Anti-War Movement Continues to Demand the Closure of U.S. Bases in Britain In 2015, the United States European Command (EUCOM) had announced plans to close RAF Mildenhall as part of a military review that will see it shut 14 other European bases, including RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth, with thousands of U.S. personnel transferred to other bases in Britain and Germany. However, in 2017, RAF Mildenhall Squadron Leader Rick Fryer said: "The [Ministry of Defence] has been advised that the full divestitures of RAF Mildenhall and RAF Alconbury/Molesworth will now occur no earlier than 2024." In a report by Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,[2] they pointed out that the April 17, 2017 edition of Stars and Stripes (a U.S. Department of Defense newspaper) said that the political and military climate has changed since the decision was taken two years ago under the administration of President Obama; under President Trump, it suggests, the Pentagon is looking at the plans again.
Also in recent years, alongside its air bases, the U.S. has expanded and constructed its openly-known "intelligence" bases at[3]: RAF Croughton; Morwentsow (Bude), a joint base with GCHQ; RAF Digby; RAF Fylingdales; and RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, which is a key link in the U.S. missile "defence" and drone programmes involved in extra-territorial killing worldwide. Britain's own drone command is RAF Waddington in Lincoln. This year, Menwith Hill and the other U.S. "intelligence" bases have become even more significant with the missile defence review, which Trump unveiled in January[4] at the Pentagon, and which announced a major upgrade in land- and sea-based missile interceptor systems, as well as the development of a layer of satellite sensors in low orbit that would help track new types of cruise missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles. In June 2017, Trump made headlines by withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement. At the same time, it was also reported that the U.S. had deployed its full range of strategic bombers to Britain for the first time in history at RAF Fairford.[5] Two B-2 stealth bombers, three B-52H Stratofortress aircraft and three B-1B Lancers were exhibited at the Fairford Air Show that year. As the largest U.S. Air Force base in Britain, RAF Lakenheath, where in 2003 it was reported it stored some 30 nuclear weapons, today hosts the 48th Fighter Wing and supports three combat-ready squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagle and F-15C Eagle fighter aircraft. Two squadrons of U.S. F-35 jets (48 of them) will be arriving there by 2020 -- the first in Europe. It has played a role since 2001 flying combat missions and providing combat support in operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and across the Middle East. It should also be noted that Britain helps the U.S. maintain some of its 800 military bases abroad -- some jointly such as at Ascension Island -- and it continues to lease to the U.S. strategic military bases that it had previously seized for itself abroad, such as Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands. The British government carried out this international crime in 1965 when it was forced to decolonize Mauritius but kept the Chagos Islands for itself, expelled the population and handed Diego Garcia over to the U.S. for a military base occupied by them to this day. Now the British government is ignoring the 2019 instruction by the United Nations' highest court to properly finish the process of decolonization, and return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and to the people who were expelled. It has also been reported that Gibraltar, presently a British Navy base, is to be made a "strategic military base"[6] for the U.S. with the vital role for the U.S. Navy's operations underlined. Today, the fight of the anti-war movement against the
U.S.
bases is inspired by the heroic fight against the U.S. Cruise
Missiles at Greenham Common in the 1980s, and those who fight now
against nuclear weapons, against U.S. spy bases at
Fylingdales and Menwith Hill and the whole anti-war movement that
stands up to say that this is not in their name. The working
class and people alongside the peoples of the world will continue
this fight to realize their aspiration for peace. The people have
always opposed turning Britain into a launchpad for U.S.
interventions and wars abroad, just as they have opposed the
warmongering and military interventions of successive British
governments abroad. Making Britain a zone for peace means the
dismantling of all U.S. Air Force and spy bases at home and also
those under Britain's control abroad. This is central to the
fight to bring about an anti-war government in Britain.
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For some 75 years and since
World War II, the
U.S. continues to maintain five major U.S. Air Force Bases in Britain:
at
Fairfield, Molesworth, Alconbury, Lakenheath and
Mildenhall[
