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CND in the News
CND in the News: 19-25 May 2005
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1 Anti-Nuclear Protesters Plan Blockade
Thu 19 May 2005
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4578052
Anti-nuclear protesters tomorrow plan to blockade Devonport Dockyard in
Plymouth – where Trident nuclear submarines are refitted. The action
– which campaigners said will begin at 6.30am – will be taken
by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Trident Ploughshares.
CND chair Kate Hudson will be at the day of action to
issue the message that the refit programme must be ended, and the UK’s
Trident nuclear weapons system must be scrapped and not be replaced. The
day of action is part of a weekend-long peace camp at Devil’s Point
in Plymouth. The protest is taking place exactly a week after Trident
Ploughshares supporters occupied privately-owned Drake’s Island
in Plymouth Sound to further their anti-nuclear message.
Yesterday, the squatters were ordered by a district judge to vacate the
island – which they declared a nuclear-free state – by 3.45pm
today. A spokesman for the group said today they had left the island to
set up the new camp on the mainland.
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2 Trident protesters start blockade
Friday, 20 May, 2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/4564915.stm
Anti-nuclear protesters who had occupied an island near Britain's largest
naval yard in Plymouth have started their blockade of the base. Police
arrested one person for obstruction on Friday morning at Devonport Dockyard
where Trident nuclear submarines are refitted. The protesters were evicted
from privately-owned Drake's Island in Plymouth Sound on Thursday. Friday's
action is part of a weekend-long peace camp in the city.
'Nuclear-free state'
The action is being taken by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
(CND) and Trident Ploughshares.
CND chairwoman Kate Hudson will be in Plymouth urging
the ending of the refit programme and for the UK's Trident nuclear weapons
system to be scrapped and not replaced.
The protest is taking place exactly a week after Trident Ploughshares
supporters occupied privately-owned Drake's Island in Plymouth Sound.
A district judge ordered the squatters to vacate the island - which they
declared a nuclear-free state - by 1545 BST on Thursday. A spokesman for
the group said it had left the island to set up the new camp on the mainland.
Devonport is the base for refits of the Royal Navy's Vanguard class nuclear-powered
submarines, which are each capable of firing 16 Trident missiles with
nuclear warheads. Police said the person arrested was a 60-year-old woman
from Essex.
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3 Anti-Nuclear Campaigner Arrested
Fri 20 May 2005
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=4579915
Police have arrested an anti-nuclear campaigner blockading Plymouth’s
Devonport Naval base as part of a four-day peace camp.
Members of the Trident Ploughshares group and the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament are staging a noisy and colourful demonstration
outside the base’s main Camel’s Head entrance today. They
are calling for the scrapping of the Trident nuclear missiles carried
by the Royal Navy’s Vanguard class submarines, which are undergoing
refits at Devonport.
Yesterday Trident Ploughshares protesters returned to the mainland after
a six-day “occupation” of Drake’s Island in Plymouth
Sound to highlight their anti-nuclear message. A Devon and Cornwall Police
spokesman said a group of protesters gathered at Camel’s Head gate
this morning and one person was arrested for obstruction.
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4 Make nukes history
Socialist Worker, 28 May 2005
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6588
Bruce Kent has devoted his life to campaigning against war and nuclear
weapons. He spoke to Socialist Worker about CND, the
Labour Party and the current Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
The Labour Party was heavily involved in the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (CND) during the 1980s when we were organising huge
demonstrations against the Cruise and Trident missile systems. In fact,
I used to laugh about the number of Labour MPs who wanted to hold the
main banner at the front of those marches. They used to queue up to get
their pictures taken with the banner at the assembly point.
Neil Kinnock, who later became leader of the Labour Party, is the one
I remember best of all. He made the most impassioned speech about the
immorality of nuclear weapons from the stage at Trafalgar Square. At a
grassroots level it was the same. Although, all the main parties were
represented in CND, it was assumed that the Labour Party
was going to form a government that would actually deliver nuclear disarmament.
The Labour leaders for their part thought we were going to be a winning
campaign and they wanted to be in the forefront of it. Many of them had
honourable reasons — they believed nuclear disarmament was the best
thing for the world. But just as they had once queued up to support us,
later almost all uniformly abandoned us. Most turned their backs after
the 1983 election.
It dawned on all of us that, although we did have overwhelming support
from the public in our opposition to US missiles being based in Britain,
we did not have overwhelming support for British unilateral nuclear disarmament.
But the Labour leadership was simply not prepared to campaign to change
public opinion. Of course, you can campaign very effectively against British
nuclear weapons by pointing out how useless they are as a method of defending
the country.
There is no state with nuclear weapons that we could possibly fire them
at without ensuring total devastation for ourselves. But neither the Labour
Party, nor the trade unions, went in for that sort of public education.
In 1986 the MP Gerald Kaufman produced a document for the Labour Party
that said that Britain should keep its nuclear weapons because they only
existed simply for negotiation purposes. Kinnock was by then the leader
of the Labour Party and he backed Kaufman. And, of course, there never
were any negotiations.
In order to polarise the argument, they characterised CND
as only wanting unilateral nuclear disarmament. We never believed that
disarmament could only happen unilaterally—we were in favour of
all types of disarmament. But we weren’t helped by many of the old
Labour MPs and other campaigners who used the word unilateral like it
was a tablet of stone.
The Labour Party’s move away from nuclear disarmament didn’t
demoralise the leadership of CND, but it did affect our
membership. We had about 100,000 members and we have dropped to about
30,000 today. Many people felt that we weren’t going to beat the
government on this issue and moved on to something else. I always felt,
that as a campaign, we were in for the long haul.
But just as Labour abandoned us, many of us abandoned Labour. Certainly,
New Labour is not the party that I once joined — it’s a privatising
party, it’s a party of big business. It has slick PR people working
for it, but an awful lot of the membership have left. Many people feel
disenfranchised and frustrated at how unfair our electorial system is.
Now we are in a ridiculous position where our government is at the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York, saying that it
believes in the abolition of nuclear weapons, but at the same time talking
about arming ourselves with a whole new generation of nuclear weapons.
Tony Blair thinks that nuclear weapons maintain the image of Britain as
a great power. But what message does this send out to countries that want
to become nuclear powers themselves? The hypocrisy surrounding nuclear
proliferation is as big as a bus. Take a look at Iran. It is doing nothing
that it is not entitled to do under international law. It is doing nothing
different to the way that Britain moved from nuclear power to producing
nuclear weapons.
There are still supporters of a nuclear free world in the Labour Party
— Tony Benn, Alan Simpson, Jeremy Corbyn and many others. And perhaps,
now that Labour no longer has an enormous majority, it will have to rethink
some of its policies.
I hope that some of the Labour MPs will take up the campaign against renewing
Trident and for an end to all nuclear weapons. But to create the pressure
of such action we need a much more broad based campaign.
We should be united with the anti-poverty groups and the environmental
groups when they say “make poverty history”. We should be
with them saying “make nuclear weapons history — and make
war history”.
Bruce Kent is vice-president of CND. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty review conference is currently taking place at the United Nations.
For more information go to www.cnduk.org
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