Thousands joined hands to surround Aldermaston base on Easter Monday
On the Easter weekend of 1958 - a few weeks after the birth of CND - thousands of people braved the icy weather and marched from London to the nuclear weapons factory at Aldermaston in Berkshire to protest the building of nuclear bombs. The march marked the birth of the peace movement in Britain.
Sadly, 50 years on, the peace movement is needed as much as it ever was; last year, our government (which counts many former CND members among its numbers) voted to replace Trident, and to lock the world into at least another 50 years of nuclear bombs. Despite the rhetoric of Brown's recent national security strategy
(he wants "to free the world from
nuclear weapons", apparently), £5 billion is being poured into building new facilities at Aldermaston to design new nuclear bombs - most likely in contravention of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
