Protests

Actor Rula Lenska and journalist Rosie Boycott join other celeb mums in a vigil against Heathrow expansion in Parliament Square

As the date for the government's decision on Heathrow's third runway hurtles towards us (they'll be deciding in June or July, we think), a whole gamut of voices has been speaking out against the agenda for airport expansion that will destroy our chances of slowing climate change.

At the risk of sounding like a bad joke, an actress and a bishop (OK then, an archbishop) have both joined the fray, along with several celebrity mums and the head of the Sustainable Development Commission. Eclectic, eh? They're all calling on the government to shelve its plans for airport expansion.

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.