On the bus of peace

YOU first spot it as you descend the Whitby road just past the Hole of Horcum. It stands in the car park at the turning to Goathland, a patch of concrete amid acres of North York Moors heather.

As you get nearer, you see it's a bus. But this is no tourist bus. It is decorated in luridly bright colours, its windows and bodywork obscured by slogans: "No To War"; "Who Cares Wins"; "New World Order Is The Bogeyman".

This is the peace bus. After countless miles ferrying the public, the 35-seater Bedford single decker has been customised into the seven-seat, two-bed home of a one-man protest against Son of Star Wars.

He is not the first one you meet, however. That honour goes to the young Rottweiler who clatters its claws against a passenger window and barks loudly as you approach. This, it transpires, is Psychoactive, better known as Psycho. He's the pet of bus owner Sav, short for Savage.

Savage and Psycho. Hardly the most passive names for pacifists.

But names and appearances can be deceptive. Psycho turns out to be a slobbery-chopped oversized puppy. Sav, with his long hair, mucky shirt bearing the strange words "Pro Freedom Long Live The Flesh!", jeans and goat's hair boots, is an erudite advocate of his causes.

These are many, but they are all broadly concerned with power and control. This includes the way we allow ourselves to be manipulated by our own greed and envy.

What led Sav - he wouldn't reveal his given name - to buy the bus last summer and drive it to North Yorkshire was his disgust at American plans for missile defence.

The multi-billion dollar system eventually aims to shoot down hostile rockets. Earlier this year, and despite a major campaign against it, the Government granted Washington the right to use RAF Fylingdales as part of missile defence, better known as Son of Star Wars.

"If Bush has got his shield up, you can't fire back. It's: 'I don't like North Korea any more. We'll nuke 'em.' There's nothing stopping him," says Sav, perched on the bed at the back of the bus.

"If anybody does try and stop him, we're the target first."

For Sav, Fylingdales is symbolic of the way leaders in the West, the US particularly, abuse their power: President Bush is the puppet of big business.

"I have got a picture of George Bush making the masonic sign of the devil." He holds up his hand, the little finger and the forefinger extended.

"He said it was because he supported the Bulls or something. Rubbish. He was saying, 'Right boys, I've got the main job now'."

The next Gulf War is all about oil, Sav maintains, not Saddam. "He's got nothing we haven't known about for years. He probably hasn't got anything we didn't sell him."

So far, so in tune with general Left-wing beliefs. But as you might expect from a man who lives in a bus, Sav's thinking goes beyond that. "Some of it does stretch the imagination a bit," he says.

He does a lot of reading. Not much else to do on a bus parked in the middle of nowhere, especially when a back injury restricts his ability to walk in the stunning countryside (he's on incapacity benefit). And when he visits friends, he surfs the Internet.

This has led him to some frightening discoveries. He describes a crowd control system called VMADS which uses microwaves to fry protesters. Then there are the mind-manipulation devices.

He says the scariest thing he has come across is something he called trans cranial magnetic stimulation. It's a device which uses certain frequencies to meddle with your brain.

"You can control a crowd, make it go from being angry to passive. Or you can set it the other way and make people feel anger to one another. You could start a riot."

Much more of this is on his Somewhere Real website - address below. (Sav has already used this to alert readers to our interview: "I'm not inactive, my latest was a feature being done on me and the project I run, including some about the mind control research I've been involved in. Be interesting to see how much they print," he writes.)

Somewhere Real is the name given to Sav's group of like-minded individuals. There are "just a handful" at present, but that's the point of his highly visible Fylingdales protest: to raise awareness.

They believe in a social system called Shareism, he explains. "It's a limit on capital, a limit on property, a limit on corporate power, a limit on any individual's political power."

Sav has little of any. His bus home is freezing cold at night and subject to the occasional owl attack. He lives on beans and chips cooked on a two-ring gas cooker and sleeps on a bed with coats for blankets. Every so often the police will call round, although they have been generally friendly.

Why choose such an uncomfortable existence?

"If you knew something that very few other people knew, and it was threatening humanity, would you keep it to yourself? That's why I am here."

And it is a genuine choice. Amid all the slogans on the bus ("Say No To Mind Control"; "Cure Poverty: Eat The Rich") there should be one that reads: "My other home is a three bed house in Peterborough".

Sav, 38, does have roots. Born in Scotland, his father was a nuclear engineer at Dounreay before his work took the family down to Weymouth. As a kid, he asked lots of questions and soon realised he was against his father's work.

Later his parents separated. His mum worked all hours to keep him and his five siblings fed, and he was left to do his own thing.

He left school at 14, "when my education really began". "The idea of big brother, having control, somebody else being able to control you - the whole idea I didn't like."

To reflect his decision to have nothing to do with "this so-called civilised society" he started calling himself Savage.

Sav was married aged 18, "which was a mistake", and they had two children who are now 16 and 18. One of them comes with him to some protests. He has two younger kids from a later relationship. They have disappeared with their mum.

He returns every so often to his Peterborough home - the bus works after some TLC - but soon gets restless. His plan is to tour the summer rock festivals in the bus.

It must be a lonely life. But as we talk, the occasional car horn sounds outside in response to the notice propped in the window: "Beep For Peace".

"A lot of people do understand where I am coming from," says Sav. "Seeing Bush giving one of his speeches is enough for most people.

"A lot of people thank me for being here. They say, 'I'm glad someone's doing something'."

Living on a peace bus is not the only way for people to make a difference, he says. "The main thing is for people to question themselves and question authority."

Sav's website is at www.groups.msn.com/somewherereal

Updated: 10:17 Wednesday, March 05, 2003