Category: South East England

THURSDAY 8 FEBRUARY — for imme­di­ate release
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With the par­lia­men­tary vote on replac­ing the Tri­dent nuclear sub­ma­rine fleet expect­ed in mid-March, and a nation­al demon­stra­tion of mass oppo­si­tion called for 24 Feb­ru­ary in Lon­don, anti-nuclear cam­paign­ers will return to AWE Alder­mas­ton on 12 Feb­ru­ary.

Non­vi­o­lent direct action cam­paign­ers Block the Builders have called for a block­ade of Britain’s nuclear bomb fac­to­ry on the Mon­day morn­ing in an attempt to obstruct con­struc­tion work on new nuclear war­head facil­i­ties. For the past four years a mas­sive invest­ment pro­gramme has been in place at Alder­mas­ton, in advance of any par­lia­men­tary deci­sion on the future of Britain’s WMD.

In pre­vi­ous block­ades, Block the Builders and their friends have closed roads around the nuclear weapons fac­to­ry for between two and four hours. The group, which is opposed to the replace­ment of the UK’s nuclear weapons sys­tem, aims to stop vehi­cles enter­ing the site to work on the Ori­on laser facil­i­ty — which is being built in advance of any par­lia­men­tary deci­sion on Tri­den­t’s future.

A spokesper­son for Block the Builders said “In a week in which the defence sec­re­tary con­firmed that the nuclear ‘deter­rent’ is a polit­i­cal rather than mil­i­tary weapon, has he both­ered to ask the British pub­lic how many peo­ple real­ly want a new nuclear weapon? Peo­ple have to let the gov­ern­ment know what they think. This is a crit­i­cal time to engage in prac­ti­cal and effec­tive action, which is why we’ve called this block­ade. We’d also urge any­one who can’t come to AWE, to express their oppo­si­tion to their local MPs in advance of March’s par­lia­men­tary debate”.

ENDS

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PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS
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Media rep­re­sen­ta­tives are invit­ed to attend from 7am on 12/02
Sug­gest­ed loca­tion for park­ing and locat­ing spokesper­son
http://tinyurl.com/qpm9f
Media con­tact tel no for the day is 07969 739 812

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NUMBERS AND PURPOSE
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With the build-up to the nation­al demon­stra­tion on 24 Feb­ru­ary and the forth­com­ing par­lia­men­tary debate, organ­is­ers are obvi­ous­ly expect­ing good par­tic­i­pa­tion in the this event.

The pur­pose of the block­ade is

- to obstruct con­struc­tion traf­fic enter­ing the site
— to hin­der oper­a­tions at the site
— to sig­nal out­rage at the gov­ern­men­t’s posi­tion

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ABOUT BLOCK THE BUILDERS
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Formed in 2004, Block the Builders is a non­vi­o­lent direct action group which has
been tak­ing prac­ti­cal action to slow con­struc­tion work AWE Alder­mas­ton and at
the sites of com­pa­nies with con­struc­tion con­tracts with AWE.
This has tak­en the form of a month­ly, pub­licly-announced block­ade of AWE
Alder­mas­ton, com­bined with unan­nounced actions at AWE and con­trac­tor sites, and
events in con­junc­tion with oth­er groups such as the recent Greenpeace/BtB mass
weapons inspec­tion (27/11/06).

For reports of pre­vi­ous block­ades, see http://www.aldermaston.net/news

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BLOCK THE BUILDERS!
non­vi­o­lent direct action against new nuclear weapons
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Pledge *your* sup­port at http://www.blockthebuilders.org.uk/pledge
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23.01.2007

A group of eight activists block­ad­ed the entrance to AWE Alder­mas­ton this morn­ing at 6.45am. Using steel lock-on tubes the group have com­plete­ly blocked the road. Thus stop­ping all con­struc­tion traf­fic enter­ing or leav­ing the site. This has called a large tail­back and the police turned all traf­fic away from the site.

The road is still blocked at 9.30am and the police have made no efforts to remove them yet. The police had giv­en them an hour to unlock but two and a half hours lat­er they are still there.

The police seem to be plan­ning to freeze them out but they havent tak­en into account the fact they are deal­ing with mad weath­er hard­ened scot­tish activists.

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 response to the Government’s White Paper pub­lished in Dec 2006 in which it con­firmed its inten­tion to replace the Tri­dent sub­ma­rine fleet and out­lined pro­pos­als for replac­ing the cur­rent Tri­dent II D5 mis­siles. .

The new facil­i­ties at Alder­mas­ton will enable the UK to test, design and build the next gen­er­a­tion of nuclear weapons. Such weapons are ille­gal under Inter­na­tion­al laws, and encour­age glob­al pro­lif­er­a­tion, insta­bil­i­ty and con­flict.

A spokesper­son for the group stat­ed “the only safe, humane, moral and legal route is to work towards dis­ar­ma­ment of Tri­dent and ditch any ideas of Tri­dent replace­ment or any new nuclear weapons system.â€?

The group are act­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Block The Builders Cam­paign whoose web­site is www.blockthebuilders.org.uk.