Local campaigners, Pat Sanchez, Pauline Devine, Patricia and Philip Gilligan asked Christmas shoppers enjoying the carols to join them in signing a letter confirming that they want their taxes "spent on decent health and social care services, not the Trident nuclear weapons system". They distributed not only Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament leaflets asking, "What if we had over £100bn to spend on healthcare, transport, housing, education and energy?" but also samples of folded paper peace cranes and instructions for making these paper birds. The cranes were made by children and peace campaigners from across Japan who had attended this year's Peace March from Tokyo to Hiroshima marking the 68th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb. They have been sent to peace and anti-nuclear groups throughout the world, including Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group by 'Gensuikyo', the Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs with a request that they be given as tokens of peace to promote a worldwide message of nuclear disarmament.
On behalf
of the Peace Group, Philip Gilligan said,
“The
people of Japan know better than most the horrifying and
indiscriminate
destruction that the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
brought in 1945. They
do well remind us in Littleborough and elsewhere that nuclear
weapons now threaten to destroy our entire planet. We were
delighted
to receive the gift from Gensuikyo.
The cranes symbolise our united call
for all countries to scrap their ever-more dangerous nuclear
arsenals and
inspire us to repeat our demand that politicians in Britain
recognise the need
to scrap the Trident nuclear weapons system, immediately."
"There are many reasons why our taxes should never be spent on nuclear weapons and amongst them is the fact that scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons system would save our country around £100 billion. This is money which could fully fund all A&E services in hospitals for over 40 years into the future or be used to build 150 new state-of-the-art hospitals or to pay the wages of 150,000 extra nurses for the next 30 years. That would save lives, instead of threatening humankind's very existence.", he added.
"There are many reasons why our taxes should never be spent on nuclear weapons and amongst them is the fact that scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons system would save our country around £100 billion. This is money which could fully fund all A&E services in hospitals for over 40 years into the future or be used to build 150 new state-of-the-art hospitals or to pay the wages of 150,000 extra nurses for the next 30 years. That would save lives, instead of threatening humankind's very existence.", he added.
