Peace group welcomes government climb down over Trident

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group has welcomed the news that the National Security Council will consider whether the country can afford the cost of Trident replacement at its next meeting.

Rae Street on behalf of the group said,

"Although the government has previously said that the future of Britain's nuclear weapons system would not be included in the Strategic Defence and Security Review, the need to stop squandering money on Trident has clearly dominated the public's suggestions about ways to cut public expenditure and the government has, now, been forced to concede that this issue needs to be discussed. Senior military chiefs also argue that Trident is an outmoded Cold war weapon which has no role to play against current and foreseeable threats. It was always extraordinary for Liam Fox to refuse to include the Trident nuclear weapons system in the review while other massive cuts are being made in the Defence budget and in public spending more generally. Common sense seems to have prevailed for the moment and I trust that the coalition government will now begin to listen to public opinion. We need to scrap plans for upgrading these nuclear weapons of mass destruction and to begin decommissioning the whole costly and dangerous Trident system. We need our taxes to be spent on public services, not on the means for threatening death and destruction in the world."

Rochdale campaigners call for boycott of Israeli dates

Campaigners from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group gathered in Yorkshire Street on Saturday, 4 September 2010 to promote the boycott of Israeli goods. A week before Eid, they highlighted the particular issues of dates grown by Israeli settlers on occupied Palestinian land in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention and of attempts by Israeli companies to package their products in ways which make their true origins difficult to detect. They urged shoppers to boycott dates that come from ‘Israel’, ‘West Bank’, ‘Jordan Valley’ or ‘Jordan River’ and to buy fair trade Medjoul dates from the Zaytoun organisation.

They decided to do this, after hearing that so-called ‘Kalahari Dates’ had briefly been on sale at Haji Cash and Carry who they knew, in fact, to be very strong supporters of Palestinian cause and of the boycott campaign.

Imra Shoaib said,

“I was shocked, especially during the holy month of Ramadan, to discover that traders in Rochdale could be tricked into buying dates grown in the Occupied Territories, even when they fully support the boycott campaign and are proudly displaying MPACUK certificates reassuring customers that their stock is ‘Israel Free’. In this case the medjoul dates claimed to be from South Africa.

I was delighted to learn that Haji had withdrawn these dates from sale as soon as they learned of their connection with Israel, but I fear that other traders in Rochdale may not be so careful. Wholesalers and shopkeepers have a particular responsibility, but, as customers, we must all be careful to check the true origins of what we buy. We do not want our shopping to pay for Israel’s illegal occupation, it's continuing expansion of illegal settlements, the expulsion of Palestinians from their own land or Israel's brutal and inhumane siege of Gaza. No one who supports the cause of Palestinian freedom will want to be celebrating Eid or Christmas eating dates grown on land illegally seized from Palestinians.”

“I am sure most of us don't want to be eating dates tainted with the blood of Palestinians when such sales are a source of their continued oppression.” she added.

Sajid Maqbool, General Manager of Haji Cash and Carry said,

“Our suppliers have been under strict orders not to supply any Israeli dates or their products and, if there are any such products, I will withdraw them from sale and take the relevant action against the suppliers. Palestine is very close to my heart and I am pleased to say that we had a random check by two members of MPAC around 2 weeks ago. They went round the store and inspected all the dates and also issued a poster stating that we are an Israel free zone. We will fully support the Palestine cause.”

For more information about the Muslim Public Affairs Committee Boycott Zionist Blood Dates Campaign!, please see http://www.mpacuk.org/story/120810/mpacuk-launches-boycott-zionist-blood-dates-campaign.html

For more information on the PSC's Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, please see http://www.palestinecampaign.org/Index5b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=3&l2_id=19

NFLA Nagasaki Commemoration, Peace Gardens, Manchester

Hiroshima Day Commemorations 2010

Peace group members were in a wide variety of places on 6 August 2010. Pat Sanchez, for example, was stuck in Paris, but still managed her own quiet ceremony in her hotel room. Meanwhile, the Gilligan family attempted to fly a paper lantern with the message “No More Hiroshimas!” from the beach at Criccieth, only to be frustrated by very strong winds. They returned, later, on a much calmer evening to commemorate the dead of Nagasaki and successfully launched the lantern out across Cardigan Bay.

Philip Gilligan said,

“Remembering the horror of Hiroshima and the death and destruction
wrought on Nagasaki a few days brings home the importance of striving for a
global ban on nuclear weapons and campaigning against the government’s
plans to upgrade the Trident nuclear weapons system. Britain’s existing
nuclear weapons of mass destruction threaten the world with many times the
destructive force of the Hiroshima bomb. They would kill 50,000,000 people
and destroy our planet. They are dangerous, costly and unnecessary. It is
time to scrap Trident and to strive seriously for a safer world in which the
£billions squandered on the potential for nuclear devastation is spent, instead,
on the things we need. We need education, health and social services, not
nuclear missiles.”

Nuclear Threat to 2012 Olympics

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group joined anti-nuclear campaigners in East London on Saturday (10 July 2010) to highlight the fact that trains carrying highly-radioactive nuclear cargoes such as fuel rods are being taken through the 2012 Olympic site and other densely populated areas of the country on a weekly basis. Rae Street, Pat Sanchez and Philip Gilligan walked around the Olympic stadium to Stratford railway station where they joined fellow protesters in a symbolic ‘die-in’ in front of the Olympic Clock.

Pat Sanchez said,

“We were there because we need to highlight the devastating consequences of any accident to or terrorist attack on one of these nuclear trains, and we were there from Rochdale because this is a danger that affects the whole country. The trains passing the Olympic stadium each week are carrying highly dangerous radioactive waste from the nuclear power stations at Sizewell in Essex and Dungeness in Kent. They go all the way to Sellafield in Cumbria via the Midlands and the North West. Any accident or attack could have devastating consequences in Rochdale as well as East London. The potentially deadly cargoes on these trains are an inevitable by-product of the nuclear power industry. The fact that they are being transported from one end of the country to the other shows that the nuclear power industry doesn’t know what to do with its existing radioactive waste, let alone the even greater quantities of waste that would result from an increased in the number of nuclear plants. We need to stop these nuclear trains running through our towns and cities and we need to end our use of nuclear energy. We need to transfer the money currently wasted on hidden and not-so-hidden subsidies to the nuclear industry to funding insulation of our homes and developing safe and sustainable energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and geothermal sources. Nuclear power is not worth the risk.”

Peace Group remembers all those killed in Afghanistan

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group held an hour's vigil at the cenotaph opposite Rochdale Town Hall on Tuesday 22 June 2010. They were mourning the deaths of British soldiers in Afghanistan, including, Richard Hollington aged 23 years, the 300th British soldier to be killed there and the deaths of the thousands of Afghan civilians killed, since the invasion by NATO forces in October 2001. Members of the group read the names of all 300 British troops killed in Afghanistan since NATO's invasion and the names of 300 of the Afghan civilians. They also laid two wreaths, one with the number '300' and one with the name 'Sayed Rahman', a two year old child killed in a US airstrike during the night of April 8/9, 2003 in a village in Paktika Province near the Pakistan border.

The group observed periods of silence for all the dead and called for British troops to be brought home from Afghanistan.

On behalf of the Peace Group, Philip Gilligan said,

"This is a day which we hoped would never come, but while the government continues to send our young men and women to kill and be killed in Afghanistan, it was inevitable that it would arrive. Saturday 26 June 2010 is 'Armed Forces Day' and David Cameron is telling us that we should show greater appreciation for our military. Bringing them home from NATO's disastrous and futile war would be a very good start. We need to remember all the dead and to demand that British troops are allowed to return home to their families. The killing must stop."

Budget Day message - “Cut Trident Save Services”

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group took its ‘Cut Trident Save Services’ message to the Budget Day demonstration outside Rochdale town hall on Tuesday evening, 22 June 2010.

Philip Gilligan carried the group’s mock Trident nuclear missile on his back, displaying a price tag of £97bn (£97,000,000,000). He said,

“Today’s budget is a major assault on local jobs and services. The coalition government says that they need to ‘reduce the deficit’, but they are ignoring the cost of the unnecessary and dangerous Trident nuclear missile system and refuse to even include Trident in their review of defence spending. Greenpeace estimates that the cost of ‘Trident Replacement’ will total £97billion. Based on population, Rochdale’s share of this would amount to a staggering £300million; six times the £50million cuts, now, threatened in next year’s Rochdale Council budget. This is money that could and should be spent on the jobs and services which the government is now cutting. Trident “is a system we simply cannot afford”. We need to cut nuclear weapons of mass destruction, not the public services we need.”