From Trident Ploughshares

Early on the morning of October 24, a group of Trident Ploughshares activists from across the U.K. converged on Burghfield Atomic Weapons Establishment near Burghfield. They blocked approach roads, preventing workers from entering. Hidden in the leafy lanes of Berkshire, Burghfield A.W.E. and it?s partner facility Aldermaston are where the U.K.??s nuclear warheads are planned and produced before being loaded onto lorries for trucking up public roads to the Trident submarine fleet in Scotland. The Mearings, a private road with access to the Main gate of AWE Burghfield, was blocked at both ends by a car with two people locked to it. The construction gate has a line of five people locked across it with their arms in ?lock-on? tubes.

Some of the blockaders were still locked across the road at the end of the day. The police continued to work to remove them from the car they were attached to, having earlier cleared people from the other two entrances. Eventually, all nine activists were arrested and charged with obstruction of the highway. Chris from Southampton, who blocked the South Mearings entrance to the main gate of the warhead assembly facility, said:

?Although it?s been very uncomfortable sitting in the same position with my arm in a drainpipe all day, it??s a small sacrifice when we hear that the entire planet is being put at risk by the abandoning of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Instead the nuclear weapons states should be signing up to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. If we have disrupted business as usual on the U.K.??s nuclear warhead refurbishment programme in even the smallest way, it??s been worth it.??