Latest news with #CND
Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
British nukes are back – and so are CND's middle-class campaigners
'Gather round everybody, we're going to do some chanting. And the first one we're going to do is: 'We want the nukes out now.'' It's a scorching hot day in Norfolk, and outside RAF Marham, Sophie Bolt, the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and a vivid floral dress, megaphone in hand, is getting things underway. The 30 or 40 people gather in front of the base's entrance sign, partially obscured by a banner so it now reads: 'Royal Air Force: Welfare not Warfare', while the handful of photographers covering the event take their positions. ' We want the nukes out now, we want the nukes out now, we want the nukes out NOW!' It's a few days after the Nato summit in the Hague, where Keir Starmer had announced that Britain was to purchase 12 American F-35A jets, which are capable of carrying conventional munitions and also the US B61-12 gravity bomb. US nuclear weapons have not been stored in the UK since the last left RAF Lakenheath in 2008 – while Britain has not had its own air-launched nuclear weapons since 1998. Now the planes and the bombs are coming back, to be stationed at RAF Marham. So it was that the word had gone out from the CND to groups, as far flung as Lewisham and Norwich, to assemble at the gates. 'We want the nukes out now, we want the nukes out NOW!' 'I think that's very good on the chanting front,' Sophie says, 'so give yourself a big cheer.' Now the group assembles for a photograph, behind another banner – 'Remember Hiroshima'. The B61-12 gravity bomb, that will be stored perhaps a few hundred yards from where we are standing, has the explosive power of more than three times the weapon dropped on the Japanese city in 1945. A man wearing a Starmer mask holds up two model bombs. Others hold up placards bearing the symbol of the CND, which in the 1960s and beyond became the universally recognised peace sign. Founded in 1958, the CND claims to be Europe's largest single issue campaign, and the longest running. A year earlier, in 1957, Britain had tested atomic and hydrogen bombs for the first time, becoming the third atomic power after the US and the USSR, and spurring rising public anxiety about the dangers of nuclear weapons and proliferation. 'The case is quite simple,' Bertrand Russell, the philosopher and pacifist who was the CND's first president, wrote. 'We think that the policy which is being pursued by the western powers is one which is almost bound to end in the extermination of the human race. Some of us think that might be rather a pity.' Other prominent members included the Rev John Collins, founder of Christian Action and one of the four founders of the charity War on Want, and Donald, Lord Soper, the Methodist minister and pacifist, who was known as 'Dr Soapbox', and who preached at Speakers' Corner and Tower Hill, against war, poverty, drink, gambling, slave labour, racial inequality and capital punishment. Its unofficial headquarters was in a Soho cafe, 'filled with bearded men playing chess', the writer Barry Miles once recalled, but the cause energised a constituency far beyond the Left, students and the clergy. Its annual marches at Easter from London to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire, which began in 1958, with music provided by a trad jazz band and a skiffle group, drew tens of thousands of people. 'The marchers were mainly middle class and professional people,' The Daily Mail wrote of the first march. 'They were the sort of people who would normally spend Easter listening to a Beethoven concert on the Home Service, pouring dry sherry from a decanter for the neighbours, painting Picasso designs on hard-boiled eggs, attempting the literary competition in the weekly papers, or going to church with the children. Instead, they were walking through the streets in their old clothes. They were behaving entirely against the normal tradition of their class, their neighbourhood, and their upbringing.' It is difficult to conceive, perhaps, how real and present the fear of nuclear annihilation was at the time. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had happened a mere 13 years earlier, and the Cold War was at its height, the threat of nuclear apocalypse looming in everyone's minds. As an 11-year-old grammar school boy at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, I can vividly remember reading the newspaper accounts of Kennedy's ultimatum to Khrushchev to turn round the ships steaming towards Cuba, and going to bed wondering if I would wake up next morning. Or what I would wake up to, if I did. The fear receded, if never going away, and the interest in the CND with it. But now Sophie says, the organisation is seeing an upsurge in membership, driven by a higher level of awareness of the nuclear threat, and events in Ukraine and the Middle East. The spectre of nuclear warfare seems to be permeating public consciousness, with the film Oppenheimer and video games like Fallout and Atomfall. Last October, the BBC screened Threads, the apocalyptic war drama first shown in 1984, depicting the horrifying effects of a nuclear apocalypse on Sheffield. A new contemporary adaptation for TV is being produced by Warp films, the company that made the critically-acclaimed Adolescence. Unrest is in the air. Everyone has something to protest about nowadays, and most demonstrations have the appearance of a vortex drawing in all manner of causes from Extinction Rebellion to Stand Up to Racism. But the protest at RAF Marham has a single-mindedness of purpose that makes it seem all the more virtuous. There are no Free Palestine flags or SWP placards. Nobody storms the gates. Nobody glues themselves to the road. Nobody shouts or throws anything. Nobody is arrested. Most are veterans of anti-nuclear protests going back more than 40 years who, one imagines, if not as in an earlier era, pouring sherry from a decanter for their neighbours or painting Picasso designs on hard-boiled eggs, would otherwise be spending a quiet Saturday afternoon on their allotment, or volunteering at their local charity shop. People shelter under a tree for shade, spreading themselves on the grass, or sitting in picnic chairs. There are sandwiches, flasks and sun cream. A small group of shirt-sleeved police stand on the other side of the road, watching incuriously and talking among themselves. Off-duty airmen and women stroll through the gate in their shorts and T-shirts with nary a word being said. A car drives by, sounding its horn in support. Now Sophie hands the microphone to anyone who wants to come up and say a few words. Glen Borrill, 57, has driven the 85 miles from Mansfield to join the protest, after his wife had read about it on social media. He's never been involved with the CND before, he says, 'but with everything that's going on in the news, I thought if I don't get involved now, when that big bang comes around, I'll have only got myself to blame because I've not done anything to stand against it. 'I've not felt so anxious about what could happen since back in the 1980s when everything was kicking off then.' He's watched Threads recently, he says. 'It's based in a city not that far from Mansfield, and it was in a similar situation in the Middle East to what's happening now. That's how frightening it's become. It's like déjà vu. That was just a film, but the actual reality seems to be playing out as that film did.' He points to the guard standing on the other side of the fence. 'Even these lads here, when the bombs come, they're not going to let them in the bunkers.' A woman from Norwich says that people living around RAF Lakenheath are being given iodine to guard against radiation fallout from the base. I have no idea if this is true or not. She has her own chant – 'Starmer, Starmer is an evil re-armer'. A man who worked for the BBC at the time of the Iraq war accuses the corporation of telling lies, and says the mainstream media cannot be trusted. Several people say that. David Pybus is 75, a tall, rangy man with gentle eyes peering out from beneath a bush hat. He's come from Peterborough, an hour and a half by bus. 'Generally speaking,' he says, 'the media just give you what the Government is saying. You only get that narrative, and they roll out some former generals and people with military ties, and that's what you get in the mainstream media.' He has been a member of the CND since 1980 when Margaret Thatcher first announced that ground-launched nuclear weapons would be based at RAF Greenham Common and RAF Molesworth. 'Being a person of Christian faith, I felt I was faced with something very evil that was contrary to that, and it was very important to try and do something if you could to oppose that.' The bombs at Lakenheath and Molesworth had gone, he says, '[and] there was a sense that things were becoming more peaceful. But now they're coming back and the threat has increased again, so here I am.' In the small copse of trees, children from the service housing across the road have been playing hide and seek and watching the gathering with curiosity. The protest has lasted for two hours, but now the steam has run out of it and the heat is taking its toll. People begin to take down the signs on the gate, carefully unpicking the last of the gaffer tape and putting it in a refuse sack. They are packing up their banners and belongings, folding their picnic chairs, and swapping telephone numbers and handshakes. I ask Sue Wright how many protests she had attended over the years. 'Lost count,' she says with a laugh. She is 75, a retired primary school teacher, wearing a CND cap and a T-shirt with the CND symbol made of interlocking flowers. She first became involved with the CND in 1968 when she was student and, when she retired at the age of 60, became more actively involved with Norwich CND. 'It was quite small, all older than me – I was the youngster. And eventually they asked me to be the chair.' The oldest member is 84, 'but he's protesting somewhere else today'. All afternoon, the quiet voice of fatalism and doubt has been whispering in my ear. After more than 60 years of protest, the world still has nuclear weapons, the threat of annihilation is closer than ever, and the future lies in the hands of those far more powerful than the small hardy band gathered at the gates. In the absence of multilateral disarmament, it is Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, that has kept the peace – such as it is. 'MADness, I call it,' Sue says. 'Total madness. But it's not assured at all. Just one use can set off a chain reaction.' Does she ever feel as if she's banging her head against a brick wall? 'Sometimes. Especially when it doesn't get reported in newspapers and on the TV, and it doesn't get a mention unless someone breaks the law, and we're committed to not breaking the law.' But that, she says, does not mean she was going to stop. She joined the CND when she was 18, she says, 'because I was terrified. I thought that nuclear weapons are so destructive that they should not exist. And I'm terrified now. 'I have a new grandson who will be two weeks old at about 10 o'clock tonight, and I fear for his future. I have seven other grandchildren and I want them to grow up in a peaceful world. I want them to grow up and to have a world to live in. I will do all I can to make people see the madness of it.' David comes up and quietly slips a postcard printed with the World Peace Prayer into my jacket pocket: 'Let peace fill our hearts. Our world, our universe'. His lift to King's Lynn seems to have left without him. We drop him off at the station, he sits down in the shade of the bus shelter, waiting for the bus, and the hour and a half journey back to Peterborough.
The Herald Scotland
07-07-2025
- The Herald Scotland
How a shot in Paisley in 1856 was heard around the world
The manufacturing bosses were known as the 'corks' and were notorious for exploiting the labour and the workmanship of the Paisley weavers in an industry that made them fortunes. Their predations forced the weavers to form some of the earliest known trade unions in the UK, more than a century before they were granted legal protection by the state. Read more: And so, on the first Saturday of July, Paisley holds its Sma' Shot Day to commemorate one of the most important developments in the history of trade unionism and workers right. Having initially reproached myself for not knowing very much about this tale and absolutely nothing of Sma' Shot Day I headed to Paisley on Saturday. This is the sort of event I really should be covering, right? And not merely in a professional capacity. As a committed trade unionist, hailing from a family of trade unionists whose activism stretches back before the war, I really should be here every year. It's not as though it's hard to miss. The programme of events for the day lasts from morning until night, a mini-festival of events that – for once – really does mean 'for all the family'. And at its centre, a parade through Paisley town centre that rises in Brodie Park to the south before finishing on the green across from Paisley's grand cathedral. This is where the ceremonial burning of a 12-ft Cork mannequin representing the victory of the workers over the cheats and scammers which raw capitalism produces in every generation. I was expecting a parade a mile long to be winding through Paisley's superb civic buildings and Scotland's most eye-catching town centre with that gorgeous cathedral and the old mill edifices and the White Cart winding through. And you reproach yourself once more for not visiting this place more often, and especially now as it seems to be undergoing a wee renaissance. Nothing you can hang your hat on quite yet: just a presentiment of something bold and optimistic happening in these streets and wynds and in the cafes and restaurants that weren't here when you last visited. Sma Shot Day (Image: Robert Perry) But here's the thing: someone had devoted a lot of work into making this parade look vibrant so that it proceeded with a swagger and a shimmy. There were schoolkids in costumes; giant mannequins and stilt-walkers and dancers. There were some of the assorted activist groups that you'd expect to see at a parade like this: Living Rent, CND and, of course, the Socialist Workers Party here represented by their Renfrewshire branch, and God love them for it, because they're always here, always represented. And your heart was warmed too by a banner belonging to the Calton Weavers, who'll have their big day on August 31 in Glasgow's East End, not far away from the church where I was baptised. There are several other community groups such as the Renfrewshire Carers Centre; the University of the Third Age and the Waspi Women. Where were all the others, who belong to Scotland's anointed trade elites? Where were the SNP and The Greens and the Lib-Dems? This isn't just another workers' rights event; this day represents one of the most important moments in the history of working-class activism. The Labour Party had a stall down on the piazza beside the cathedral, along with 20 or so other little tented pavilions, but they too should have been all over it. Read More: Davie Fulton, a retired construction worker who worked on repairs to the cathedral, sees me taking notes and introduces himself. 'I remember when this parade was more than three times as big as this,' he said. 'It would take ages to come through the town centre and all of the unions and local groups were present.' Not today though. Another trade union activist expresses disappointment that her own trade union isn't represented. 'They're keen that we get along to various Pride events and Palestine demos – and that's fine – but this is what real trade union activism is all about: jobs, wages, security, maternity rights, the real living wage, fair distribution of wealth and dignity at work.' Sma' Shot Day was a local workers holiday until war broke out in 1939 and then was slowly consigned to history: a remnant of a simpler time and maybe something else rooted in the new opportunities for homes and education and better pay in the era of post-war expansion when it might have seemed that many of the old battles for social justice and fairness at work had been won. In 1986 though, it was revived at a time when Thatcherism was beginning to lay waste to the UK's traditional industries and destroying the communities they supported. Sma' Shot Day and the victory it represented need to be remembered again. As we gather for the Burning of the Cork on Cotton Street, outside the council buildings I meet sisters Liz and Jane who are here with Jane's grandson, Daniel and his drum. 'He's been waiting all year for this event,' says Jane, a former council worker. Jane once worked for the old Anchor Mill and for the next 20 minutes they provide me with an eloquent and detailed folk history of their town. Sma Shot Day (Image: Robert Perry) 'This is a great day,' says Jane, 'and it's never been more important to remember the weavers' struggle against the corks. There are no social and affordable houses being built and young people especially are once again prey to low wages which make it impossible to get on the housing ladder." In the 'Sma Shot Cottages, just a few hundred yards from the Cathedral precinct, the original weaving looms are still intact and in good working order. This is where a mid-19th century mill foreman lived, complete with kitchen/living area, bedroom, children's room and parlour. Here I find Dr Dan Coughlin is explaining the set-up on the loom. He's weaving a herringbone cloth. The warp threads run the length of the fabric, the weft threads run across its width. The loom is set up with warp threads going through eyelets, it has four treaders which he operates with his feet in different combinations. His feet move the treaders and the warp threads separate to create a shed, the space through which he shoots the shuttle which carries the weft thread left to right. He moves the treaders with his feet again to create a new shed and sends the shuttle back the way through the new shed, right to left, to weave he fabric. He lays to rest some myths about the Sma' Shot but paints a vivid picture of the weavers' skills and gets to the core of their dispute with the bosses. It was all about fairness. 'The Paisley shawl had three different types of yarn,' he explains. 'The pattern yarn, the ground yarn and the small shot. This had nothing to do with the weavers having to pay for it themselves, it was an unfair system of payment. In the Paisley shawl we can have so many colours per line. If you have three colours in one line, then you have to put in a sma' shot behind them and then you start the next line; put in three colours; put the sma' shot behind them. 'In Paisley you didn't get paid for the sma' shot, you got paid for the pattern shot. The unfairness of the system was that if one weaver here, on this loom, got a shawl with only one colour in it, every second shot wasn't being paid for. The weaver over there has four colours in his shawl - every fifth one of his is not getting paid for, a weaver with eight colours, every ninth shot is not being paid for, so it's an unfair system of payment. If I'm asked to do a pattern with only one colour, I realise I'm not going to get paid for half my work, so it was an unfair system of payment. That was the problem.' Dr Coughlin is describing both an art and a science. The craft and workmanship – as it does in all industries – is what built Scotland's wealth. Three centuries later, the workers are still creating Scotland's wealth and still being cut out of it.
Irish Independent
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Mark Beaumont: Protest is as much a part of the soul of Glasto' as the music
The Australian punks accused the media of 'trying to make it look like just a couple of isolated incidents and a couple of 'bad bands', so it appears the public isn't as anti-genocide as it is'. Pretty much every act I saw at this year's festival dropped a 'Free Palestine' in somewhere. 'The status quo has shifted majorly,' the Sniffers summarised – 'people are concerned and desperate for our governments to listen.' Amid such a fervent media furore, many seem frustrated that the dark spectre of politics has infiltrated their cosy sofa weekend watching Rod Stewart – which only highlights how disconnected the BBC-ified Glastonbury experience is from the fundamental meaning and history of the event. Ever since Michael Eavis gave out free milk in 1970 in the name of humanitarian togetherness, Glastonbury has been deeply political. In 1981, Eavis partnered with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), whose logo is still prominently placed at the top of the Pyramid Stage, with the aim of raising money for the organisation and promoting its message of nuclear disarmament. Throughout the Eighties and early Nineties, it was a haven not just for the Green Field's hippies but for the otherwise outcast traveller community – infusing the event with the politics of rebellion, environmentalism and social justice upon which its modern counter-cultural reputation was built. Every year, the Greenpeace Field shouts about the latest developments in the climate emergency, and the Leftfield tent hosts speeches and discussions on a vast array of political issues. And throughout its history, Glastonbury has been the place where major bands and figures make major statements. In 2005, Bob Geldof brought the Make Poverty History campaign to Worthy Farm. In 2017, the then leader of the Labour Party made a high-profile Pyramid Stage appearance, drawn to the home of the mass by an 'Oh, Jeremy Corbyn' chant – galvanising the youthful hope that had grown around him at the time. In 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky crystallised the nation's solidarity with his country with a powerful video message to the Pilton masses. Waking up to the shock Brexit vote result in 2016, it was at Glastonbury that bands such as Bastille and Foals gave voice to Remoaner despair. And, three years later, it was during his dazzling headline set that rapper Stormzy – clad in a monochrome Union flag stab-proof vest – encapsulated the feelings of many in the nation when he got the vast, televised crowd chanting 'f*** Boris'. It may come as a shock to the TV audience that can bypass the politics pulsing from every corner of Worthy Farm each year (and particularly in 2025) with the flick of a red button, but brazen and confrontational stands on crucial issues of the day are what Glastonbury – and the passionate, sometimes angry young people who attend and play it – has always done. And will continue to do, especially now it's a public platform commanding viewing numbers in the millions. Glastonbury is far more than a big, flag-clogged gig on a farm – it's also a powerful source of righteous campaigning and high-profile tub-thumping, with many great and positive politicised moments under its belt. We might not agree with everything that's said here – we might find some of it unacceptable and shocking – but let's not be in any way surprised by it.
Daily Mirror
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
'Glastonbury is a middle-class hate crime - time to put it out of its misery'
Is this the way the future's meant to feel? Twenty thousand people in a field, calling for the death of conscripts, comfortable in the knowledge that if war ever comes for them they can afford to buy their way off the front line. A lady in a sunflower hat. A man proudly wearing the badge of the CND. A sea of people, all able to find £400 a head and the time off work to head to Somerset, all of whom have benefited from state-funded education, and not one expecting a terrorist to paraglide in and open up with an Uzi, as they danced and partied without a care in the world. They seemed not to notice the racial hatred, even when it poured from their lips. In fact, they'd probably be very offended at the suggestion, and point out they were echoing the words of a black man, and talking about the wrongs of a genocide, so it couldn't possibly be racist and don't you know how nice everyone is at music festivals? But when a pretty poor punk duo called Bob Vylan, whose sledgehammer wit is so perfectly displayed in their name, invited - or is it incited? The police will know - them to shout "Death to the IDF" it was a signal that everything that was once jolly lovely about 'Glasto' is as dead and buried as the 378 people slaughtered at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7, 2023. Had Somerset turned into the same sort of killing field, to provoke a government by the murder of its innocents into an era-defining conflict, the survivors may well have signed up to fight back on the spot, sunflower hats and all. Whether the UK armed forces would have considered them any damned use is a different matter. But of course it did not happen in Britain, because Britain has no terrorist enemies, has never had a war within, and has always fought on the side of the angels. Except when it hasn't. And certainly, no-one has ever called for the death of the people who keep us safe, except for the Irish, the Northern Irish, the Iranians, ISIS, the Taliban, the Welsh, the Scottish, the Americans, the French, the Germans, the Italians, oh and quite a lot of everyone else. Part of the reason for the 40ft high metal fences that surround the Glastonbury site is not just to protect the wealthy people within from having to share sound with people who can only afford a download. It's also to keep them safe from the many sorts of terrorist who would quite enjoy walking into a field full of entitled white prats and blowing as many of them as possible sky-high. But people who float through life in fashionable wellies, who can afford to buy a tent for fun rather than fashion one out of sacks in a refugee camp, and who think it's a lark to be muddy for a couple of days because they know they won't have to wash in a puddle for the next year, did not feel empathy for a single second with the festival-goers who made the mistake of partying while living next door to someone who wanted them dead. They just called for the death of millions of Jews, because someone suggested they do so, and didn't think twice about whose company they were keeping. They didn't think that the Israeli Defence Force gets its troops via conscription, with little chance to excuse themselves. That everyone is a reservist until they're 40. They didn't think that may mean the IDF is not very professional, they don't all want to be there, and maybe aren't very good at shooting things, or indeed at not shooting things. They didn't question as to why Israelis still have conscription, and whether it might be linked to the fact people are trying to kill civilians ALL THE TIME. And they especially didn't do the maths about Palestinian people and Israeli people, who both suffer warmongering leaders, and if wanting your own country is fine for one of them, then it's fine for both. Nor did they recall that their own government - this nice, Labour, cosy, British government - is talking about bringing back conscription. While the soft-bellied Glasto-goers, with an average age approaching 44, could escape it, their children may not. How'd it feel if someone shouted "Death to little Crispin and Charlotte"? Not so socially-acceptable, then. But Glastonbury has long been the place where common sense went to die. From an indie, hippie festival in a field it's become an industry of its own, with established, mainstream acts vying with smaller ones purely to cash in. But when it's got to the point that Rod Stewart and Lulu are on the main stage, it needs more cops and cleaners than a recently-discovered mass grave, and genuine hippies can't scrape together the entrance fee, it's no longer serving any purpose beyond pure, naked capitalism. Vylan have put on a load of new followers, who will no doubt get tapped up to crowdfund the legal fees if they face any sort of police action for inciting the murder of an entire nation's youth. And they seem to have downgraded their status from being "violent punks" to being concerned about school dinners, and toned down calling for death to calling for peaceful protest marches. Good luck, as a criminal defence lawyer might say, with that. But Glastonbury's rather tainted star has fallen even further into the mire. It's surely time for this middle-class, middle-of-the-road, money-making, maggot-attracting hate crime to take its final bow, and leave music festivals to people who still know that they're supposed to involve some peace and love. Otherwise next year they'll try to go one better, and we'll see Ayatollah Khameini in the 'legends' slot, and bomb-making classes in a tepee.
The Guardian
28-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Are we safe, if nuclear weapons are here?': trepidation in Norfolk village over new jets
The genteel west Norfolk village of Marham does not seem to be at the forefront of Britain's military might. A dance class is about to start in the village hall, a game of crown green bowls is under way and swallows are swooping around the medieval church tower as wood pigeons coo. 'It's a lovely, quiet little village,' says Nona Bourne as she watches another end of bowls in a match between Marham and nearby Massingham. Like many, Bourne is troubled by the news that this week thrust Marham to the frontline of UK's nuclear arsenal, in the biggest expansion of the programme for a generation. Without consultation, RAF Marham is to be equipped with new F-35A jets capable of carrying warheads with three times the explosive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Bourne said: 'When they spread it all over the news that these planes are going to come here from America with these bombs, it makes you think we're going to be targeted. My bungalow is five minutes from the base.' The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is planning a protest in Marham on Saturday. Bourne, whose son-in-law used to work at the base, is tempted to take part. 'I might join in,' she says. 'My daughter says we've always been a target here, but I am concerned. If I was younger I'd think about moving, but I'm 83, I'm not going anywhere.' Sisters Becky, 29, and Katherine Blakie, 31, are heading to a friend's house for a plunge in their hot tub. 'I read about the weapons on Facebook,' says Becky. 'It's strange to think they'll be here in little old Marham.' Becky, who works in fundraising, is annoyed that the village was not consulted about the decision. She says: 'Marham and the RAF base are intertwined so we should definitely have had a say.' Katherine, a medical student, says: 'It makes you think, 'Are we safe, if people know nuclear weapons are here?'' At this stage it is unclear where the nuclear warheads will be housed, but new jets to be based at Marham have the capacity to drop them. Wherever they are stored, the fear Marham will be a target is widespread in the village. 'Look what happened at Pearl Harbor,' says Patricia Gordon after finishing her bowls match. 'We'd be obliterated here.' She adds: 'And with Donald Trump's finger on the button, does it matter that we've got nuclear weapons or not?' But her partner, Bruce Townsend, 77, a retired lorry driver, thinks the nuclear deterrent works. He says: 'You can't give up nuclear weapons. Iran, and those countries, know damn well that if they start anything, they'll just get wiped out.' He adds: 'I feel the same about the protest as I did about people who tried to ban the bomb. It's stupid. They can't change it.' It is the men in Marham who seem more relaxed about the prospect of nuclear-armed planes on their doorstep. Chris Joice, a carer who used to work at the base, says: 'We've had F-35s for so many years, and having the next model isn't going to make much difference.' Joice is out walking a friend's dog, Millie, who has an RAF roundel pendant strapped to her collar. He is concerned about the lack of consultation: 'I'm just annoyed that all these decisions go ahead and the common man doesn't have a single word in.' He adds: 'No one needs that kind of firepower. I'd rather people rolled dice to settle their beefs.' Others are more full-throated in their support. Jim Smith, 79, a retired construction worker, remembers nuclear weapons at the base in the 1950s. 'They had them up there in 1958 or 59 when they had the V bombers. It stopped a world war then. And it's no different now.' A man on a bike who would only give his name as John recently retired as a grounds maintenance worker at the base. He says: 'They're never going to attack us. It would be Armageddon if it comes to that. So it doesn't make a shite's worth of difference worrying about it.' He adds: 'I don't mind protest, I'm a biker so I'm all about freedom, but I've got better things to do. People protesting here don't live in the real world, they should worry instead about people sleeping on the streets in King's Lynn.' Colin Callaby, 64, is out picking cherries from a tree in the middle of the village. The cherries, which he plans to turn into wine, are the sweetest he has ever known. 'We're right in the firing line,' he says, 'but if there's going to be a nuclear bomb we're all done for so I'd rather be right underneath it and die instantly than be 50 miles away and take weeks to die from radiation.' He adds: 'It's very sad that mankind has got to spend billions of pounds on mass destruction and we can't do something better with that money. But what can you do?'
