Risk of arrest at CND protest

by Christopher Rails CHRISTIAN CND campaigners who intend to demonstrate at Upper Heyford US air force base, Oxfordshire, this weekend, could risk arrest by crossing forbidden barriers to talk to servicemen and their families.
Members of Christian CND will march from Bicester to the main gate at Upper Heyford base on Saturday as part of a weekend of witness, festival and worship entitled "Peace Pentecost". They will offer gifts to the base personnel of a cherry tree and a cross. If the cherry tree (which symbolises peace) is refused, Canon Paul Oestreicher, a vice-president of CND, will plant it at the main gate. (Barbara Eggleston, Christian CND organiser, said Christian CND were "very disturbed" when they were recently refused permission to attend a church service at the base, and gifts of a cherry tree and a cross were refused.)
At an ecumenical service later in the day, the preacher will be Fr George Zabelka, former
chaplain to the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bomb crews, who is participating in the Bethlehem peace pilgrimage from the United States to the Holy Land.
Sunday activities will begin with a dawn eucharist, and there will be all-day workshops on theology and non violence.
On Monday, participants may choose to undertake some form of non-violent direct action. Barbara Eggleston said that demonstrators could be "moved by the spirit of Pentecost" to make contact with servicemen and their families, even though this would mean crossing into Ministry of Defence property. Servicemen's quarters have been made out of bounds to the public, and Miss Eggleston admitted that there could be arrests if Christian CND members ignore the ban.
Plans for the weekend were released at a press conference on Monday. Valerie Flessati of Pax Christi, the international Catholic peace movement, said that hundreds of their members were expected to attend. She said Catholics at Upper Heyford would include some Dominican friars from Oxford, some St Joseph of Peace sisters, groups from university chaplaincies and members of diocesan and parish justice and peace groups.
She said there had been a steady upward trend in Pax Christi membership since the renaissance of CND, and that this had been reinforced by the controversy concerning Mgr Bruce Kent.