{"id":1224,"date":"2016-03-20T11:54:00","date_gmt":"2016-03-20T18:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=1224"},"modified":"2016-03-20T11:54:00","modified_gmt":"2016-03-20T18:54:00","slug":"a-nuclear-protest-in-the-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/?p=1224","title":{"rendered":"A nuclear protest in the rain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Aldermaston<\/a>

Participants in the 1963 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament march from London to the nuclear weapons facility at Aldermaston in Windsor High Street. Image by Tony Eppstein.<\/p><\/div>\n

To walk from London to the UK\u2019s Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire takes four days.\u00a0 Starting in 1958, the year the UK and the US signed a mutual defense agreement \u201con the uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes\u201d tens of thousands of people did it over Easter weekend each year, to protest the risks to humankind and to the earth itself from the proliferation of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

I first watched the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament\u2019s march on Easter Saturday, 1963.\u00a0 Heavily pregnant, I stood with other townsfolk on the sidewalk of Windsor High Street.\u00a0 Rain had fallen all week and continued to fall, a cold, relentless, English rain. About mid-morning the first marchers came, under a sky the same brooding gray as the rain-soaked castle walls above us.\u00a0 Their clothes sodden, they chanted fitfully to the dogged drumbeat of wet shoes on streaming pavement.\u00a0 Some carried banners bearing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament symbol.<\/p>\n

We had a friend in the march.\u00a0 An hour passed before we spotted him, poncho flapping, wet hair plastered to his face.\u00a0 We cheered and called out.\u00a0 He grinned and waved.\u00a0 Another hour or more before the last stragglers passed through the town.\u00a0 We cheered them too.\u00a0 I leaned on my husband\u2019s arm, feeling the weight of the unborn life inside me.<\/p>\n

Postscript<\/strong>: organized protests against nuclear weapons in the UK continue to this day. You can see an overview at the Action AWE website.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To walk from London to the UK\u2019s Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire takes four days.\u00a0 Starting in 1958, the year the UK and the US signed a mutual defense agreement \u201con the uses of Atomic Energy for Mutual Defense Purposes\u201d tens of thousands of people did it over Easter weekend each year, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[353,354],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1224"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1261,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1224\/revisions\/1261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maureeneppstein.com\/mve_journal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}