We shall (not) overcome

For 50 years they have been characterized as eccentrics, tilting at the nuclear weapons windmill. The Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp has perpetrated not a single violent action in that time but is now to be dismantled on the orders of the Labour Government. However they try to dress it up that is what is happening. In the High Court the AWPC was described as an operational and security risk.

Security Risk
All of this gives new impetus to the CND 50th anniversary march on Aldermaston on Easter Monday, which promises to be the biggest ever. Here’s why we march.

It survived six Tory governments, the end of the Cold War and the rise and fall of mass marches against the British nuclear deterrent. But after 50 years in which the tradition of peaceful demonstration has been maintained outside the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, the New Labour era has finally done for one of the most famous symbols of protest in British political history.

Today would have seen the latest gathering of the band of women who have assembled on the second Saturday of each month since the 1980s to object to the continuing development of the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent. Instead, following a High Court ruling this week, the protest tents are being removed, demonstrators are being threatened with arrest and “no camping” signs are being erected.

From being a symbol of the right to protest, Aldermaston has become the latest testament to the desire of successive New Labour governments to curtail the right to assemble, demonstrate and object to government policy.

Posted by Watson

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