Few if any of the people passing along Vauxhall Bridge Road were aware that the UK headquarters of bomb makers Lockheed Martin were just a few yards away in Carlisle Place, and many of them stopped to talk with the protesters and to sign the petition against replacing Trident as well as the Christmas card asking the company to stop making bombs and to invest in peace.

After an hour and a half of handing out leaflets, gathering signatures for their petition and card, a group of the protesters in Santa dress (and an odd reindeer) went to the building housing the Lockheed Martin offices to deliver their card.

At the door they were met by a security man and the premises manager of the offices, which are shared with a number of other organisations, who told them that they could not enter the building and that nobody from Lockheed Martin was prepared to come out to meet them. He offered to take the card and deliver it to them, making sure that they got it, and after a short discussion his offer was accepted. At the request of the premises manager they left room for people to walk past on the pavement and to leave and enter the building.

The protesters then began to sing, start with their specially written "Lockheed Anthem" to the tune of 'Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’, which starts:

Lockheed the big bomb maker
Does some very nasty work
Building new nuclear weapons
Carlisle Place is where they lurk

After singing all three verses and choruses of this, they went on to other anti-nuclear carols for around 15 minutes, while one of the protesters with a Santa mask and a 'weapons inspector' white suit lay on the pavement in a black plastic body bag.

A number of people from the other companies in the building came in and out during the protest, but there was no sign of anyone from Lockheed Martin, who have offices on the second floor of Manning House, a fine example of Victorian architecture that was once the house of Cardinal Manning. Their lease comes up for renewal in around 18 months and it seems that the building's owners - and doubtless the other companies leasing offices there - will be glad to be rid of them. So next year's Christmas demonstration there may well be the last in Carlisle Place.

It's very hard to find any rational explanation for the UK government's dedication to the continuation of the UK nuclear weapons program and the replacement of Trident.
It has of course been many years since we have had an independent nuclear deterrent - the very heart of our special relationship with the USA is that our nuclear weapons are essentially an offshore arm of the US nuclear capability. There has been a massive expansion in the manufacturing capability of the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston since 2005 costing well over £5 billion. The AWE is owned by a private consortium led by the major US arms company Lockheed Martin and including another US company, Jacobs along with Serco from the UK. It is perhaps not surprising to read in the Guardian that as well as making warheads for the UK the AWE also makes them for the USA.

This vast investment in increased nuclear bomb-making capacity has taken place at a time when US and other world leaders have been talking about cutting stocks of warheads, and making great efforts to stop countries such as Iran and North Korea developing a nuclear capability.

Our nuclear program was once justified as a deterrent against Soviet attack during the years of the cold war. Since we are now celebrating 20 years since the break-up of the Soviet empire this is an argument that is 20 years out of date, 20 years of entirely wasted expenditure on keeping our submarines with their nuclear warheads at sea.

With our current financial position, continued expenditure on a military nuclear programme seems clearly madness. That it has gone on for so long despite the end of the cold war seems to indicate some very effective lobbying by private arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin.

More pictures on Demotix, and shortly on My London Diary:
 http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2009/12/dec.htm#lockheed