Peace Group marks 30th anniversary with renewed call to scrap Trident

Around 60 members and supporters of Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group celebrated three decades of campaigning for peace and disarmament in Rochdale borough with a shared lunch, in Littleborough, on Sunday (12 June 2011). They especially enjoyed a cake made in the shape of the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) symbol. Several founding members of Littleborough Peace Group, including Rae Street, Pat Sanchez, Lynn Kelsall and Sharon Courtney attended the 30^th anniversary celebrations, while others, including former secretary of Rochdale CND, Jackie Ferguson sent birthday greetings to the group.

The group renewed their call for the scrapping of the Trident system and for an immediate halt to government spending on all nuclear weapons.

Philip Gilligan said

“The £2.2billion that the government squanders on the Trident nuclear weapons system every year is a dangerous waste of scarce public resources. This is money that needs to be spent on the services we need. We need our taxes to be spent on jobs, health and education, not on threatening our planet with nuclear annihilation. It is time to scrap Trident and to call an immediate halt to the government’s plans to spend tens of £billions more of our money on an even more destructive nuclear weapons system.”

Peace Group concerned about NATO ‘mission creep’ in Libya

At its monthly meeting on Wednesday, 8 June 2011, Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group expressed deep concern about NATO’s escalating military action in Libya. They expressed solidarity with anti-war groups in Portugal who, earlier in the day, had called for the immediate cessation of the armed intervention by NATO. They urged the Government to call for a negotiated and peaceful resolution to the civil war in Libya that would ensure that the Libyan people, and not NATO, determine the future of their country.

George Abendstern said,

“In March, David Cameron and those supporting military action in Libya told us that the goal was protect civilians. We were told that this would be a swift 90 day operation and that it would involve no ‘boots on the ground’. Critics like Conservative MP, John Baron and CND vice-chair Jeremy Corbyn, MP warned, at the time, that there was a major risk of ‘mission creep’ and doubted that NATO’s military intervention would be restricted to the protecting civilians. Time has quickly proved their fears to be well founded. NATO air-strikes have been ineffective in protecting many civilians who continue to suffer in military attacks, while, almost immediately, NATO’s agenda shifted to talk of ‘regime change’. British troops are already on the ground in a training role and NATO’s military action has been extended for, at least, another 3 months.”

“It is time for a change of direction on Libya. An escalation of violence will further destabilise the country and lead to more civilian deaths. The civilian population needs protection, through a negotiated settlement. They will not be protected by the warmongering rhetoric of David Cameron and William Hague; politicians who seem intent on dragging us into another apparently endless NATO war”, he added.

30 years of campaigning for peace and disarmament

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group will hold its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday (8 June 2011) exactly 30 years after the group first met. As the minute book shows (see photograph), at 8 pm on 8 June 1981, ten people met at 83 Smithy Bridge Road to discuss forming a 'group against missiles'. They were amongst the many thousands of people concerned about the escalating nuclear arms race and the arrival of 96 Cruise nuclear missiles from the USA at Greenham Common in Berkshire. They named themselves 'Littleborough Peace Group' to emphasise their positive objectives and agreed to affiliate to the national Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Many of those present, subsequently, spent time supporting the Greenham Common Peace camp which ultimately saw the departure of Cruise nuclear missiles from Britain ten years later, while the earliest local campaigns focused on collecting signatures for the International Peace Petition. This called on the presidents of the USA and the then Soviet Union "to end the arms race which threatens all with annihilation ... to terminate immediately all research, development, testing, manufacture and deployment of nuclear bombs and missiles; and ... progressively, but quickly, destroy present stockpiles."

The group has remained continuously active since 1981. Littleborough Peace Group worked closely with Rochdale CND during the 1980s and 1990s and formed a key part of Rochdale Stop the War Coalition from 2002. The three groups merged in January 2007 to become the current, borough-wide, Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group.

Some of the founding members have sadly died or moved away during the past three decades, but several remain very active supporters of the group.

Rae Street was one of those attending the inaugural meeting in June 1981. She has since been a vice-chair of national CND and was, until earlier this year, chair of the Greater Manchester and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Along with Pat Sanchez who sent her apologies for the inaugural meeting in 1981, Rae was also a founder member of the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons.
She said,

"Greenham Common is, now, thankfully, a natural resource and wildlife sanctuary, open to the public, while all those people in Littleborough who signed the International Peace Petition in the 1980s played their own small, but essential role in persuading Reagan and Gorbachev to eventually sign the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987. However, the threat of nuclear annihilation remains and the need to campaign for a nuclear-free future has never been greater. The nuclear-armed states (China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the USA) have the capacity to destroy our planet many times over. Just one of the 48 nuclear warheads carried by each of the UK's Trident submarines has an explosive power 8 times greater than that which killed 140,000 people in Hiroshima. Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group remains as determined as ever to rid our world of nuclear weapons and war."

"All those who have supported our campaigns in the past or who wish to join us in future campaigning will be very welcome at our 30^th anniversary celebrations. For details of all our activities, they should contact Philip Gilligan ( philipgilligan@lineone.net, 01706 370712)." she added.