Peace group’s plea for nuclear disarmament

Date published: 29/06/2009

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group were joined by many shoppers on Yorkshire Street as they called for a parliamentary discussion on the Ministry of Defence’s first report on the proposed replacement of the Trident nuclear system.

Shoppers could fill in postcards to MPs, some said that times are hard, others urging them not to waste money on nuclear weapons and also reminding them that Trident has been described as useless for Britain’s security needs.

Philip Gilligan on behalf of the Peace Group said: “Britain is in the middle of the worst economic crisis for decades. In Rochdale we are losing our local hospital services and being told that we will face cuts in other essential services.

“But the government is now planning to spend as much as £76 billion on upgrading nuclear weapons which we do not need and which do nothing but threaten us all with complete annihilation.

“Rochdale's MPs, Jim Dobbin and Paul Rowen, sensibly voted against the government plans to replace Trident during the vote in Parliament in 2007, but other local MPs, like Janet Anderson and Phil Woolas supported this immoral squandering of our taxes on ever more dangerous nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

“We need to continually remind them and the government that we need nurses not nukes. We want welfare not warfare. We want all our MPs to say no to Trident.”