Campaigners protesting at one of the world's biggest spy bases are raising funds to open their own visitors' centre there.

The Menwith Hill Women's Peace Camp were told four years ago by a high court judge they could use a small layby on the A59 near the US spy station for their permanent protest.

Now they intend to use it to park a trailer there and show videos and exhibit information about the base.

"It's now becoming an issue that people can understand", said Helen John, one of the Peace Camp founders, "So now it's time to take up a position in the road in opposition."

John - and colleagues Angie Zelter and Anne Lee - will appear at Harrogate magistrates's court on July 19 facing charges of criminal damage after they allegedly used bolt-cutters to break into the base.

The campaigners' plans coincide with a surge of interest in the base, the biggest outside the US, sparked by the US Government's revival of its space defence programme.

Dubbed "Son of Star Wars", the Ballistic Missile Defence programme is designed to fend off nuclear missile attacks from "rogue nations".

Menwith Hill, along with the Fulingdales early warning station in the North Yorkshire Moors, is vital to the $60bn programme. CND has organised a mass protest at Fylingdales on July 8 to try to persuade Tony Blair to reject the expansion of the US programme on British soil.

And a European Parliament enquiry is to be launched into electronic surveillance and its role in industrial espionage.

Inside Menwith Hill, Echelon, a high-tech surveillance system,stands accused of gleaning information from billion dollar European and Asian trade negotiations for the benefit of US corporations.

EU officials in Brussels have said the system "works by indiscriminantly intercepting very large quantities of communications from the world's satellite phone calls, internet, email, faxes and telexes and then siphoning out what is valuable".

David Bowe, MEP for Yorkshire and Humberside, suspected the US National Security Agency - which uses RAF Menwith Hill as its UK headquarters - of using military technology for commercial purposes to justify the billion dollar cost to the American tax payer.

"We should have reasonable cause for concern", said Bowe. "It's beyond any remit they may have under international treaties."

The Menwith Hill Forum, an umbrella orgainsation which includes politicians and pressure group the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases, attracted more than 60 local people to a meeting in Harrogate on June 22. They demand that Menwith Hill - which is officially an RAF base - be made more accountable to the public.

"If it is an RAF base why has no British politician ever croosed the doorstep," said Bowe.

See Yorkshire CND Menwith Hill website