See you all against war and Trident tomorrow

MEP TO ADDRESS MASS LONDON ANTI-WAR RALLY

LUCAS DEMANDS: TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ AND HALT TRIDENT REPLACEMENT

THE Government must abandon plans to replace its Trident nuclear missiles
and immediately withdraw all UK troops from Iraq, Green Party MEP Caroline
Lucas will tell a central London rally tomorrow (Saturday, February 24th).

Speaking at the ‘No Trident/Troops out of Iraq’ rally, Dr Lucas will say:

“Replacing Trident would be illegal, immoral, counter-productive – and
utterly irrelevant to the real security threats we face today.

“It would cost the British taxpayer an estimated £76bn over the next few
decades – money that could be used to fund practical solutions to climate
change, the far greater security threat we face, as the recent UN
International Panel on Climate Change has again made clear.

“It will put the UK in direct breach of the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty, and would increase the global supply of nuclear materials by
launching a new nuclear arms race.”

Veteran peace campaigner Dr Lucas is also a member of the decision-making
National Council of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which has called
the demonstration alongside the British Muslim initiative and the Stop the
War Coalition, and is a co-founder and Co-President of the European
Parliament’s cross-party Peace Initiatives group.

She is currently awaiting trial for allegedly breaching the peace by taking
part in a peaceful blockade of the Trident nuclear submarine base at
Faslane, Scotland, alongside MPs and elected representatives from around the
world.

“It is hypocritical in the extreme for us to be censuring Iran for
apparently pursuing nuclear weapons whilst we in the UK are ignoring our
legal and moral obligations to disarm ours, and are in fact doing precisely
the opposite, as International Atomic Energy Agency Director General
Mohammed ElBaradei said earlier this week,” she added.

The demonstration will assemble at Hyde Park from 12 noon, followed by a
rally and speeches in Trafalgar Square. Dr Lucas is expected to address the
rally at about 2.30pm.


ENDS

Note to Editors:

Copies of Dr Lucas’s speech will be available after the rally at
www.carolinelucasmep.org.uk or on request from Ben.


For more information please contact Ben on 01273 671946, 07973 823358 or
ben@greenmeps.org.uk