The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament will stage a demonstration after this Wednesday’s Budget with the slogan ‘Cut Trident: not jobs, health and education!’.
CND will join with the Stop the War Coalition and other organisations to protest over the vast spending on Trident and war whilst at the same time huge cuts are being made to the basic services that citizens rely on. Demonstrators will gather at 5pm in Trafalgar Square and march to a rally opposite Downing Street.
Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said “Whilst the Government claims it needs to impose savage cuts on almost all areas of our public services, billions are still being poured into huge military projects that have no relevance to the defence of Britain. Over £2.2bn a year is spent maintaining the current Trident nuclear weapons system and the costs of just the ‘concept phase’ of its replacement are budgeted at £905m. How the MoD can blow almost a billion pounds on the ‘concept’ of the new submarines – before the work starts on designing, let along building them – is beyond belief. ”
“Our message to the Chancellor is simple: cut your spending on nuclear weapons and war and instead protect the basic services that every man, woman and child in this country relies upon.”
Date: Wednesday 23rd March
Time: 5pm
Location: Trafalgar Square, followed by a march along Whitehall to a rally opposite Downing Street.
To drive home the message to MPs, the billboard site opposite the Portcullis House entrance to Westminster tube station is currently occupied by a giant CND graphic showing the proposed cost increase of spending on nuclear weapons due to the Trident replacement programme. The billboard is pictured below, alongside an image featuring supportive MPs:
After Wednesday’s protest CND will be preparing to take its message to the TUC March for the Alternative demo to be held this Saturday, 26th March. CND is organising a specific anti-nuclear bloc on the demonstration including a giant model of a Trident missile.