Local residents line beach in mass demonstration against space radar proposal

Stephen Price

Local residents have gathered in a large number on a Pembrokeshire beach to display their opposition to the Ministry of Defence and US military’s DARC radar proposal.

The protest on Newgale Beach, displaying opposition to what would be a radar array consisting of 27 dishes as tall as four double-decker buses across an area surrounded visually by Pembrokshire Coast National Park at Cawdor Barracks in Brawdy, saw residents link hands in a line that stretched from most of the pebble bank at one end of the beach to the other, while a drone took footage overhead.

Plaid Cymru threw its support behind the growing campaign in West Pembrokeshire opposing the Ministry of Defence’s proposed radar array, known as DARC back in October 2024.

During the party’s annual conference in Cardiff, delegates voted unanimously to take action against the plan, a move hailed as a breakthrough by local campaigners.

The decision marks the first political endorsement of the campaign, which has been gathering momentum in the face of silence from Welsh Labour.

The campaigners argue that the radar proposal would have detrimental effects on the local environment, economy, and community.

Pressure

The PARC (Pembrokeshire Against Radar Campaign) group, which has spearheaded opposition to the DARC proposal, described Plaid Cymru’s support as a “hugely significant moment”.

Following the latest demonstration, a spokesperson for local pressure group PARC Against DARC, which launched last year, said: "This has been another significant display of public opposition to DARC radar that just seems to grow and grow, following on from a petition against DARC nearly at 18,000 signatures, the official support of 37 elected politicians across the Senedd and Westminster in a statement of opinion and early day motion, and thousands of emails by locals having been sent to decision-makers.

"It’s overwhelmingly clear to us how much opposition there is both to DARC radar and to the proposed Newgale bypass road, which has just seen a flood of objections in its public consultation that went well over 90% against.

"It’s almost universally believed here that the road, which would decimate the Brandy Brook valley and cost tens of millions, would be required for both the construction and operation of DARC.

"While the MOD has failed to produce a promised Environmental Impact Assessment or consultation so far, the fact that the MOD are failing to include this road, the landing cable station in Brawdy Enterprise Park, and the requirement for either a huge number of pylons or extensive groundworks for miles together in one eventual planning application seems highly suspicious, and in our view possibly illegal."

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"Turn a blind eye"

Tim Rees, director of local annual Pembrokeshire music event Unearthed Festival, speaking at the demo, said, ‘we have a beautiful coastline which the National Park has done a great job of preserving, and we’re about to turn a blind eye to decades’ worth of preservation, for what? For something we don’t have a say in, that won’t benefit tourism, and will directly impact me in my business.

"I run a music festival as well as some hospitality businesses, and this isn’t going to help. The money that’s invested, we won’t see that as local people."

Gordon Main of the STUN campaign against the Newgale bypass road said: "This is a pan-Wales issue and we should all wake up to it.

"Do we want to be another client state of the USA and intimately in their pocket forever, and do we also want to be part of what is ultimately an aggressive military stance to have 365 dominance of the whole of the world?

"I don’t think that’s what the people of Wales, or the people of Pembrokeshire want, and this road is for that as far as we know, and it’s based on spurious science."

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"Tightrope"

Brian Jones of CND Cymru (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Wales) said: "I do wonder how much longer we can walk that tightrope of countries having nuclear weapons poised to launch at a moment’s notice, and there won’t be time to check if something was just a mistake, a false reading, or a miscalculation.'

Echoing many local residents’ concerns regarding the health impacts associated with the radiation DARC radar would produce, Emma Tannahill said: "There’s staggering scientific evidence that shows elevated cancer rates in people who work in radar stations that are exactly the same, using the same wavelengths as the one that would be at DARC.

"Those people who got cancer were not sitting on the radar dishes at their lunch breaks: they were people who were working at the stations, and they were not directly in front those beams.’

PARC campaigner Jim Scott added: "Although DARC is a hangover from Biden’s AUKUS pact between the US, UK and Australia, its purpose of allowing the US to target and shoot down other nations’ satellites is exactly inline with Donald Trump’s outrageously aggressive and wasteful plan to create a multi-trillion-dollar “Golden Dome” of satellite weaponry that we believe is intended to allow the US to make a first strike against other superpowers like China without fear of retaliation, threatening to encumber the world with even more economic and military subservience to America at a time when it has such little regard for international law that it is openly arming a live-streamed genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.

"Genocide Don” seems to have waited for his second term to unleash his most deranged plans, and the people of the St Davids peninsula came together loud and clear at this protest to say that Trump is not our president, not the world’s president, and our county stands defiantly against becoming a high-priority military target for the sake of insane plans we have never voted for

"Our local MP Henry Tufnell has done nothing more than parrot MOD propaganda right from the start of the people’s campaign.

"He has no plan, no ideas, and seems content to ride along in complicity with one of the most vehemently opposed proposals in modern times in the county, while the St Davids peninsula burns around us.

"We have no intention of easing up our pressure on UK and Welsh Labour decision-makers, and their refusal to live up to their jobs as public servants is something we are going to make sure that voters remember for as long as their disgraceful support for DARC continues."

Find out more via the campaign petition, Crowdfunder, Email signup form and Lobbying page