Halt Trident: our delivery to the PM

Back in July, we launched a campaign to halt further government spending on the Trident nuclear weapons system until a review of the whole project has been completed.

In 2006, the government estimated that replacing Trident would cost between 15 and 20 billion pounds.  Greenpeace have gone further, arguing that once we include other costs like VAT, this total will be more like £34bn.  With essential public services in the UK strapped for cash, many of us think that the government should be spending this huge amount of money elsewhere.  Not to mention that replacing Trident seems like a step backwards now that Obama has taken the lead on scaling back nuclear weapons worldwide.

Gordon Brown has said that not renewing Trident is not an option, but those of us who signed the petition –  more than 6000 people – think differently.

Today a group of 38 Degrees staff and volunteers made the trip to Downing Street to deliver this petition to Gordon Brown, to let him know what we think about Trident renewal.

The first stage of handing in the petition was getting through security – all our stuff was scanned, even the petition.  Then we made our way up to Number 10. 38 Degrees volunteer Alex was the one to deliver the petition – not to Brown himself, unfortunately, but to a Downing Street official.  However, we’re confident that we’ve sent a strong message to the government about Trident renewal, which they won’t be able to ignore.

Afterwards, Alex told the rest of us how his delivery had gone: “This was my first time delivering a petition. I have to admit I was pretty nervous, but it felt empowering to finally hand it through the door of number 10. Whilst I was handing in the petition I spotted the BBC’s political editor, Nick Robinson, inside.  Let’s hope he was giving Gordon a grilling about what action he plans to take at Copenhagen.”