Nuclear weapons crime in the UK has been reported to Thames Valley Police.
Take your pick of the reasons. The eye-watering cost? Risk of nuclear accidents? Breeches of International Laws? Radioactive pollution from the production sites? The sheer immorality? The list goes on……
Currently there is a rare window-of-opportunity on this issue. As CND Vice-President, Rebecca Johnson, currently touring the UK with her “New Ban the Bomb” show says: “We’ve campaigned for many decades and are now at a tipping point when we could ban and abolish nuclear weapons. Or, if we lose this opportunity, live under nuclear terror for the rest of this century.” Rebecca will be in Bristol in the New Year, we’ll be arranging NVDA training and building support for anti-Trident actions.
The first major action will be the “Report a Crime in Reading” on Saturday 8th February (http://actionawe.org) I’d like to see at least a hundred people there. That’s one for every billion pounds to be squandered on the Trident Replacement, queuing up to report the crime of Trident at Reading Police Station. We’ll be doing briefings and hoping to run transport from Bristol to this event.
One particular obsession of mine is how close the bomb factories are to dense urban areas. The photograph was taken from the M4 (travelling east towards London) just after passing the Reading Services. The construction cranes at AWE Burghfield and some of the buildings are clearly visible. Measuring the distance on Google maps it’s only about a mile! Yikes!
Now call me over-cautious? But isn’t having a nuclear bomb factory only a mile from one of Britain’s major motorways a tad reckless? But it gets worse - just along the M4 at junction J11, that’s the one with the big wind-turbine, is the 24,000-seater Madejski sports stadium. Reading itself has a population of some 150,000. Worried? You bet!
Do you agree this is all totally unacceptable? Want to join us? Mark Saturday 8th February in your 2014 diary now. Visit Action AWE’s page ‘Report a Crime at Reading Police Station‘ for full event details or check out “Report a Crime in Reading” on Facebook for more info.
Action-AWE
