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This Easter Monday will be the fiftieth anniversary of the first march from London to
the Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston. To mark this historic event, the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is inviting the peace, anti-war and environmental
movements to come together and celebrate five decades of anti-nuclear campaigns and
call for an end to Britain's resurgent nuclear weapons programme.
Aldermaston 2008:
the bomb stops here!
CND
T his Easter Monday  24
March  the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarma-
ment (CND) is holding a mas-
sive "surround the base"
event at the Atomic Weapons
Establishment, Aldermaston.
It will be a celebration of 50
years of campaigning for nuclear
disarmament and a clear
demand for an end to Aldermaston's continuing role as the beating heart of Britain's nuclear
warhead production.
Get on board
Each of Aldermaston's seven
gates will have a theme of one of
the decades, the '50s, '60s, all
the way through to the '00s,
plus a "timeless" gate organised
by the women's peace camp
which has been held at the site
for the past 22 years. Different
regional, national and specialist
sections of CND, faith and environmental groups are involved.
Both gate-based and roaming
entertainment and speakers are
being organised and more
artists, musicians and entertainers are invited to participate. See
right for contact details.
More than 5000 people are
expected to attend, from across
Britain and beyond, and coaches
are being organised to transport
participants from all regions (see
website for details, right).
One delegation is travelling
all the way from Japan, and
includes Hibakusha, survivors of
the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They are
planning a peace walk  to
arrive at Aldermaston on Easter
Monday  from nearby Greenham Common (former home to
US cruise missiles and historic
symbol of popular resistance).
Fifty years is enough!
For the past five decades there
have been sustained campaigns
to halt Britain's nuclear weapons
programme and Aldermaston
has become both a symbol and
tangible location of grassroots
protest and resistance.
With parliament voting in
March 2007 for a new fleet of
nuclear-armed submarines, and
with the construction of facilities for a new generation of
nuclear warheads already underway at Aldermaston, it's time to
send a clear message to the government that 50 years is
enough!
Trident replacement is expected to cost the taxpayer more
than £25 billion and, when the
total lifetime costs are taken
into consideration, it is predicted to cost more than £75 billion.
Currently, the only nuclear
threat Britain faces is that the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty may fall apart  by
breaking it themselves, the
British government is setting an
incredibly poor example to
aspirational nuclear weapons
states.
The WMD profiteers
The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston
designs and manufactures the
warheads for the United Kingdom's nuclear weapons. Since
the mid-1990s it has been a
"government-owned-contractor-operated" (GOCO) affair which,
since 2000, has been managed
by a consortium of British
Nuclear Fuels, Lockheed Martin
and Serco, called AWE Management Ltd.
The one third stake of AWE-
ML owned by BNFL is currently
up for grabs, with two US companies, Fluor and Jacobs, emerg-
ing as the only likely winners. It
is therefore likely that within
coming months Britain's nuclear
weapons programme will come
under the day-to-day operation
control of a consortium which is
two-thirds US run.
Investment and development
In 2002, AWE published a plan
to redevelop and build new
facilities at the site. According
to AWE personnel, these developments are on the scale of
Heathrow's Terminal Five and
the construction industry has
estimated that there could be
around £12bn in contracts over
the next decade.
These developments clearly
tie in with the March 2007 parliamentary decision to develop a
new generation of nuclear-armed
submarines: Aldermaston will
build the warheads for this new
system.
At the heart of the new developments at Aldermaston are
new multi-million-pound supercomputer facilities which will
give AWE one of the most powerful computer systems in
Europe  possibly only exceeded
by the supercomputers used in
the USA for their atomic
weapons development  and will
minimise the need for live testing (prohibited under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty).
The old laser facility at the
site is being replaced by a new
facility which is 1000 times
more powerful. Despite lengthy
delays caused by campaigners,
the structure of the facility is
now almost complete.
Facilities to build warheads
will be refurbished and new ones
built. These include new facilities for handling plutonium,
highly enriched uranium, tritium, high explosives and new
warhead assembly facilities.
Additional warhead specialists
and engineers have been recruited in recent years and this element of the workforce continues
to grow.
Now more than ever
CND has been spearheading the
"No Trident Replacement" campaign, and this Easter's event is
an important focus for mass
opposition to the government's
plans.
CND is calling on everyone
involved in the anti-nuclear
movement over the past five
decades to come together to
mark this historic event, not
just as a celebration of 50 years
of anti-nuclear protest, but as
part of a renewed campaign to
halt Trident replacement. As
one early marcher recently commented, "I marched because we
were the first generation to
realise that the world could end
in half an hour. We walked to
save this precious world. We can
`ban the bomb'. I still believe we
can do it".
Come to Aldermaston on
Easter Monday and join with
thousands of others to surround
the base.
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