Press release from The Dragonistas
3rd June 2016
A group from Knighton and surrounding area will soon be taking to Atomic Weapons Establishment Burghfield in Berkshire their opposition to the immorality, illegality in international law and obscene cost of the government’s plan to renew the Trident nuclear deterrent. The planned action by the group, calling themselves the Dragonistas, is just part of a month of continuous anti nuclear weapons protest at AWE Burghfield by concerned groups from across the UK, co-ordinated by Trident Ploughshares, a group founded by Angie Zelter from Knighton.
The group from the Knighton area plans to contribute to a Welsh Day of Action at Burghfield on June 15th. Whereas two years ago the group promoted its anti-Trident message in colourful, attention-grabbing fashion by unrolling a massive pink wool scarf down the middle of the town’s Broad Street, it now plans to incorporate into the June 15th protest a large wooden model of a nuclear submarine!
The exact nature of the protest action remains under wraps but Angie Zelter, speaking for the group, stressed that it was entirely non-violent, the intention being to raise public awareness of the issue and to disrupt the activities at AWE Burghfield, near Reading, where Britain’s nuclear warheads are manufactured and maintained.
One member of the group, Chris Plant, said “With each of the 160 missile warheads on board each submarine having eight times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, Trident can only be a weapon of mass destruction and as such illegal under international law. Add to that its cost, estimated recently at £150 thousand million over the lifetime of the system, and renewing Trident looks absolutely obscene.”
The group would be pleased to hear from any like-minded individuals, who can make contact through the Trident Ploughshares Facebook page and website, https://tridentploughshares.org/.
For more information and to arrange interviews please contact Chris Plant at 07751221487 or cjwplant@yahoo.co.uk