CND Vice Chair, and London CND Chair, Carol Turner, reports on a successful blockade of Lakenheath last Saturday.
Originally featured in Labour Outlook
Despite government silence, news that US nuclear weapons are returning to Britain is at last beginning to get through. CND members from across the country gathered at the main gate of Lakenheath airbase to join a blockade which marked the end of a successful two-week peace camp, organised by the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace (LAP) coalition.
Lakenheath, in the heart of the Suffolk countryside, has the biggest presence of US military forces in Britain – exposing its less than honest claim to be an RAF base. Lakenheath hosts the US Airforce 48th Fighter Wing, tasked with providing ‘worldwide responsive combat airpower and support’ which is ‘capable of dominating any adversary’.
Palestinians are among the so-called adversaries the US forces based there are currently helping to ‘dominate’. F35 bombers fly from Lakenheath, in support of Israel’s attacks on the Occupied territories.
LAP activities during the April peace camp included a War Crimes and Genocide Day highlighting the complicity of the US, UK, and NATO in Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza. Past attacks from Lakenheath include Libya in 1986 and combat missions against Afghanistan from 2001 and Iraq in 2023. Other peace camp activity days included an international conference attended by guests from across Europe and beyond, and a Greenham Women day.
Around 250 people took part in the blockade on Saturday 26 April, including two CND coaches from London. An impressive list of banners. I recall seeing them from Wales, York, Plymouth, Quakers, London Peace Pagoda – including nearby Norwich and Cambridge.
Fine weather and a carnival atmosphere notwithstanding, there were seven arrests from among those who chose not to heed the police call to disperse at the end of the afternoon.
CND General Secretary Sophie Bolt said nuclear weapons don’t make us safer, they make us a target. She expressed solidarity with those arrested after the successful three-hour shut down of the main entrance to the base. “Rather than arresting people for peacefully protesting the return of US nuclear weapons to Britain,” Sophie said, “the clear violations of international law facilitated by the British government should be investigated.“
Visit CND for more information on US nuclear weapons coming to Britain and what you can do.
Lakenheath Alliance for Peace is a coalition of local, national, and international groups dedicated to preventing the return of US nuclear weapons to Lakenheath. LAP holds monthly vigils at the base.