2004 Aldermaston March

2004 Aldermaston March. On Friday 9th April the 2004 Aldermaston March began with a rally in Trafalgar Square before following the route taken by the first march back in April 1958, which had also begun with a rally in the square. The 2004 march was called as a protest against the development then of a new generation of nuclear weapons.

2004 Aldermaston March
A young marcher on the way from Reading to Aldermaston

I covered the rally and went with the marchers as far as Hyde Park, and cycled to join them again in Maidenhead on Sunday 11th, walking with them for a few miles before returning to pick up my bike and cycle home. On the final day I caught the train to Reading and walked with them to Aldermaston.

I put many of my pictures from the march on My London Diary where you can still view them, and wrote a post about the events which I’ll reproduce here with proper capitalisation and some minor corrections, along with a few of the pictures I made in London on Friday 9th April 2004.


Aldermaston 2004: No New Nukes Rally & Start of March

2004 Aldermaston March

Aldermaston isn’t in London, but the ‘stop the next generation of nuclear weapons‘ march from London to Aldermaston started on Good Friday, 9 April 2004, from Trafalgar Square, where there was a ‘No New Nukes‘ rally.

2004 Aldermaston March

Aldermaston and nearby Burghfield are at the centre of the UK’s atomic weapon programme, and the march was a protest against the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.

2004 Aldermaston March
Pat Arrowsmith addresses the rally

In 1958 the dangers of nuclear war were clear to most of us, and almost fifty years of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction among members of the nuclear club make them even more of a danger now. We have seen another almost 50 years of lies and deception dressed up as security and national interest. For example we still haven’t been told of the nuclear warheads kept by our American allies at Lakenheath.

It was good to see many familiar faces, both on the platform and off, with addresses from Tony Benn, Jenny Jones, Pat Arrowsmith, Jeremu Corbyn and more, including a fine performance from Susannah York. There were a considerable number who had been on the first Aldermaston march, back in 1958, forty six years ago. I was too young to be involved then, but my two older brothers had been there.

Street theatre about Trident from Theatre of War

‘Theatre Of War’ gave a spirited performance, and there was a jazz band to add a little spirit at the front of the march, perhaps a reminder of the trad boom of the fifties. Pat Arrowsmith, Bruce Kent and some other CND veterans were up there too, leading off the 2,300 who led off through St James. The police estimated the march at 1000. I actually stood and counted as they went by, and although it isn’t an exact science with a march this size, I won’t be more than fifty or so out either way.

A single Trident submarine has warheads equivalent to 3000 Hiroshima bombs.

It was a cheerful sendoff to those marchers on the long plod to Aldermaston, one of several marches there starting from different parts of the country.

At Hyde Park, the march proper formed up, with around 430 making their way west through Kensington and towards the first night stay at Southall. I couldn’t walk all the way, although I’d probably covered as much distance running around taking pictures and left the march in Kensington.

On Saturday, the march continued from Southall to Slough via Uxbridge. I had other things to do in the East End and central London, but I managed to catch up with the march on Sunday morning at Maidenhead Bridge with some furious bike riding from Staines.

Pat Arrowsmith

By then, some problems with Thames Valley Police had emerged, with the police trying to force the march on to the pavement, while some marchers insisted on keeping to the road. In the end a compromise emerged, with the police tolerating those who wanted to stay on the road walking close to the edge of the pavement.

From Maidenhead it seemed a long walk along the A4 to Knowl Hill for a rather late lunch stop. There we were greeted from a distance by the sounds of the Sheffield Samba Band who piped the march in to lunch. I regretted not bothering to pick up my meal tickets, but was really too busy to stop to eat. I photographed the column of marchers setting off for Reading and then started a more lonely walk back to Maidenhead and my bike.

Bristol Radical Cheerleaders

By this time I was feeling the strain. Even on my ‘day off’ on Saturday I’d walked over 10 miles with a heavy camera bag, and the weight of a Nikon with a solid lens round my neck was getting to be too much. So for Monday I travelled light, working with a tiny Canon Digital Ixus. It had the nasty habit of often not taking a picture until a second or so after you pressed the button, by which time I’ve usually put the camera down, so I came home with quite a few pictures of random patches of road and grass from Berkshire. However, as you can see on My London Diary, some came out.

On Monday I walked all the way and a few miles more, with pictures from Reading to Burghfield, were we stopped close to AWE Burghfield [where atomic bombs are made] to the end of the march rally at AWE Aldermaston, after which we took a walk halfway round the large site.

Aldermaston2004 was jointly organised by CND, the Aldermaston women’s peace Camp and Slough4Peace.


My pictures from the rally and march start here on My London Diary, with more pictures starting on further web pages for Friday, Sunday and Monday.

CND is still active, still campaigning for peace and a nuclear free world and opposing the UK’s possession of nuclear weapons. As they say, “Nuclear weapons threaten us all. And they are an obscene drain on public finances.” You can find out more about their actions and sign their petition calling on the government to embrace diplomacy and peace negotiations, instead of nuclear weapons and war and take steps towards nuclear disarmament and a safer world.


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End The Torture 2004

Pictures from the End The Torture – Bring The Troops Home Now protest 20 years ago today on 22nd May 2004.

End The Torture - Bring The Troops Home Now

Back in May 2004 I was still taking pictures using the Nikon D100, the DSLR camera that really first made professional quality digital imaging available outside of highly paid professional photographers. I’d bought this 6.1Mp camera in 2002, but for the first year or more used it in tandem with film cameras, not least because at first I only had one Nikon-fitting lens, a 24-85mm, equivalent on the camera’s DX-format sensor to 36-128mm on full frame.

End The Torture - Bring The Troops Home Now

With film cameras I’d been used to a much wider range of focal lengths, from 15mm to 200mm and while I could do without the longer end, I still needed film for wider images. But by May 2004 I had some new lenses, a Sigma 12-24mm (18-36mm eqiv) and a Nikon telephoto zoom that stretched out to 210mm, equivalent at the long end to 315mm.

End The Torture - Bring The Troops Home Now

Both were fairly large and fairly heavy lenses, but together with the 24-85mm gave me a full range of focal lengths. Though with only a single D100 body I probably spent almost as much time changing lenses as taking pictures. None of them would have impressed the kind of photographers who like to spend their time photographing test charts or pixel peeping, but they were certainly adequate for normal photographic work.

End The Torture - Bring The Troops Home Now

The pictures from the Bring The Troops Home protest on 22nd May 2004 show I was determined to use the entire range of my new lenses, perhaps not always entirely appropriately. I think sometimes I zoomed out too far with the telephoto and occasionally would have been advised to use a rather less wide view with the Sigma. But others work well.

The protest was called at short notice by the Stop the War Coalition, CND and the Muslim Association of Britain to respond to the atrocities being committed in Iraq, following the publication of pictures showing abuse and torture of Iraqis by US soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Some pictures were first published by CBS in April 2004 but more came out in May.

The march organisers stated “The whole world is horrified at the terrible pictures of torture of Iraqi prisoners now emerging. They are the tip of an iceberg of abuse – dozens of civilians have died in custody of British and American troops in occupied Iraq. We are demanding the withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and for the Iraqi people to be allowed to govern themselves.”

At the rally there was an impressive array of speakers including Tonny Benn, Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, Lindsay German, Bruce Kent, Jeremy Corbyn, Jean Lambert and others from peace and Muslim movements and I photographed most of them on the march and as they spoke.

In Trafalgar Square the speakers were as usual on the raised area at the base of the column with a press area in front of that, and we are always looking up at the speakers. The longer lens let me get tightly framed head shots, but a few are perhaps too tight.

As well as speakers there were also theatrical reenactments of prisoner abuse by the ‘Theatre of War’ group with the march pausing briefly at various points for the three military personnel to abuse their roped and hooded victims. The also stood and performed on the plinth at the rally in Trafalgar Square.

Looking back at these pictures now I feel that perhaps because I had that long lens I concentrated more on the celebrities taking part in the event, and rather less than I would now on the bulk of protesters and their placards and banners. But I’m still pleased with a number of the images I made. Some I think could be improved by going back to the RAW files and reprocessing them in our now improved software to give them a little more contrast and clarity.

My London Diary has a little more about the protest and a much larger selection of the images I made at this event beginning some way down the May 2004 page. You can go directly to the pictures at END THE TORTURE – BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW.


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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.