"People come to Scotland to see the Loch Ness Monster," says the hotel owner on the west coast, "but the real monster is at my doorstep." He is referring to the Trident nuclear submarines and their deadly nuclear missiles.

One warhead has seven times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. Up to eight warheads can be carried by a Trident missile. And 16 of these missiles can be launched from a submarine.

The peace movement has protested for decades, but does not ever seem to get very far. The new option, according to activists from Trident Ploughshares, is "people's disarmament".

Any method used to "disarm" Trident is acceptable, as long as it does not endanger anybody. Members of the Ploughshares cut the fences of the submarine bases, they swim up to the submarines to dismantle test equipment, and they sink computers from floating laboratories into the sea.

They always wait to be arrested. In hundreds of court cases, they have justified their actions as "preventing the greater crime" - nuclear war. They refer to the International Court of Justice opinion, which states that the use of nuclear weapons is illegal. Some cases have resulted in groundbreaking acquittals.