Nobel peace winners join blockade of UK nuclear arms factory

By IRNA,

London : Hundreds of peace campaigners converged Monday to shut down Britain’s nuclear bomb factory at Aldermaston in southern England with the support of two Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

Those attending the protest included Jody Williams and Mairead Maguire, who respectively led the successful campaign for the Convention on Cluster Munitions and worked to end violence in Northern Ireland.

The blockade, which started in the early hours, is the latest protest against the government’s controversial plans to replace the country’s submarine-based Trident missile system.

The organisers, Trident Ploughshares, told IRNA that campaigners, which included bishops and parliamentarians, would stay at the gates of the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston until they were removed by police.

Previous blockades, including at the Faslane base in Scotland, where the Trident submarines are based, have seen hundreds of arrests as campaigners peacefully refuse to move after chaining themselves to the gates.

CND, Britain’s oldest peace group which is supporting the protest, said that Trident was a “Cold War weapons system which does nothing to protect Britain from the threats we face today.”

"At a time of economic crisis it is scandalous that billions of pounds are being squandered on new facilities at Aldermaston,” said CND chair Kate Hudson.

“Prioritising spending on nuclear weapons when most other areas face cuts is a real vote loser - polls now consistently show a majority against spending £76bn or more on Trident Replacement - the sooner politicians wake up to this the better,” Hudson warned.

She told IRNA that world leaders meet at the UN for the five-yearly review of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in May and that Britain needed to live up to its 40-year commitment to disarm.

The UK government, Hudson said, should “not be setting the worst example possible by pushing ahead with a new generation of weapons.”