TRIDENT PLOUGHSHARES Press Release: Tuesday 19/11/02 11am

"WE’LL GO ON SOUNDING TRIDENT ALARM," SAY LOCALS

Today, as Trident Ploughshares takes down its disarmament camp at Devonport , locals who organised the weekend’s events vowed to continue the campaign for as long as Trident is on their doorstep.

Claire Devereaux, a local Trident Ploughshares pledger, said "It has been tremendous fun highlighting a very serious issue. Local people have been supported by peace campaigners from all over Europe. However, I am very angry at local MP David Jamieson suggesting that our campaign will take away peoples’ jobs. If the millions being spent on Trident each day was invested locally it would greatly ease the poverty in Plymouth and create many more opportunities for employment."

Jamieson’s comments were in strong contrast to the positive support the campaigners met locally, on the streets of Plymouth, at the blockade yesterday and from Catholic Bishop Christopher Budd, whose message of support for Trident Ploughshares is copied below.

In the immediate future the campaign will focus on supporting those arrested at the weekend during their forthcoming court processes. In addition to ongoing affinity group actions there will be another disarmament camp at Devonport in 2003.



Message to the Trident Ploughshares Inter-faith Service

from Catholic Bishop Christopher Budd 8th November 2002

Trident Ploughshares Peace Campaign

"Unfortunately I will not be able to join you for this prayer service. However, I wish to express my solidarity with you in your endeavour to get nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction banned from our planet.

May I ask two sensitivities of you:- please always pursue your objectives with peaceful means; and in whatever you do please keep in mind you are touching people’s means of employment, a most important matter.

I pray that nuclear and other weapons will be eventually removed from our world and that people’s employment will cease to be dependent on the production and management of such weapons. May I be bold and finish with a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

‘Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation. A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who posses modern scientific weapons – especially atomic, biological or chemical weapons – to commit such crimes.’

All good wishes",

Bishop Christopher Budd

Press Contact: Marcus Armstrong 07905 917532 or 07967 819514