Members of Wrexham Peace & Justice Forum who were unable to get to the demonstrations in London and Aberystwyth today, instead teamed up with young Wrexham people to add colour and distribute information at an army recruitment drive by 39 Regiment Royal Artillery in the town centre.

We arrived to discover that Queens Square had been taken over by two huge military vehicles and young children were being encouraged to clamber up and explore one of them, a multiple launched rocket system (MLRS). This vehicle is described on the army website as “a self-propelled artillery rocket system with a range in excess of 30km… a single round of 12 rockets delivers 7,728 bomblets or 336 anti-tank mines.” While the children were greeted by smiling soldiers on one side of the MLRS, a banner on the other side showed the machine in action – nothing to smile about. We strongly object to weapons of mass slaughter being parked in our town centre and presented as entertainment for children. Many passers-by agreed with us.

Hundreds of information leaflets were handed out, mainly to young people and their parents, detailing the realities of army life. This included a leaflet produced by AT EASE (www.atease.org.uk), alerting young recruits to the binding contracts which can tie them into the army from before their 18th birthday until the age of 22 or later. A second leaflet outlined some of the dangers of army life not usually highlighted by army recruiters, including the bullying regimes at army training barracks, the possible consequences for an individual soldier who refuses to fight in an illegal war, and the lack of care shown by the MoD towards serving soldiers and ex-servicemen and women.