Aldermaston | ukwatch.net

Britain's Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: After 50 Years, Alive and Kicking

tim — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:21:51 +0000

In July 2008, at the invitation of CND, I traveled to London to address the national council of this venerable peace and disarmament group. The assumption in CND circles was that, thanks to my authorship of a scholarly trilogy on the history of the worldwide antinuclear movement (i.e. The Struggle Against the Bomb, published by Stanford University Press), I might be able to provide activists with some useful information. While meeting in London with CND leaders, however, I decided to gather some information myself about CND’s recent ventures.

CND was founded in February 1958 by Bertrand Russell, A.J.P. Taylor, J.B. Priestley, Michael Foot, and other British luminaries who were appalled by the nuclear arms race and the drift toward nuclear war. Determined to “ban the Bomb,” CND organized annual antinuclear marches from Aldermaston (the site of the British government’s nuclear weapons research facility) to London, where thousands of antinuclear activists rallied in Trafalgar Square. The emblem designed for these first Aldermaston marches — a circle encompassing a stick figure with arms outstretched in the semaphore signals for N and D (i.e. nuclear disarmament) — grew immensely popular and soon became a worldwide peace symbol. Meanwhile, CND churned out vast quantities of antinuclear literature, held public meetings throughout the British Isles, converted politicians to its position, and emerged as Britain’s largest, most influential peace and disarmament organization.

Of course, CND activists did not succeed in banning the Bomb. But they did have the satisfaction of turning British public opinion against the nuclear arms race, thereby pushing Britain and other nuclear-armed nations toward nuclear arms control and disarmament measures and helping to prevent nuclear war.

Today, although CND’s membership is far from the heights that it reached during the heady 1980s, it is also well above the depths to which it sank during past periods of decline. Indeed, having grown by roughly 10 percent in the last three years, CND now has a very respectable 35,000 members, with branches all over the country. It draws on older, long-time stalwarts like Bruce Kent, as well as on younger, newer activists, such as its current chair, Kate Hudson.

As in past decades, CND’s primary goal is abolition of nuclear weapons. Last year, it led a tumultuous campaign against the British government’s plan to replace the country’s aging Trident nuclear missile-carrying submarines with an upgraded nuclear weapons force. The largest of the numerous demonstrations organized against Trident replacement drew up to 100,000 participants, and polls found that 72 percent of the British public opposed the nation’s acquisition of new nuclear weapons. Although the government managed to carry a key Trident replacement vote in parliament, it was shaken by the extraordinary level of opposition. As a result, officials promised to bring the issue back to parliament for further consideration.

This concession to antinuclear sentiment might actually mean something, for there is growing pressure to move Britain’s defense policy away from its decades-old reliance upon nuclear weapons. Recently, for example, a number of former top British government officials spoke out in favor of the Shultz-Kissinger-Perry-Nunn call for nuclear abolition. Furthermore, the European parliament has voted to make Europe a nuclear weapons-free zone. In addition, Barack Obama — who might well become the next U.S. President — has pledged to make the building of a nuclear-free world a top priority. In these circumstances, CND’s efforts to block the development of a new British nuclear striking force might yet bear fruit.

Despite the centrality of nuclear issues to CND, it does grapple with other foreign and defense policy issues. As a participant in Britain’s Stop the War Coalition, it works to end the war in Iraq. Also, like its U.S. counterparts, CND is attempting to head off the possibility of a U.S. military attack upon Iran. Moreover, CND seeks to block the deployment of a controversial U.S. missile defense system in Eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic, Poland, and Lithuania. There is substantial resistance to this revised “Star Wars” system in the host countries, and especially in the Czech Republic. In addition, the Russian government — which, despite its decline in the international power hierarchy, possesses more nuclear weapons than any other — views the deployment of this system as a highly provocative act.

CND also faces some significant problems at home, including a largely hostile press, an escapist television and mass culture, and a poverty of public discussion and debate on defense issues. Perhaps most worrisome are the rising political fortunes of the Tories, who seem poised to sweep into power in the next nationwide elections. Conservative-dominated local governments have begun denying tabling rights to CND, while the newly-elected Conservative mayor of London has pulled his city out of the Mayors for Peace campaign, a nuclear abolition venture comprised of 2,317 member cities in 130 countries, headed by the mayor of Hiroshima.

Even so, CND has managed to emerge from fifty years of antinuclear agitation as a sprightly and effective force on the British political landscape. It might even live to see that bright day when, thanks in part to its efforts, nuclear weapons are banned forever.

Safety Crisis at Nuclear Bomb Factory

Ellie Keen — Thu, 01 May 2008 20:46:14 +0000

Some rather shocking news has emerged. Britain’s Atomic Weapons Establishment has just had to admit that it stopped ‘live nuclear work’ at its Burghfield plant last December owing to safety problems. Reported by the Scottish Sunday Herald at the weekend, this is apparently the first time that the MoD has ever had to stop working on nuclear weapons.

The Burghfield factory is located close to Aldermaston in Berkshire.

Six years ago, the government’s Nuclear Installations Inspectorate discovered over 1,000 saftey flaws. Since then, the AWE management has failed to deal with the problems, hence the shut down of the problem sector. Last year, documents released under freedom of information law showed that the NII was concerned about a huge range of problems.

AWE missed a number of NII deadlines to remedy the problems, but the MoD allowed them to go ahead with regular work anyway, deeming it to be too necessary to disrupt. But AWE was so slow that in the end the MoD had to call a halt.

According to a recent NII report, “AWE has agreed that no live nuclear work will be carried out until the necessary fixes are in place.”
But Burghfield isn’t the only offender. The report also showed that Aldermaston was included in the inspection process toward the end of last year. Of 59 inspections made, in only two instances were the facilities found to be “good”, 43 were deemed “adequate” and 14 “had potential improvements identified”.

So not only are our nuclear weapons illegal, immoral, a waste of money and utterly useless in meeting any real security needs, we now know their production facilities are dangerous, poorly maintained, and a risk to the workforce and the population as a whole.
What is the government thinking of? Time to disarm.

Organising Against Britain's Bomb

Ellie Keen — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:28:45 +0000

In the autumn of 1957 a number of groups came together to form the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War and plan a protest march during the following year’s Easter holiday.

To highlight the way that Britain was joining the nuclear arms race it was decided to march to the government’s nuclear weapons establishment in Aldermaston, near Reading.

Aged 28 I was asked to take on the job of organising the protest – despite never having done anything similar before. I had time on my hands after being sacked from my job as a nursing orderly for taking a petition against nuclear testing around my workmates.

A new movement was growing in opposition to Britain’s programme of nuclear tests.

Prior to the march there had been a series of sit-in protests at the War Office in London and some military bases.There was a thirst for action.

When the march came, it was a great success. We started with a rally in Trafalgar Square with 8,000 people – which was regarded as very large.

The left was well represented in the campaign, as were the Quakers. And, although most of the marchers were middle class, there were also a few delegations of workers.

The effect of the Aldermaston campaign and the surrounding publicity was to help the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) get off the ground and generate many new activists, despite the somewhat stuffy attitude the campaign initially had towards such protests.

In the months after the demonstration we went on to organise regular pickets and even an occupation of the Aldermaston plant.

We issued appeals to the workers not to participate in the building of nuclear weapons, and had some success in persuading lorry drivers to turn around without delivering their cargo.

Soon after, we moved on to protesting against Britain’s new nuclear missile system. I became the field secretary for the Direct Action Committee. I saw my job primarily as working in the labour movement.

I made contact with trade unionists in the towns near to the missile bases that were being constructed and sought their support.

In 1959 we started a campaign in the new town of Stevenage, which was nicknamed “Missileville” because of its relationship to the arms trade.

The high point of the push in Stevenage was a weekday march through the town that was mainly formed by trade unionists, including militant building workers who had stopped work to join in.

There was a similar campaign in Bristol in the early 1960s at the aircraft factories. I travelled on my scooter from London to help organise picketing of the plants.

On one occasion there was a factory gate meeting at Bristol Engines Company that the union prolonged into a stoppage against the arms trade.

Shop stewards at many of the engineering plants had devised plans for how production could be switched from armaments to civilian uses, and were very eloquent on the subject.

For a time I was employed by the slightly maverick CND group in Merseyside in order to campaign for direct action against the bomb. I met with the dockers, and together we formed a local industrial committee.

Dock workers told me that whenever they saw a consignment marked for the British military base at Fylingdales they sabotaged it.

It is important not to overstate how widespread these campaigns were, but the fact that we were able to win some workers to taking action is important.

By the mid-1960s the movement against British nuclear weapons had effectively melded into the campaigns against the war in Vietnam.

A great many people believed that the conflict there could “go nuclear” and that we should put most of our efforts into stopping it.

It was at that time that I started to get involved in the movement to get British troops out of Ireland. I thought, “It is all very well to campaign against war in far away places but what about the war on our doorsteps?”

Together with other activists I helped leaflet British troops, urging them not to fight in Ireland.

As a result I was prosecuted for sedition and received an 18-month prison sentence – the first of 11. I escaped from prison and was recaptured after attending an anti-fascist demonstration. I found myself in solitary confinement for a long time.

At the end of the Vietnam War, CND went through a bit of a low period, and did not revive again until the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan started to ramp up the Cold War.

Today I am still involved with CND, and even though I don’t think we are on the brink of annihilation, I think the dangers of nuclear proliferation are greater than ever. And of course we have the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite that, it is true that the various treaties that constrained the arms race in the last three decades have made the world safer.

They did not come out of nowhere, however, they were a result of public pressure – a pressure that peace activists over the last 50 years should take some of the credit for.

We shall (not) overcome... Nuclear protest survived six Tory governments. But not New Labour

JamieSW — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:15:08 +0000

It survived six Tory governments, the end of the Cold War and the rise and fall of mass marches against the British nuclear deterrent. But after 50 years in which the tradition of peaceful demonstration has been maintained outside the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, the New Labour era has finally done for one of the most famous symbols of protest in British political history.

Today would have seen the latest gathering of the band of women who have assembled on the second Saturday of each month since the 1980s to object to the continuing development of the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent. Instead, following a High Court ruling this week, the protest tents are being removed, demonstrators are being threatened with arrest and “no camping” signs are being erected.

From being a symbol of the right to protest, Aldermaston has become the latest testament to the desire of successive New Labour governments to curtail the right to assemble, demonstrate and object to government policy.

Evidence from the Ministry of Defence to the High Court cited “operational and security concerns”. In their High Court appeal, legal representatives for the Aldermaston women argued that the by-law which ostensibly took effect last May banning “camping in tents, caravans, trees or otherwise” amounted to an unlawful interference with freedom of expression and the right of assembly guaranteed by articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. David Plevsky, appearing for the Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp, said the new regulations were “criminalising the peaceful, traditional and regular activities of the AWPC”.

It cut no ice. Before the ruling, Sian Jones a member of the peace camp, said: “If we don’t win this review our very existence will be under threat. But there are also wider implications for the long-held right to protest, which is such an important part of British society. Aldermaston has been known as a place of protest for the last 50 years, and this year is the 50th anniversary of the first CND march there.” That battle has now been lost.

As a result of the heavy-handed prohibition of a long-running series of protests which have never resulted in violence, a march this Easter to Aldermaston – intended to commemorate the pioneering protest of 1958 – has now taken on a wholly contemporary significance. After a series of assaults on the right to protest around Westminster and beyond, the 2008 trek through Berkshire is set to become the latest chapter in the fight to wrest back civil liberties that New Labour appears determined to take away.

The CND is planning a 50th anniversary day of action on Easter Monday, when the atomic weapons establishment is to be surrounded by a “human chain” to highlight what it says is the stifling of legitimate protest. The police have warned that anyone causing an obstruction during that protest is likely to be arrested and prosecuted.

Kate Hudson, the chairperson of CND said: “We feel this is an extremely serious matter where the long-established and hard-won right to protest is now under attack. People are extremely worried about the weapons of mass destruction being produced at Aldermaston and it is unrealistic of the Government to think that they will not take part in expressing their views. “We hope that on Easter Monday people will not only come because it is the 50th anniversary of the first march but also to show the need to defend their civil liberties.”

One campaigner planning to take part, 57-year-old Margaret Jefferson, from west London, said: “I think it is essential that people make a stand on this issue. I had stayed at that peace camp as have so many others without posing any threat to anyone. What is this Government afraid of, what do they think we will do?

“We live in a very dangerous world as it is and with the end of the Cold War there is even less justification for nuclear weapons. As long as these weapons are here there is the risk that a version of them will come into the hands of terrorists.”

One of the most famous figures to participate in 1958 is too frail to be there on Easter Monday. But there is no questioning his ongoing commitment to the protest and outrage at the modern Labour Party’s complicity in its suppression.

Michael Foot, the former Labour leader, who marched with his late wife, the actress and author Jill Craigie, said last night that he was “deeply saddened” to hear of the camp being closed down, and especially dismayed that this should happen under a Labour government.

“We thought the cause was right and just and we were glad to take part in these marches,” Mr Foot said. “I think it is wretched that they are now thinking of shutting down the camp after it had been goingsuccessfully for more than 20 years and I am sure Jill would have felt the same way as well.

“The governments at the time sometimes behaved very badly towards these protesters who were simply exercising their rights in a peaceful way. But these were Tory governments, the Labour Party supported them as I recall, I was the leader at the time. But times seem to have changed.”