This spring, I’m celebrating the silver jubilee of my personal assault on the military-industrial complex. I was 18, and I started my offensive by picketing the RAF recruiting office in Hull. This picket then turned into a sit-down (or lie-down, head to toe, there weren’t that many of us) blockade of the traffic on King Edward St. You know the spot, opposite Debenhams, just along from the Central Library.

I didn’t actually lie in the road (that part of the action, in the way of things on the left in the early Eighties, had been designated wimmin only), but my girlfriend did, and she was duly arrested. Now, feminism aside, a young man in Hull cannot stand idly by while his girlfriend is man-handled by a bunch of coppers, so over I went to have it out with them, prompting them to arrest me as well, which was the desired result. Breach of the peace, £20 fine. I was all for not paying so I could do my 14 days in prison, but my mum wasn’t having that and stumped up on the sly.

The following month found me at RAF Naphill, near High Wycombe, Bucks. They were digging an enormous hole there to house a new Nato bunker, a rear HQ, I believe, in the event of the Red Army over-running the main one in Brussels. My friends and I got in there one Sunday, scaled two tower cranes and barricaded ourselves into the driver’s cabins about 100ft up, Sean and Jason in one, Neil and me in the other.

We stayed four days, eagerly monitoring news reports of our occupation on the radio. I shudder to think of it now – the cold, the crane swaying in the wind, the floor of the cabin a mere sheet of Perspex – but at 18, you do the stupidest things, you think you’re invincible. (Note to 18-year-olds – you’re not.)

We came down on the Thursday expecting to be cruelly martyred, a show trial, a decent stretch, but the MoD police told us the contractors were embarrassed about the lack of security on site and we were released without charge. Having spent four days weeing in a bucket and listening to Duran Duran, that came as a grave disappointment. At the front gate, the crane driver thanked us for the unexpected holiday.

And then early in June of 1983, shortly before the general election, I took part in a mass blockade of the RAF base at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire. We sat down in the road, and when a car wanted to enter or leave the base, the police would pick us up and put us on the verge. Most policemen would do this efficiently, some would do it surprisingly gently, and one would knee you in the groin.

Once the vehicle had passed we’d all sit back down until the next one came along. This went on most of the day. By late afternoon someone in authority (conspiracy theorists had it that Maggie herself, worried we were about to bring her government crashing down, gave the order) ran out of patience and we were all nicked. Fully 752 people, the largest number of arrests at a demonstration in British history, were carted off in vans to a nearby gym and charged with obstruction.

Several months later I entered the dock at Banbury Magistrates’. My friends and I had a plan: we would remain silent, thereby refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the court, thereby in all likelihood getting ourselves sent down for a good few weeks! I realise now that refusing to recognise the legitimacy of Banbury Magistrates’ Court sounds a bit silly, but they were febrile times, the early Eighties, emotions ran high.

They asked me to confirm my name. I didn’t say anything. Address? Silence. Plea? Silence. I straightened my back, puffed out my chest, looked that clerk of the court straight in the eye, didn’t say a damned word. I felt, I’ve got to say, quite the revolutionary. The clerk rolled his eyes and looked up at the chairman of the bench. “We’ve got another one here, your worship,” he said. They entered a not guilty plea on my behalf, rapidly concluded I’d done it, fined me twenty quid and sent me on my way. I think the judicial system of north Oxfordshire survived the episode intact.

A quarter of a century on and I do not lie down in the road outside military bases any more. (If I did, it’d require a minimum of two policemen to lift me up, three if they wanted to leave one unencumbered to stick the boot in.) Indeed, last summer, I was a guest at a black-tie event inside a military base, and I shall be going to another this summer. (An interesting odyssey from a kick in the balls to an invitation to the balls.) But as the barrier lifts and the sentry waves us through, I shall smile a small secret smile at remembrance of things past.

robert.crampton@thetimes.co.uk

In a twin effort to lose a bit of weight and get on top of the public speaking invitations, I’m having next week off, back in a fortnight. The diet blog continues at http://robertc.timeshealth.co.uk