Let us take a trip down memory lane.....it is the 1980s....a protesxt, led by women, were put together to protest the US stationing cruise missiles with nuke tips on UK soil.
Thames Valley Police warned of the scale and nature of the anti-nuclear demonstration planned to take place on Saturday 25 June; and on the urgent MOD reinforcement operation comprising 100 MOD Police and a somewhat larger number of RAF personnel that had consequently been set in hand.
- In the event, the demonstration took place and, at its peak, about 1500 were present outside the perimeter. At about 3.00 pm, some 80 demonstrators penetrated the wire, in 5 separate places, and entered the base. They were swiftly contained by the MOD forces, but not before some of them had reached the runway on which they painted anti-nuclear slogans (which have now been removed). There was one arrest by MOD police, for damage to the window of an MOD police coach, but all trespassers were removed from the base by the early evening.
- This event was significant in three main respects. Firstly, it was evidence again of the general reliability of Thames Valley Police warnings of the likely nature scale of such demonstrations- even though on this occasion the warning came at a very late stage. Secondly, the civil police assessment that incursions were likely was fully borne out. Thirdly, the event was further confirmation that the Greenham Common perimeter is a particularly hard one to defend and that, whatever the scale of internal reinforcement, it is unrealistic to suppose that every incursion can be wholly prevented- as opposed to being swiftly contained.
- The Guardian today reported the incident, together with the creation of a peace camp outside RAF Cottesmore. Extra MDP personnel have been deployed there and also at Porton where there is also now some presence of demonstrators although the latter have not so far been reported to the press.
In case you were more interested than I gave you credit.....
I bring up this historical bit because once again the US is planning on nukes for the UK.....
The US will deploy nuclear weapons to the UK for the first time in 15 years in a move Russia will view as a provocation, The Telegraph reported, citing Pentagon documents.
Pentagon procurement contracts show that the US is planning to station B61-12 nuclear warheads at RAF Lakenheath, a base in Suffolk, England. The US pulled its nuclear weapons out of the UK in 2008, and its decision to redeploy them demonstrates the low state of US-Russia relations.
According to The Telegraph, Russia said a US deployment of nukes to the UK would be an "escalation" that would require "compensating counter-measures."
The US already has nukes stationed in Germany, Belgium, Italy, Turkey, and the Netherlands as part of NATO's nuclear sharing program. Last year, Russia announced it was deploying nuclear weapons to Belarus amid tensions over the proxy war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to NATO's nuclear sharing program to justify his decision.
The B61 is the US's primary nuclear gravity bomb, and the B61-12 is its newest iteration. It's considered a tactical nuclear weapon, which have a lower yield than strategic warheads. But the B61-12 has a maximum yield of 50 kilotons, more than three times as powerful as the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
The UK has a nuclear arsenal of its own and announced in 2021 that it was expanding, raising questions about Britain's commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The UK said it was raising the ceiling of its nuclear warhead stockpile from 180 to 240 and that it would no longer publish information about the number of warheads it maintains in an operational status.
Will this trigger the intensity of the protests from 40 years ago?
Please any UK readers that have an opinion on this let me know.....
Personally, I think women should get involved again.
I Read, I Write, You Know
"lego ergo scribo"
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