road for two hours on Tuesday evening going to do?', but until I can think of something better I'll carry on.

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"Most of us hope that we'll leave the world a little bit of a better place than when we arrived and the biggest mistake people can make is thinking they can't affect change."

For the most part the protest is good natured stuff. Hot tea is handed round and as protesters who haven't seen each other for a while catch-up, those that drive in or out do their best not to catch their eye.

However, every so often one of the three police officers who each week arrive as added security are forced to warn one of the campaigners, usually Lindis, that she is in danger of overstepping the mark. The cautionary words are nothing new. The legality of the yellow line which divides the base from the protesters has become the stuff of countless court hearings.

Lindis's admirers talk of her dogged determination, North Yorkshire Police and the Ministry of Defence haven't always seen it that way. A few years ago, they jointly tried to take out an Asbo against her. While the judge refused the application, she was electronically tagged.

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"These challenges to the boundary may seem like the stuff of petty neighbourhood disputes, but there's a principle at stake," says Lindis, whose passion was born of the Greenham Common disputes of the late 1970s. "People will try to frighten you with the law, but it's as much our weapon as it is theirs."

At 68 years old, she's still blessed with what she describes as the persistence of a two-year-old. Together with Anni, who had to step down from active protesting after becoming ill, she has previously filed an injunction against the building of two further radomes at the site.

It didn't succeed, but the case dragged on for a year which was some small victory, as was the publicity she received when she climbed the gates of Buckingham Palace ahead of a state visit by George Bush in 2003. Most of those who join her each Tuesday may not be so visibly committed to the cause, but they do share a similar world view.

"Coming up to Menwith Hill was our Sunday afternoon drive," says 34-year-old Laila Packer, a full-time mother who lives in Leeds. "I remember asking my dad if we could go see the secret spy station and for many people that's where the questions stop.

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"However, when I went to Cuba on honeymoon I saw the terrible effect American sanctions were having on the country. When I came back, I decided to do something about it and there's a core of us who do our best to be here each week.

"It is about pricking the conscience of people who live near here, but Menwith is not just a local issue, it's of national and international importance. I suspect if the American people knew how much their own government was spending on these overseas bases they would be appalled."

Over the years, the Menwith Hill demonstrators come and go each week without too much fuss, but every so often something out of the ordinary happens. Once it was Lindis falling off a wall and breaking her arm and a couple of years ago they found themselves rubbing shoulders with playwright Alan Bennett.

"There's a lot of issues surrounding this place," says Steve Hill, a retired sales rep for a publishing company. He now gives drumming workshops and describes himself as a fully paid up member of the awkward squad. "But Alan Bennett put it so succinctly. If we are going to have a box of dirty tricks, let it be our own dirty box, not an American one."

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It's that very same reasoning which prompted Lindis to first unfurl her banner all those years ago.

"I started protesting when Cruise Missiles came to Greenham Common because I had three young children and I thought the world was going mad," she says. "I always say, you never know they might pack up here tomorrow and our job will be done."

Until then, Lindis and the rest of the peace protesters will be keeping Tuesday evenings clear.

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