Peace campaigners end the year campaigning against Trident

Peace campaigner Pat Sanchez collecting signatures in Rochdale on Saturday 30 December 2006

Peace campaigners from Rochdale and Littleborough say that they finished 2006 doing very much what they intend to do throughout 2007; campaigning for money to be spent on saving lives rather than destroying them. 

Members of Littleborough and District Peace Group leafleted in Rochdale on 30 December, asking Saturday shoppers to sign their petition and to write to their MPs. Their leaflets explained that at the same time as they are closing Rochdale Infirmary Accident and Emergency Department and Maternity Unit, the Government has admitted that it wants to spend tens of billions on a replacement for Britain's current nuclear weapons system. 

Philip Gilligan, on behalf of the group, said: “Experts calculate that ‘Trident Replacement’ could eventually cost  as much as, £75,000,000,000 and that Rochdale’s share of this scandalous sum amounts to  £261,000,000; twelve times the Health Trust’s deficit that supposedly requires us to lose so many of our essential local health services.  This money should be spent on improving our health and social services, but instead the government wants to squander it on weapons of mass destruction.” 

Mr Gilligan called on others to help the Peace Group to halt “this nuclear madness.”  “We must ensure that all our local MPs, including government ministers such as Phil Woolas, know that we oppose Trident replacement and want our money to be spent, not on instruments of indiscriminate death, but on saving and improving lives”, he added.