ANTI-NUCLEAR campaigners have condemned the insanity of the Labour government’s commitment to militarisation, nuclear threats and war.

The rebuke came during the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's (CND) national demonstration at the BAE shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, on Saturday.

Peace campaigners flooded Barrow’s town centre after Labour hyped up the shipyard’s importance by announcing that the port is to be granted “royal” status.

Barrow has built submarines for Britain’s nuclear weapons programme since the 1950s.

Protesters staged a march and rally at which speaker after speaker condemned Labour’s drive to militarisation at the expense of the vulnerable.

Matt Kerr of Stop the War Scotland said Britain possesses “one of the biggest stockpiles of nuclear warheads on the face of this Earth — for some, that ability to wipe out life hundreds of times over is not enough.”

He argued that Britain's £205-billion Trident renewal programme was “about making a lot of money for a few, on the back of fear.”

“We live in an age of monsters,” he said. 

“It’s easy for us to stand here and point across the pond at Trump, or even at that genocidal tyrant Netanyahu, but there are some monsters closer to home too.

“Keir Starmer says he wants to ‘reshape our economy’ to build the military, while telling us it’s a ‘moral duty’ to cut money from the sick, the workless and the impoverished.

“When our services stand in ruins, they tell us there’s no magic money tree, but there is always a magic missile tree.”

He urged peace activists to take the “welfare not warfare” campaign to their families, friends, communities, union branches and workplaces.

The Barrow protest marked the start of a CND protest tour of Britain’s nuclear bases.

CND general secretary Sophie Bolt said: “Nuclear weapons do nothing to make people safer. 

“They are a huge drain on public finances that will only make the population poorer and see essential services cut even further to the bone.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement on Wednesday is expected to confirm a £2bn boost to Britain’s defence budget as brutal cuts are made to overseas aid and services helping some of the country’s most vulnerable people.