Peace Group to pressure Brown in Manchester

Peace Group members (George Abendstern, Sam O'Brien, Samir Chatterjee, Pat Sanchez, Amy Gilligan and Patricia Gilligan) in Yorkshire Street with leaflets about the demonstration.

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group will be protesting at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester next Saturday (20 September).

The group spent this Saturday morning (13 September) on Yorkshire Street in Rochdale town centre asking people asking people to join them on 'The Costs of the War' demonstration next weekend.

The protest, which is organised by the Stop the War Coalition and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, will hope to put pressure on Gordon Brown and the Labour Party to change their policies. They will be calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to what they describe as the government’s other warmongering policies.

Rochdale & Littleborough Peace Group chairman Philip Gilligan said: "The demonstration will, once again, be taking place on the eve of a Labour Party conference, and I know that, as in previous years, it will be joined by many current and former members of that party. They, like most people in the country, opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. They oppose the government’s plans to squander billions on upgrading of the Trident nuclear weapons system.

"They, like others, feel betrayed by Gordon Brown’s failure to carry out his October 2007 ‘promise’ to withdraw troops from Iraq and by the fact that he is sending ever increasing numbers of British troops to kill and be killed in Afghanistan.

"We need no more promises from Gordon Brown about troop reductions which never actually take place.

"We need to increase the pressure to force his government to bring our troops home, to scrap the Trident nuclear missile system and to finally adopt foreign and defence policies which are no longer dictated by the Pentagon.

"This demonstration gives all of us a good opportunity to show our support for progressive forces within the Labour movement and to demand policies which will, once more, promote Labour as a party of ‘Peace, Justice and Freedom’ rather than of ‘War, Big Business and Nuclear Weapons’."