Aldermaston blockade in progress

23.04.2007 A group of activists from Scot­land have shut 3 gates at Alder­mas­ton this morn­ing since 6.05am. At Home Office gate two peo­ple have been arrest­ed for obstruc­tion of the high­way, with one per­son sit­ting on top of the gate keep­ing it shut. At Tadley gate six peo­ple have been arrest­ed and are locked-on in the road­way pre­vent­ing vehi­cles from leav­ing or arriv­ing. A third (Con­struc­tion) gate was also locked shut with a D‑lock.

The group were act­ing peace­ful­ly to dis­rupt the mul­ti­mil­lion pound devel­op­ment of a replace­ment for Britain’s Tri­dent Nuclear Weapons.

“With the Scot­tish elec­tions loom­ing and the real pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Nuclear-Weapons Free Scot­land, we felt we had to come and make the strength of feel­ing up here clear to AWE”, Dave, one of the activists
from South Lanark­shire, said. “It is clear from the devel­op­ments at the site that the deci­sion to renew Britain’s nuclear weapons long pre-dates the par­lia­men­tary vote last month.”

The Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment, Alder­mas­ton, is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing mas­sive new devel­op­ments sim­i­lar in scale to the Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 5 project. The devel­op­ments include new com­put­ing and laser facil­i­ties
which will enable sci­en­tists to sim­u­late nuclear explo­sions to improve the design of nuclear war­heads with­out actu­al­ly explod­ing a weapon which would be banned under the Com­pre­hen­sive Test Ban Treaty. The site was giv­en a £5 bil­lion refit after the renew­al of the Mutu­al Defence Agree­ment with the USA in 2005 which allows the shar­ing of nuclear infor­ma­tion between the USA and Britain.

One of the group, Danya from Argyll and Bute, Scot­land, said “The devel­op­ment of yet more Weapons of Mass Destruc­tion at this site is in total breach of the nuclear Non Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty. The vote last
month to com­mit the UK to keep­ing nuclear weapons until 2050 was a fore­gone con­clu­sion and does noth­ing to tack­le the real enor­mous issues that the UK and the world faces, such as cli­mate change and nuclear
pro­lif­er­a­tion.”

“Instead, the par­lia­men­tary deci­sion and devel­op­ments at this site will height­en glob­al insta­bil­i­ty, con­flict and nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion.” The group which includ­ed activists from Faslane Peace Camp, a protest site oppo­site HMNB Clyde where the UK’s Tri­dent sub­marines are based, say they were act­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with “Block the Builders”, a cam­paign tak­ing peace­ful actions against the new devel­op­ments at the site. http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk/

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Update on action as off 10.45am

At 10.30 the police removed the pro­tes­tor from the top of the gate using a scaf­fold­ing tow­er, he has been arrest­ed.

Ear­ly at the oth­er gate one per­son was arrest­ed and removed from a lock but some­one else took their place.
The police cut­ting team got there at about ten and are cut­ting through two of the lock­ons. The gate is still blocked.
One of the peo­ple arrest­ed ear­ly has now been released after being giv­en bailed.