PEACE campaigners from across Europe blockaded one of Britain’s key nuclear bomb factories yesterday in protest against plans for the £100 billion renewal of Trident nuclear weapons system.

The blockade of Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Burghfield, outside Reading in Berkshire, marked the launch of a month of peaceful action before May’s general election.

Protesters chained themselves together across Burghfield’s entrance gates.

The blockade lasted almost 10 hours before ending peacefully. There were no arrests.

Parliament will make a decision on Trident replacement in 2016, but campaigners say advance work on the programme has already started at Burghfield and sister factory AWE Aldermaston a few miles away.

The Burghfield action is supported by 60 organisations.

Peace campaigners from Finland, Sweden, Spain, France and Belgium joined British protesters.

The protest was organised by Action AWE campaign. Supporters include film director Ken Loach and actor John Hurt.

Blockader Andrew Dey from Yorkshire said: “It’s time for Britain to join other UN nations in negotiating an international nuclear ban treaty.

“We’re calling for the manufacture and modernisation of nuclear weapons of mass destruction to end. The bases can be used for disarmament purposes, employees need not lose their jobs.

“The reality of a so-called ‘nuclear deterrent’ is that nuclear armed submarines patrol globally, ready to fire 24/7 with the ability to wipe out cities almost anywhere on Earth within 15 minutes at a cost of billions which should be spent on the NHS.”

Ruka Toivonen, a blockader from Finland, said: “We don’t want to suffer nuclear winter and radiation caused by British or other nuclear weapons. We support Scotland’s right to become nuclear free and call on the UK to cancel Trident, stop threatening the world with accidental or intentional nuclear disaster and support negotiations to ban and eliminate all nuclear weapons.”

Jan Jones from Pontardawe, a Wales Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CND Cymru supporter, said: “Although we’re told that the vote on new nuclear weapons will not be taken until 2016, we know that work has already started on their design.
“The money that is proposed to be spent on new nuclear weapons could pay for scrapping all student tuition fees for 30 years, or could fund all Accident and Emergency departments in the UK for over 40 years.”
Burghfield carries out the final assembly and maintenance of Trident nuclear warheads.

A treaty banning nuclear weapons may be possible, following initiatives by civil society, International Red Cross, religious organisations and nuclear-free governments, and could be agreed by 2020.

The Westminster government has a stockpile of around 225 nuclear warheads, each with eight times the explosive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

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