Several arrested at anti-nuclear protest

A number of people opposing the UK’s nuclear weapon system have been arrested during an anti-nuclear demonstration before Plymouth’s Royal Naval base.

More than 100 people from the campaign group Trident Ploughshares started the demonstration. Some of them laid down across the road, whereas others chained themselves together.

Trident Ploughshares said it was an “unambiguous message of opposition” to the UK’s Trident nuclear weapon system.

“Radiation and people don’t mix and to have something like a Trident refitting programme in a city of 250,000 people is a bad idea,” said Shirley Law, one of the protestors.

Plymouth Moorview MP Alison Seabeck said getting rid of Trident was not the answer to the problem, stressing that, “In a perfect world I wouldn’t want nuclear weapons – I really wouldn’t want them.”

While a spokesman at the naval base said residents of a free democratic country have the right to protest, a police spokesman announced that more than 10 people were arrested for public order offences.