Press Releases & Updates 2006

At noon on Wednesday 20th September Irene Willis, 61 of Trident Ploughshares, Fr. Martin Newell, 39 of Trident Ploughshares and the Catholic Worker community and Stephen Barnes, 31 of the Catholic Worker community, climbed up onto the roof of Manning House and hung a large banner saying "Stop Lockheed New Nuke Bombmaker" down the front. Their friends in the Muriel Lester’s nonviolent affinity group hung banners on the railings outside the building and gave out leaflets to, mostly sympathetic, passers by. They gave free publicity to the corporation’s presence in Westminster and to its work at Atomic Weapons Establishment, Aldermaston, developing a replacement for the Trident nuclear missile system. The later is a breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. [1] They have thus saved Lockheed Martin some of its slice of the £20 billion + that developing and building a replacement for Trident will cost. [2]

Banner on Lockheed Martin HQ

Irene Willis was carried down the fire escape by two security men at about 12.15 pm. The police cordoned off the road outside Manning House but nobody was arrested. The Head of Communications at Lockheed Martin had agreed to meet one person from the group at 1.20 pm. By 1.30pm after the group had discussed the offer and made it clear through the police that they would want more than one representative he withdrew the offer. The two men remained displaying the big banner until they came down of their own accord at 2.30pm.

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