Janet Kilburn
On 4 and 5 August a group of international peace gardeners visited AWE Aldermaston to plant vines and fig trees both inside and outside the Atomic Weapons Establishment. Nine were arrested and charged with criminal damage.
Taking inspiration from the biblical text Micah 4:3 - "and everyone shall live underneath their vine and fig tree and none shall make them afraid..." - the action kicked off a weekend of events held at Britain's nuclear weapons factory to mark the 60th anniversary…
On 9 August, charges against ten women (and a dog), brought under the Aldermaston byelaws, were dropped ( “Women arrested at cocktail party”, July/Aug PN).
The women had been charged with “camping” and “lighting a bonfire”, following the introduction of new bylaws on 31 May 2007. Their original arrest - on 8 June - was, frankly, bizarre; Ministry of Defence (MoD) police took more than three hours to get women to the nearest police station - partially due to women vanishing,…
In August 2002, the Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston outlined a raft of new facilities it wanted to build over the coming years. Amongst more benign projects like greening the site and providing better facilities for its employees, the nuclear bomb factory's plans included a massive laser, and hydrodynamics and explosives facilities.
Fast-forward four years and, after a bitter struggle by anti-nuclear campaigners, work on the first of the most contentious facilities - the…
Perhaps for most women who had a close involvement with Greenham, a new book on the subject will be approached with a certain trepidation. Over the years there have been a few - some written by academics, others by women who lived at the camp - and for reasons including remoteness and subjectivity, none has been fantastically well-received. One reason for this is that not one of us has the “whole story”. We each have our own - and we know it.
In this book however, Ann Pettit has…
Having been involved in anti-nuclear campaigns and actions for the past 20 years, it's with something of a heavy heart that I write this critique of Faslane365. I kind of got dragged in at the last minute because two possible contributors fled the country when they realised the deadline was approaching -- cowards!
There are two personal reasons for feeling a certain weight of treachery for writing this: firstly I really would like to see some genuine grassroots mass social movement…
Back in the summer of 2002, Britain's Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE - the place where British nuclear weapons are manufactured) published a document in which they outlined a raft of new facilities they intended to build over the coming years. Entitled the Site Development Strategy Plan, the contents of the document, combined with the recruitment of new scientists at the nuclear sites, provoked some antinuclear campaigners to consider whether a new generation of nuclear weapons was on the…
As Peace News went to press, campaigners were making a last ditch attempt at halting the planning process for AWE Aldermaston's controversial Orion laser facility. Janet Kilburn reports...
At a meeting on 25 January, a small group of local councillors is expected to rubber stamp the plan - despite hundreds of objections and a growing call for a public inquiry. Campaigners, locals, parliamentarians - and even another nearby local authority - have been lobbying both…
This year's CND conference took place close to the heart of London's poshistani shopping district -- the West End. Within two minutes of arriving, we had discovered the first two rules of the venue we had managed to break (no bicycles,no gaffa tape, blimey, good job we ditched the dog!). You can't take some people anywhere.
However, the morning quickly moved into the usual round of resolutions and voting, with very little to report. The resolution opposing Trident replacement was…
It is almost hard to know where to start with this - there are so many reasons! But here goes with the main ones...
Reinforcing power: I suppose the first is just that part of me feels as though those eight white men in suits are not wo
On 9 May, as the first BtB protester was being released from prison - after receiving a 14-day sentence for wanton vandalism in protest at new developments at AWE Aldermaston - Block the Builders (BtB) finally swung into action, with an early morning
We all have something to share and sometimes the most effective way of imparting information, offering and combining this with opportunities for safe discussion and exploration, is via a workshop format. In my experience, workshop organisers often forget that participants are supposed to do some “work”! and session are often very loosely structured, with no clear and specific outcomes expected. This can be extremely frustrating: being precise about what's on offer, or pinning down what…
Between 1969 and 1977 Paul Watson was involved in the groups and actions that would spawn Greenpeace International. He was one of the relatively small number of people who participated in early sea-actions against nuclear testing, whaling and seal hunting.
It is fairly common knowledge that the Greenpeace co-founder and “life member number 7” left/was pushed from (depending on who you read) the organisation as it began its journey towards becoming the respectable face of…
As a nonviolent activist who has been to prison for short periods on a number of occasions over anumber of years, the issue of how much we, as prisoners and as activists, participate in our own incarceration is something I have found quite perplexing.
Take - for example - the issue of work in prison as a simple starting point. The vast majority of prisons worldwide depend very heavily - if not entirely - on the goodwill and complicity of their captives, backed up by a range of…
In the post-Thatcherist political landscape of British society we continue, in a truly British fashion, to maintain the notion of the level playing field, meanwhile progressing the ethos of protectionist privatisation with a ruthless and self-serving agenda.
New phrases (and concepts) such as public-private-partnership and private finance initiative are commonplace in the political language of modern Britain under Tony Blair's personal version of caring capitalism.
A cynical…Personally I find the very notion of regulating warfare, of nations and peoples signing up to agree the rules of engagement, truly disturbing. If we believe that war is inherently a bad thing, why should we devote our time and energy to trying to make it a better thing, or a more humane thing. When is cutting peoples throats, dropping bombs from a great height or burning people who you do not even know, humane?
Surely by investing our energies in attempting to reform and improve the…
