Peace campaigner halts work at nuclear bomb factory

Pat Sanchez lies blocking the gates at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston yesterday morning.

A Littleborough peace campaigner succeeded in halting work at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston for five hours yesterday morning (Monday 27 October).

With other members of Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group and Greater Manchester and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Pat Sanchez had joined the protest called by Trident Ploughshares and CND at the nuclear bomb factory in Berkshire.

There were hundreds of anti-nuclear protesters at Aldermaston and Ms Sanchez was amongst those who decided to stop traffic entering the warhead factory by lying in the road locked onto each other.

Eventually, all the gates were blocked and Ms Sanchez and her fellow peace campaigners were able to block work for more than five hours, from 6.40 am to midday.

Ms Sanchez was elated by her success and joined enthusiastically in the cheering which greeted the countdown to the final minutes of the blockade.

She said: “We wanted to stop work there on those evil bombs for as long as possible. Blocking the gates did this very directly. It's bad enough that they work on maintaining the existing nuclear weapons of mass destruction. It's even worse that they're investing £billions on designing new warheads for a possible replacement to the Trident nuclear weapons system. It's wrong on so many counts! Wrong to plan for mass murder, wrong to threaten other countries with nuclear annihilation, wrong to waste £billions when we can't afford enough social care for sick or elderly people or to halt climate change, wrong to waste the nation's scientific talents designing killing machines instead of cures for malaria or HIV and wrong to give out a message to the world that the only worthwhile security is a nuclear bomb. I will only feel genuinely secure when we have rid the world of nuclear weapons.”