Anti-nuclear campaigners heading for Clyde bases protest

On July 8th people from across Europe will join UK campaigners for a week of peaceful direct action1 organised by Trident Ploughshares against the UK's nuclear weapon bases on the Clyde to share their concern that the threat posed by the nuclear-armed states, including the UK, is a threat directed at the whole world.

Dominique Lalanne, a nuclear physicist and chair of Abolition of Nuclear Weapons-France, said: "I am coming from France to make clear that nuclear weapons is a global problem for all of us, French as well as Britannic people. I want a nuclear free world and I hope the Ban Treaty2 will convince our two peoples that we have to take the lead!"

From Goteborg in Sweden Petter Joelson said: "We're coming here as a family with our two year-old son, because we think it is crucial to be a part of a movement for a safer future. Nuclear weapons, together with climate change, can completely devastate the planet, and I think it is my responsibility as a parent and human being to do what I can to stop that."

Dulce and Juan Carlos, and family, from the Canary Islands, will also be joining the campaigners at their campsite in Peaton Wood, just half a mile south of the nuclear warhead storage depot at Coulport. They said: "We are joining this international call to face together the global threat posed by the strengthening of the nuclear deterrent system. We hope that Scotland (and all the world) will be soon free of nukes".

It is expected that by the time the camp begins there will be in place a UN nuclear weapon ban treaty to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons – seen as the biggest step forward for nuclear disarmament in decades.

For Trident Ploughshares Jane Tallents said: "In the struggle to rid the world of the threat of nuclear war there is every place for conventional political action and for public education and persuasion. But when you are dealing with something as morally deviant as these weapons of mass destruction there is also an important place for nonviolent confrontation."

Read more about Trident Ploughshares here: www.tridentploughshares.org