CUMBRIAN supporters of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) have called on the Government to scrap Trident and sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Three events held in the county also commemorated the 73rd anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945, killing 140,000 people. 

The campaigners held events at BAE Systems in Barrow, where Trident submarines are built; the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing site in west Cumbria; and at Wastwater where water is extracted for the Sellafield operation.

The anti-nuclear campaigners were joined in Barrow by activists from Lancashire and Greater Manchester as they displayed a giant peace symbol and distributed leaflets emphasising their moral objections to nuclear weapons and the 'high costs' of the jobs involved.

Philip Gilligan from South Lakeland CND said: “It is often claimed that Trident provides employment and well-paid jobs in places where alternative employment of the same quality is scarce. This is true, but the extent of this job creation is limited and the cost per job is very high.

"CND calculates that only 11,520 civilian jobs are directly dependent on Trident, making these some of the costliest jobs in history."

Irene Sanderson, of North Cumbria CND, said: “This has been a very important day. Like many thousands around the world, we have not only remembered the victims of nuclear weapons, but also heeded the clear message from the survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"They have urged us to campaign for the United Kingdom to join the majority of countries in the world who agreed the draft of the United Nations Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons last year."