10 Women arrested at Aldermaston

TEN WOMEN ARRESTED AT AWE ALDERMASTON AS NEW BYLAWS TO STOP PROTEST AT THE BASE COME INTO FORCE

PRESS RELEASE. For imme­di­ate release
Sat­ur­day 9th June 2007

Ten women from the Alder­mas­ton Women Peace Camp(aign) (AWPC) were last night arrest­ed in a blan­ket action by MOD police just over a week after the intro­duc­tion of new Bylaws designed to stop the women from their 22 year-long protest against the base which is cur­rent­ly build­ing facil­i­ties for the upgrade of the Tri­dent nuclear mis­sile sys­tem..

TEN WOMEN ARRESTED AT AWE ALDERMASTON AS NEW BYLAWS TO STOP PROTEST AT THE BASE COME INTO FORCE

PRESS RELEASE. For imme­di­ate release
Sat­ur­day 9th June 2007

Ten women from the Alder­mas­ton Women Peace Camp(aign) (AWPC) were last night arrest­ed in a blan­ket action by MOD police just over a week after the intro­duc­tion of new Bylaws designed to stop the women from their 22 year-long protest against the base which is cur­rent­ly build­ing facil­i­ties for the upgrade of the Tri­dent nuclear mis­sile sys­tem..

The women were hav­ing a meet­ing when they were arrest­ed at 21:50 on Fri­day 8th June in what one of them called “a blan­ket and arbi­trary arrest”. They were tak­en to Lod­don Val­ley police sta­tion and held overnight. A dog that belonged to two of the women was tak­en to Read­ing police sta­tion.

All ten women have been charged with 2 Bylaws offences and banned from a 5‑mile radius around AWE Alder­mas­ton. The first alleged offence is that they were camp­ing when they were sim­ply gath­ered around a con­trolled fire hav­ing a meet­ing, and the sec­ond, unfound­ed, charge was that they lit a bon­fire.

The new Bylaws, which came into effect on 31st May 2007, specif­i­cal­ly pro­hib­it camp­ing and light­ing open fires. The women main­tain that they were doing nei­ther and that theirs was an unjus­ti­fied arrest as the bylaws were specif­i­cal­ly amend­ed, after con­sul­ta­tion with AWPC, to allow for meet­ings . They have all been bailed to appear before New­bury mag­is­trates court on 21st June. Your sup­port in court on the day would be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed

The arrests came as AWPC have mount­ed a judi­cial review in the High Court against the new bylaw and the women pre­pared for a cel­e­bra­to­ry par­ty to mark their 22-year long protest and bear­ing wit­ness out­side the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry.

Please come and join us at today’s cock­tail par­ty to send a clear mes­sage to the MoD that women will con­tin­ue to occu­py space out­side AWE Alder­mas­ton, con­tin­ue resist­ing Britain’s nuclear weapons pro­gramme, and con­tin­ue claim­ing the right to protest

For more infor­ma­tion on venue of today’s cock­tail par­ty and arrests please phone 07887802879