CND Cymru commemorated the 69th anniversary of Hiroshima’s tragedy, when the US dropped the first atomic bomb on the city in 1945, with a slow peace walk around the Eisteddfod Maes in Llanelli, accompanied by Côr Cochion’s songs of peace, and the unrolling of a portion of the 11-mile-long ‘Wool against Weapons’ knitting. The second bomb, dropped on 9 August 1945, devastated Nagasaki.
In memory of its victims, Côr Cochion sang the poetic ‘Lullaby of Oleander’ by a Japanese A-bomb…
Nuclear weapons
28 September 2014News
28 September 2014News
On Nagasaki Day, 9 August, many from across Wales joined with others from the UK, Europe and the rest of the world in stretching a colourful 11-mile-long knitted scarf between the Aldermaston and Burghfield nuclear bomb factories.
It was a beautiful, joyful culmination of months of extraordinary effort by so many people and, coinciding with the big demonstrations for Gaza in London and elsewhere, poignantly showed the need for general disarmament and spending of resources in…
28 September 2014Letter
Despite its length Paul Ingram’s defence of BASIC’s Trident Commission report (PN 2572-73) leaves many unanswered questions.Your headline to his article suggests benefits. It seems to me that the report has done considerable harm.
How did the members get chosen?
If you asked some senior and respectable fishmongers their views about an essential diet you would not be surprised if they came up with fish.
No surprise that the commission, granted its…
28 September 2014Review
A familiar jibe aimed at people active in the nuclear disarmament movement is that they are engaged in a single-issue campaign. A simple answer has always been to hand: most of those active in anti-nuke work are also up to their eyes in other work for social change. However, this collection of essays adds another dimension to this response by cataloguing in detail the way that nukes are intrinsically linked to many other ills.
Hugely informative, it also aims to persuade more…
28 September 2014Feature
On 22 September, Trident Ploughshares and Faslane Peace Camp blockaded
Faslane, homeport of the UK Trident nuclear weapons system. Photo: Trident Ploughshares
I got a lesson once in how to handle serious disappointment – one that I have never forgotten. It was 2001, and the Scottish high court had just pulled the rug from under a growing hope that Trident might be outlawed in the British courts. This was almost three years after sheriff Margaret Gimblett had famously acquitted the…
28 September 2014News in Brief
On 25 July, 10 protesters against nuclear weapons blocked the entrance to Plymouth’s Devonport dockyard for four hours with a red Ford Focus.
Two members of the Trident Ploughshares group attached themselves to the car, which blocked the Camel’s Head main gate to the dockyard, to prevent the refitting of Trident nuclear missile submarines.
The pair were arrested and charged with aggravated trespass.
28 September 2014News in Brief
Over 50 people were arrested in August in the US for protesting against nuclear weapons.
On Hiroshima Day, 6 August:
30 people were arrested blockading Livermore nuclear weapons laboratory in California. Three people were arrested at the Pentagon, for refusing to enter a police-designated protest zone. Seven people were arrested for crossing a property line at Lockheed Martin, an arms manufacturer in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.On Nagasaki Day, 9 August:
Six people were…
21 July 2014News
Early on 11 July, a military convoy carrying nuclear warheads was stopped for one hour near Loch Lomond by protesters from Faslane Peace Camp. One person climbed on top of a nuclear transporter; four were arrested.
The 20-vehicle convoy, with four special transporter lorries to carry 100-kiloton nuclear warheads, had driven through the centre of Glasgow shortly after midnight.
The convoy, from AWE Burghfield to the Coulport nuclear store, was tracked by Nukewatch and Scottish…
21 July 2014News
On 9 June, the Trident Ploughshares direct action network blocked all vehicle entrances at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (awe) Burghfield for five hours. The factory cancelled all deliveries for the day.
The action, which was part of the Action AWE campaign, began at 6.45am with blockades of all three vehicle entrances. At the Construction Gate, a trailer was steered across the entrance and four protesters locked-on. A ministry of defence (MoD) road leading to the Main Gate was…
21 July 2014News
At 2.30pm on 30 June, 15 people arrived to report the Trident nuclear weapons system as a crime at Llandrindod police station as part of the Action AWE week of ‘Reportings of Trident Crime’ all around the country.
A Llandrindod police sergeant said that a rural police force could not deal with these kinds of crimes as they had no knowledge of international law. I asked that they deal with it in the same way as they would deal with a report of a threat to murder, because when the…
21 July 2014News
On 5 July, a 120-metre-long pink scarf, knitted by opponents of nuclear weapons, was unfurled through the centre of Knighton (Tref-y-clawdd).
The unfurling procession was led by a town crier, joined by the Teme Valley Ceilidh Band, hand-bell ringers, the Pales Peace Choir and a huge Welsh red dragon.
Many local residents offered their support to the knitters. Knighton resident Karen Plant said: ‘This protest has been fun but it has a serious message, namely the…
21 July 2014Feature
I lead BASIC, an organisation that has been working for nuclear disarmament for almost 30 years, and that on 1 July published the report of the Trident Commission that BASIC convened in February 2011. The commission has recommended that Britain retain its nuclear deterrent (along with other recommendations the government might find a little more challenging).
Some people have been asking whether BASIC has gone over to the ‘dark side’.
Pluralistic thinking
I…
15 July 2014Blog
Ruth and Jimmy kiss in their car on the Moors. A fighter jet roars ominously overhead. Potential violence erupts into the everyday. Some of the images in Threads - a mushroom cloud rising over Sheffield, a middle-aged woman urinating in fear - are etched forever into my mind’s eye. Watching the film again, the same cold fear washes through my guts at the thought that such destruction is still within the reach of several world leaders…
27 May 2014Blog
Every year an International fast is held between Hiroshima and Nagasaki days (6th-9th August) in Burghfield, Paris, and Büchel, the last Nato base in Germany at which nuclear weapons are stationed. PN has covered the fast in both Paris and Burghfield with several articles in the past (see PN September 2012, June 2013 and September 2013).…
7 May 2014Blog
Rolls-Royce directors were confronted with the harrowing testimony of a Hiroshima survivor, Setsuko Thurlow, at their AGM on 1 May. Although the quote was lengthy, the chair was too disorientated to interrupt, and the board responded with nervous laughter.
Rolls-Royce provides power systems for Britain's Trident nuclear-powered, nuclear-missile-carrying submarine system. In June 2012, Rolls-Royce was awarded a £1bn contract to produce new reactor cores for the submarine that is…