PHILL Jones arrived at the Faslane Peace Camp in the same month as Frankie Goes To Hollywood's anti-nuclear anthem Two Tribes went to number one in the British charts.

The camp had been going two years by then.

Margaret Thatcher was in Downing Street, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, the Soviet Union was still in existence and fears of nuclear destruction were the stuff of Hollywood movies and BBC drama.

He spent the next nine years on the camp. In that time he rammed a Trident submarine, became a father and even broke into the control room of a fully armed Polaris submarine. "Margaret Thatcher was furious I wasn't shot, according to Bernard Ingham," he said.

Mr Jones was one of the original generation of peace protesters. As the camp turns 30 a new generation of peace protesters are trying to revive its fortunes.

Leonna O'Neill is one. Ms O'Neill, 27, and originally from Belfast, has been living in Faslane for the past 18 months.

She's one of six permanent residents at the site who have been working to improve its visibility. "We've worked really hard to clean the place up and get it functioning again and get more actions happening," she said. This month the peace protesters are carrying out "30 days of action" to mark the anniversary.

It's the latest chapter in the camp's 30-year history. In the eighties there were more than 20 people living permanently on the site but the removal of a site licence in the late nineties saw the camp shrink in size.

Ms O'Neill admits the issue of nuclear weapons is much less visible than it was in Mr Jones's days. "Nuclear weapons have been normalised and they're no longer shocking," she says.

More than that, she says, "the anti-nuclear movement has failed to attract a younger generation."

Ms O'Neill believes that independence – and the Scottish Government's promise of the removal of Trident – might offer new hope to the anti-nuclear movement. "Obviously I'm quite cynical about politicians and their promises but I hope it will open the debate at the very least."