Anti-Trident Protest at Atomic Weapons Establishment — 19th March

Almost thir­ty demon­stra­tors braved the chilly ear­ly morn­ing weath­er at the gates of the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment in Alder­mas­ton, Berk­shire — Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry — to protest against Par­lia­men­t’s deci­sion last Wednes­day to renew Tri­dent, and against the con­struc­tion and devel­op­ment work that has been going on all the while at the site, even before any demo­c­ra­t­ic deci­sion has been made on the future of Britain’s nuclear war­heads. Par­tic­u­lar­ly notice­able is the work on the Ori­on laser, which is designed to cir­cum­vent the Com­pre­hen­sive Test Ban Treaty and facil­i­tate the devel­op­ment and test­ing of a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear war­heads, in con­tra­ven­tion of the Nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.

Peace flagsAlmost thir­ty demon­stra­tors braved the chilly ear­ly morn­ing weath­er at the gates of the Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment in Alder­mas­ton, Berk­shire — Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry — to protest against Par­lia­men­t’s deci­sion last Wednes­day to renew Tri­dent, and against the con­struc­tion and devel­op­ment work that has been going on all the while at the site, even before any demo­c­ra­t­ic deci­sion has been made on the future of Britain’s nuclear war­heads. Par­tic­u­lar­ly notice­able is the work on the Ori­on laser, which is designed to cir­cum­vent the Com­pre­hen­sive Test Ban Treaty and facil­i­tate the devel­op­ment and test­ing of a new gen­er­a­tion of nuclear war­heads, in con­tra­ven­tion of the Nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty.

The action was called by Block the Builders, fresh from their suc­cess­ful block­ade of Par­lia­ment Square in Lon­don on Wednes­day. Amongst those present on Mon­day were the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kent Stu­dent CND — mak­ing their debut at Alder­mas­ton; the knit­ting grannies; and Jane from Bris­tol, who went to school local­ly and was cel­e­brat­ing her 85th birth­day; and of course mass­es of police! The sto­ry was cov­ered by the New­bury Week­ly News, who were par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigued by the knit­ting grannies:

http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article.aspx?articleID=3997

The next planned block­ade and protest at Alder­mas­ton has been called by Tri­dent Ploughshares for Tues­day 10th April (just after East­er week­end). Please come along and bring your mates too, and help keep up the pres­sure!

More details:
http://www.tridentploughshares.org/events.php3#1477
http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk/index.php