The Russians are coming!
Speech given at RAF Marham 28 Feb 2026 by Kirsten of Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT)
We find ourselves at an interesting point in history.
The Russians, we are told, are coming. 12 years after Russian troops seized Crimea, and four years after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, they are the number one threat they say. The Ukraine invasion of course is still ongoing. The solution given to this insecurity is, apparently, to buy more weapons.
The Americans, we hear, are like Schrodinger’s cat: this was the cat that was both dead and alive until you opened the box in the physics thought experiment. They are both our long term partner on whom our defence depends: we therefore need to buy weapons to keep them happy. But also potentially unreliable, so we need to be ready: for which the answer is to buy more weapons.
The Chinese threaten the freedom of Taiwan, Taiwanese democracy is threatened by the Peoples Liberation Army! The solution to this, we hear, is to buy weapons.
But the Chinese are also arming their neighbours, some of whom need British components – like ejector seats – to make the planes work. In which case, we ask the neighbours to buy our weapons – but with the honest to goodness promise they won’t use them for bad things.
When they do use them for bad things – as they always do, heck, they did this week – that creates instability. And you know what the recipe is to solve this problem? I bet you do! It’s to buy weapons.
It’s like a multiple choice test where the answer is always the same, no matter what the question is. Buy more weapons.
So here we are. A billion pounds worth of weapons is on its way to, well, right here. Another couple of billion over the lifetime, just on the jets. Forget the basing costs, weapons costs, pilot costs.
We have been told a lot of things. But here is what we have not been told.
Are there American bombs down the road in Lakenheath?
Answer: No comment.
Does that increase the threat to local people.
Answer: No comment.
If there is a war: how will they be used?
No comment.
How much will all this cost? No comment.
How many will die? No comment.
How do we stop it escalating to a global conflict.
Again, silence.
Again, No comment.
The system which delights in telling us to buy and build more weapons is strangely silent when it comes to the harm and the costs of the weapons on this airbase..
Well if the Government won’t answer, all of us here will!
We together will say there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war!
We will tell everyone that there are nuclear bombs and bombers here, and there shouldn’t be.
And we will hold the Government to account for every pound it spends on death and destruction, while telling us there isn’t the money for better schools, better hospitals, greener transport and a decarbonised power system.
Thank you for being here, thank you for getting the word out and thank you for helping to end the silence.
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