The shipyard which builds Britain’s nuclear submarines and is set to build future Australian submarines was struck by a “significant” fire overnight, the cause remaining under investigation.
A “significant” fire broke out at Devonshire Dock Hall at Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria, north-east England overnight. Two people were admitted to hospital with suspected smoke inhalation but there were no other injuries.
The former Vickers-Armstrongs facility is where the UK builds its nuclear submarines and it is a key location for the new nuclear submarines of the ‘AUKUS’ submarine alliance of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. HMS Agincourt, an Astute class hunter-killer (fleet) submarine and three of the forthcoming Dreadnought nuclear deterrent submarines are presently under construction at the site.
Given the work undertaken at Barrow, police were quick to reassure there was no “no nuclear risk” to the public.
Although the cause of the fire has not yet been made public, and reports have claimed faulty equipment may be to blame, the blaze at what is certainly one of Britain’s most secure military-industrial sites has inevitably caused a certain degree of speculation over the possibility of sabotage. The shipyard’s owner, BAE systems, has become a frequent target for anti-Israel activists over the past year and European security circles have long been alive with talk of Russian sabotage, including arson.
In several cases, pro-Palestine activists have sabotaged UK weapons factories that supply equipment to Israel. There is no indication BAE produces and exports for Israel at the Barrow site, but the severity of protests, which have quickly evolved from blockades to sometimes quite aggressive direct action has increased. As previously reported of this phenomenon:
Stopping British weapons and equipment exports to Israel has been an urgent priority of the hard left since the October 7th attack, with several protests and even direct actions against UK arms manufacturers in recent months. In November, a major avionics factory operated by BAE systems was blockaded by ‘Workers for a Free Palestine’ activists who asserted Israel is a “terrorist state”. The factory is understood to contribute to the F-35 project.
In June, activists protested at a factory in Glasgow, Scotland, a court hearing they caused over one million pounds of damage at the side. Sheriff John McCormick said that activists “entered the building through the roof and caused damage including to parts essential to submarines”.
In another action in June, ‘Palestine Action’ activists broke into a weapons factory in Kent, England and smashed up the shop floor with crowbars. In August, police officers were hit with sledgehammers when activists armed with other weapons including axes and whips raises a further arms factory in Bristol, which was ram-raided with a prison van and again smashed up.
Russia has been claimed to be behind a series of acts of sabotage against Western defence sites and infrastructure over the Ukraine War. Just this month, Russian intelligence was blamed for a series of attempted fire-bombings of cargo jets across Europe, and other claimed incidents have varied from arson against Ukrainian businesses in London to the alleged poisoning of water supplies at NATO bases in Germany.
There were several such incidents across the continent in April, including the arrest of a Polish national in his home country, accused of conducting hostile reconnaissance against the airport used by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky when he flies abroad.
Because Ukraine is covered by a no-fly zone, when politicians enter and leave the country they travel first by VIP train across the Polish border and then to Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport, where flights can then take them worldwide. The Polish Prosecutor said of the allegations against the man: “The findings of the investigation show that the suspect’s tasks included collecting information that would be helpful in planning a possible assassination attempt on the life of the President of Ukraine by the Russian services… the detainee was charged with reporting readiness to act for foreign intelligence against the Republic of Poland… The act is punishable by up to 8 years in prison.”
In the same month two German-Russian dual citizens were arrested in Germany over alleged hostile reconnaissance of a U.S. Army base in Bavaria used to train Ukrainian soldiers. The pair were said to be planning to “commit explosives and arson attacks, especially on military infrastructure and industrial sites in Germany”. One of the suspects in the case, Dieter S., was accused of: “conspiring to cause an explosive explosion and arson, acting as an agent for sabotage purposes… membership in a foreign terrorist organization and preparing a serious act of violence that endangers the state.”
Again in April five people in the United Kingdom were facing charges over an arson attack that burnt out a Ukrainian-owned business in London. At least one of the group was charged with hostile activity intended to “assist a foreign intelligence service carrying out activities in the UK”. In February of this year Estonia arrested ten alleged saboteurs, who were accused of working to spread fear as part of a “hybrid operation”, the neologism now in currency for war by other means.
A remarkable case in December 2023 saw 14 ‘spies’, who among their number were Ukrainian refugees, sentenced by a court for a plot to gather information and launch a variety of actions and attacks. The court heard how the group were in communication with Russian intelligence and had been promised payments in cryptocurrency payments in return for their work.
The bounties on offer from Moscow were said to have included $5 for putting up a poster disseminating pro-Russian or anti-Ukrainian propaganda, or $400 for installing a wireless surveillance camera watching a port, airport, or railyard where military equipment transited from Europe to Ukraine. $10,000 in crypto was apparently offered in return for derailing a military train carrying equipment to Ukraine.
While derailing a train may seem fanciful, such tactics are already in widespread use in the Ukraine war itself and beyond, with pro-Kyiv saboteurs working overtime behind Russian lines to prevent ammunition and resupply trains reaching the front line, frequently blowing lines, burning equipment, and derailing trains. In some cases the Ukrainian partisans have gone further, planting car bombs on the personal vehicles of targets within Russia.