PEACE activists in Saddleworth have spoken out against Andy Burnham’s plans to invest in nuclear submarines.
The Prime Minister announced that the government would spend more than £8 billion on replacing and expanding the UK’s fleet, which he said would “protect Britain for decades to come.”
It comes as part of wider plans to invest into nuclear defence and promises more than 47,000 new jobs and apprenticeships in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, where manufacturing takes place at BAE Systems.
However, speaking at a memorial for the victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, activists in Saddleworth have said they were against the government’s plans to invest in nuclear arms.
“Young people are not a homogenous group and there are many in the region who don’t want to work for BAE,” said campaigner Jacqui Burke.
“The danger of nuclear war is ever present and growing daily, and without a powerful grassroots movement dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons, the unthinkable, another Hiroshima or Nagasaki, is possible.”
Alongside her role in the Saddleworth Peace Group, Jacqui has spent more than two decades working for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
On a visit to Barrow-in-Furness, she said they found widespread concern that young people would be funnelled into an industry they may disagree with – or risk unemployment.
She added: “We went to Barrow-in-Furness as a big group, and we were all thinking people were going to be rude and aggressive – but we got people driving past us and beeping and waving.
“One car drove past and then stopped, and then this mum and her son got out and joined us.
“And they were saying that they didn’t want [the scheme] to be the only show in town, that they wanted a choice of what they did.
“Some older people remembered the miners and the steel workers, how their communities were decimated because there was no alternative. Young people said that they didn’t want to be forced to leave to get any choice. They’d like a choice in their own hometown.
“It was completely different than we’d expected.”
Jacqui was just one among two dozen people who staged a memorial at Uppermill’s Square on Thursday, August 6 to remember the victims of the Hiroshima bomb.
More than 100,000 died after the US bombed the western Japanese city in 1945. Just days later, a further 70,000 were killed following a second bomb on the coastal city of Nagasaki.
That same day, the mayor of Hiroshima marked the 81st anniversary with a stern warning that nuclear deterrence “simply pushes a world without nuclear weapons into the distance”.
Also attending the memorial were Councillors Barbara Beeley, Alicia Marland and Garth Harkness.
“I think this is the fourth time I’ve stood here in August to commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Cllr Beeley said. “But has the world become a safer place in those four years? I don’t think so.
“But we, as peace champions and those committed to peace, must carry on doing what we’re doing. We have got to constantly say, no, that’s not right. No, we don’t agree with that.
“As the voice of the ordinary person in the street like you and me, sometimes you think you don’t get heard. But if enough of us say no, then perhaps we will be.”
The Saddleworth Peace Group is one of hundreds of peace groups spread across the UK.
The group hold several events each year, including memorials for Armistice Day and for victims of the Holocaust.
According to volunteer Steve Chick, the group was first started by his friend Ken Loach “a long, long time ago.’
“It’s a years-long commitment from people trying to do the right thing,” he said. “I’ve always been involved with things like Greenpeace, so this just seemed like a natural thing to join.
“When Ken died, the group started to fall apart, and then I volunteered to host it – for the next couple of years, the meetings were all at my house.”
Last year marked the eightieth anniversary of the bombing, and was once again recalled in a memorial at Uppermill’s Square.
As the years continue to pass by and living memory fades however, Steve – and the rest of the Peace Group volunteers – are adamant that the memorials in Saddleworth will continue into the future.
“The further we get away from the 1945 bombing, the more it becomes like, ‘Well, no, maybe it didn’t really happen’,” he said. “So it’s about not taking your eye off the ball.
“We don’t think for one moment anybody’s going to go, ‘Oh, Saddleworth Peace Group don’t want a bomb, we’ll cancel it’. We know that’s not going to happen, but it’s a question of if you like standing up and being counted.
“We do it publicly because even though people don’t often stop and join us, at least we’re here, you know?”
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