The Rev Ewen Gilchrist reflects on life in a parish which included Scotland’s nuclear submarine base.

IT was picture postcard stuff - a small whitewashed kirk, surrounded by lush green turf and looking down to the shores of the Gareloch. Hills rose beyond the church, offering a stunning autumnal tapestry of gold, copper and brown.

My first church – Garelochhead – looked like a scene stealer from the BBC series Hamish Macbeth. Reality had other ideas. A few miles down the shore, Faslane Naval Base never slept – guards, dogs, cameras, sirens, fences, flood lights, razor wire everywhere. From Faslane, Britain’s nuclearpowered and nuclear-armed submarines came and went.

And if your imagination could stretch beyond the beguiling moorland landscape, it could ponder on the hidden silos which house the warheads.

This was my first parish, in the mid-1980s, when Margaret Thatcher’s government was investing billions in a new road and infrastructure so that the Polaris nuclear “deterrent” could be replaced by Trident.

I was a member of CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) but I never answered a call to Garelochhead on that ticket. I answered that mysterious, frightening call because I wanted to share the Good News of Christ and be part of a congregation which would reach out to everyone in the parish, kirk member or not.

Quickly, I realised I was part of a conflicted parish and a conflicted congregation; many just wanting to get on with family life and church life without too much consideration, if any, of the elephant in the room - that the Base was the economic lifeblood of the parish.

Basically, my parish kept those warheads polished and ready to go. Some folk would actively justify it; some were horrified by it. Most tried very hard not to ask the question in the first place. Yet the world knew where Garelochhead was and what Garelochhead did – documentary teams from several countries would visit. Journalists, peace campers, protesters and military personnel all found their way to the manse and all received welcome. How else could it be?

Pastorally, I saw the emotional difficulties created in this setting. Wives would run the whole family show whilst husbands were on tours of duty. There would be no contact, no letters home, no communication of any kind. Secret, hidden, uncontactable in the ocean depths.

I recall one captain who could, if ordered, release Armageddon. Back home on leave, he had to get his head round the school run and picking up milk at the Spar shop. His wife had to learn to share her home and routines and family once again. Not easy.

There was the submariner whose wedding I was overseeing. “Come and see my office!” he said. “Come and see the sub.” But no way would the Ministry of Defence (MOD) allow me on board. I was a designated security risk.

Scores of MOD families found that eagerly anticipated time off with dad (or mum) was routinely cancelled at short notice, if rumour suggested that the protestors at the peace camp were about to launch one of their campaigns and try to breach Base security, as they did on several occasions.

The Moderator of the General Assembly of the time visited our parish. He insisted on an unscripted stop-off at the peace camp – opposite the Base gates – to meet the protesters and listen to their stories. It got immense media publicity. Presbytery was not best pleased!

These are snap shots of a conflicted parish. Forty years on, what might resolution look like?