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Press Releases & Updates 2003
14th May 2003
We Spent £500K Defending WMD Against Peaceful Protest, Say MOD
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In a statement issued today, the Trident Ploughshares campaign has responded to the revelation, as reported by the BBC, that last year the costs incurred by the British Ministry of Defence in dealing with protest at the Faslane nuclear weapon base in Scotland were close to £500K.
The claim is that the cost were incurred in heightening security at the base and making good damage caused by anti-Trident activists.
The Trident Ploughshares statement reads: "First of all, we treat these figures with some scepticism in view of the generally low level of reliability in public statements issued by the MOD. If in fact they do relate to real costs we would point out that £500K represents one sixth of one day’s expenditure on the Trident system. The fact that Britain spends these huge sums on criminal weapons of mass destruction when many of its citizens live in poverty is a damning indictment of this regime. Further, if they have spent these sums on heightened security then it has been largely wasted, given the ease and regularity with which peaceful activists breached so-called "high security" areas in 2002, for example having the leisure to paint a number of peace slogans onto Trident submarine Victorious at Faslane last August and then to ring the ship’s bell.
While it deeply concerns us that our activities again and again expose the casual and complacent way in which these prime terrorist targets are defended from attack, it is Trident itself, with its ongoing and active threat to humanity, which causes us the most distress. We will continue to do what we can to obstruct, disrupt and disarm it. As responsible citizens we have no other choice."
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