Press Releases & Updates 2000

The walkers will set off from Aldermaston, where the components for Britain’s nuclear bombs are made, on 26th June, and will walk to Faslane, 30 miles from Glasgow, where the Trident nuclear weapon submarines are based. They will arrive at 7 a.m. on the 1st August, just in time to join the Trident Ploughshares/Scottish CND blockade of the base.

Prime movers in the walk are the nuns and monks of Nipponzan Myohoji, a small Buddhist order which has a peace pagoda in Milton Keynes and one in London. The diverse group of around 20 walkers are already committed to the entire distance and many more will join them on the journey. The flame from the burning of Hiroshima after the dropping of the atom bomb on August 6th 1945 has been kept alive over the years and was brought to the UK this summer.

Among the walkers is Ulla Roder (45), a peace activist from Denmark and one of the "Trident Three" who disarmed "Maytime", a Trident-related research barge in Loch Goil in June last year. Ulla spent several months last year in a Scottish prison before being acquitted in Greenock Sheriff Court. She said: "We are walking to make people aware that the nuclear threat is real, because of the continuing build-up in the new nuclear weapons systems. As we go on foot we can reach people directly and in a personal way. We will make the resistance to nuclear crime visible on the roads and in the towns. We can also demonstrate peaceful alternatives by the way we live and work together as we go."

On behalf of Nipponzan Myohoji Sister Astrid said: "Military men, industrialists and scientists are fully aware of the absurdity and immorality of continuing the build-up of these arms, yet they still involve themselves in it."

Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas, who was among 185 people arrested at the blockade of Faslane on February 14th will join the walk for the 28th June and again on 1st August.

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