Nuclear weapons

1 August 2016News

Welsh activists blockade bomb base

Combined choirs sing out against Trident, AWE Burghfield, 15 June 2016. Photo: kelvin mason

On 15 June, far-flung groups from Aberystwyth, Swansea, Knighton, Cardiff, Newport Gwent, Rhyl and Bangor joined others from all over Wales at the Atomic Weapons Establishment near Burghfield to protest against Trident and its replacement.

The Wales Day was part of a month of direct action organised by Trident Ploughshares, culminating in a ‘grand finale’ on 30 June with blockaders…

1 August 2016Feature

Brexit, Scottish independence and Trident – a plan of action

Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, addresses a Stop Trident demonstration in London’s Trafalgar Square, 27 February 2016. photo: David Holt

After the Brexit vote the view is suddenly full of huge new sprouting things, like Jack’s overnight beanstalk, but I want to look back a bit to the immediate aftermath of the Scottish parliament elections in May.

In the Scottish Scrap Trident coalition, we noted that the new Holyrood had a marked increase in MSPs belonging to…

14 July 2016Blog

A thoughtful review of The Truth About Trident: Disarming the Nuclear Argument by Tim Wallis

The Truth About Trident sets out a blow-by-blow detailed analysis in advance of the forthcoming parliamentary debate about the renewal of Britain’s nuclear weapons’ system known as the ‘main gate’ decision later this year.

Despite the slightly disingenuous claim of the book that it will act as an objective ‘trial’ of the 30-year-old weapons system, Tim Wallis’s credentials as a leading peace activist reverses this expectation. As he states his intention is that ‘the moral…

1 June 2016News

Marc Morgan surveys anti-nuclear fasts, past and present

The international Hiroshima-Nagasaki fast has been held for over 30 years now, as an act of sorrow and commemoration and as a form of protest against nuclear weapons. It continues to grow in support, numbers of participants, and international range from year to year. This year will be the fourth time that it is held in the UK, with a four-day fast from 6–9 August in Whitehall, central London.

Last year, about 150 people fasted in six different countries. In France, the fast is…

1 June 2016News

Vanunu charged with new "crimes"

On 8 May, Mordechai Vanunu was charged with several crimes: talking to two US nationals three years ago; saying things – that were not broadcast – during a TV interview last September, something for which he has already been punished; and moving flats within the same building without informing the police.

Vanunu’s real ‘crime’ is that he revealed Israel’s secret nuclear arsenal in 1986 – something for which he has already served 12 years in prison. After the Israeli authorities…

1 June 2016Feature

Printmaker Sarah Gittens remembers the unnamed partipants who keep the peace movement going

This linocut print shows a table of people gathered to make origami cranes. They are located within a landscape derived from pictures of the area around Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped on 6 August 1945. The cranes relate to the story behind the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima.

The monument shows a Japanese girl called Sadako holding up a crane. Sadako died from leukaemia as a result of radiation from the bomb. While she was in hospital, she set about making…

30 May 2016Blog

Come to protest in the heart of the development of the UK's nuclear weapons system.

June 2016 will see a month of disarmament action against Trident at AWE Burghfield. Situated a few miles south-west of Reading, this is at the heart of the UK's nuclear weapons system. It is the final assembly line for the UK's nuclear warheads, and they return here for major maintenance work.

Opposition to Trident has spiralled rapidly in recent years. In Scotland,…

1 April 2016News

One-man blockade halts warhead

Photo: John Ainslie

At 5.20pm, 10 March, Scottish Nukewatcher Brian Quail from Glasgow walked out onto a pedestrian crossing in Balloch, near Stirling, and stopped a nuclear warhead convoy on its way from AWE Burghfield to Coulport, where warheads are stored and loaded onto Trident submarines. More info: www.nukewatch.org.uk 

1 April 2016News

Knighton residents to initiate private prosecution of Defence minister over Trident

Photo: Trident Ploughshares

Around 30 people plus a red dragon, with musical accompaniment by Côr Cochion, Côr Gobaith and a trombone, demonstrated outside Merthyr Tydfil magistrates court on 3 February. What was it all about?

A group of Knighton residents are aiming to initiate a private prosecution against the UK secretary of state for defence for conspiring to commit a war crime. They are alleging that the deployment of Trident, the UK’s nuclear weapon system, is a crime.…

1 April 2016News

Welsh campaigners join 60,000+ strong anti-Trident demo

Singing 'Stop Trident' in London, 27 February. Photo: Lotte Reimer

Three of us pensioners set off from Aberbanc at 5.15 in the morning of 27 March to meet up with a coach full of fellow protesters in Swansea for the Anti-Trident demo in London.

We made new contacts and shared networks on the journey up and back from London, always an important part of the overall occasion.

Luckily, the rain held off and, even though a cold wind blew, the people, old and young together,…

1 April 2016Feature

An excerpt from a new book on one of the biggest issues facing us

Trident submarine HMS Vengeance returns to HMNB Clyde where Trident nuclear warheads are stored. Photo: Ministry of Defence

So what is the truth about Trident? The truth is that we live in a world that is not as it was in 1939–40, when Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany and prevented an invasion by a combination of wits, luck, geography, will power, enormous self-sacrifice and the skill of some RAF fighter pilots. The idea that Trident would protect us in a similar situation is…

1 February 2016Feature

Take action at Burghfield this June

Photo: Ministry of Defence

Trident Ploughshares have chosen June this year for a month of nonviolent civil resistance (blockades, citizens’ inspections, cutting fences – anything nonviolent and creative) at the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Burghfield.


Threatening mass destruction impacts the whole social change movement because at its heart it supports a monetarised, exploitative, inhumane and deeply unethical divisive system.

Nuclear weapons and the…

1 February 2016News

Nukewatchers detained

On 9 January, police in Stirling detained two lots of activists monitoring nuclear weapons convoys passing through the Scottish town.

Veronika Tudhope, assistant coordinator of Scottish CND, was approached by two police officers while she parked by Stirling Castle. The officers said her car had been reported for ‘erratic driving’ and asked to see under the bonnet.

They then detained her until 10 minutes after the convoy had passed. Veronika commented that she’d been driving…

1 February 2016Feature

Ploughshares activist Megan Rice first speaker at new Peace & Justice Centre

Megan Rice talking at the Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre Photo: Brian Larkin

Sister Megan Rice, a US Ploughshares activist, spoke on 8 January at the newly-opened Edinburgh Peace & Justice Centre about being imprisoned for two years for a symbolic act of resistance at the facility where the US is making new nuclear weapons and where the explosive components of the Hiroshima bomb were produced as part of the Manhattan Project.

Megan was 82 years of age at the time…

1 February 2016Feature

Who’s doing what to stop them replacing Britain’s nuclear weapon system?

With conceptual work for replacement Trident submarines already eight years underway, it can seem as though the renewal of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapon system is inevitable. But the debate is not over, and grassroots activist and research organisations still hope to stop Trident replacement and pave the way for complete nuclear disarmament

The biggest event of the next few months will be the Stop Trident national demo, a rally and march to Trafalgar Square on 27 February,…