Peace activists in Saddleworth have spoken out against Andy Burnham's plans to invest in nuclear submarines at a memorial at Uppermill's Square on Thursday, August 6 to remember the victims of the Hiroshima bombing.

The Prime Minister announced the government would spend more than £8 billion on replacing and expanding the UK's submarine fleet, which he said would "protect Britain for decades to come". The wider nuclear defence plans promise more than 47,000 new jobs and apprenticeships in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, where manufacturing takes place at BAE Systems.

"Young people are not a homogenous group and there are many in the region who don't want to work for BAE," said campaigner Jacqui Burke.

"The danger of nuclear war is ever present and growing daily, and without a powerful grassroots movement dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons, the unthinkable, another Hiroshima or Nagasaki, is possible."

Burke, who has spent more than two decades working for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said a group visit to Barrow-in-Furness found widespread concern that young people would be funnelled into an industry they may disagree with, or risk unemployment.

"We went to Barrow-in-Furness as a big group, and we were all thinking people were going to be rude and aggressive, but we got people driving past us and beeping and waving," she said. One car stopped, and a mother and her son got out and joined them.

The mother and son told them the scheme shouldn't be "the only show in town". Older people remembered miners and steel workers whose communities were "decimated because there was no alternative", and young people said they wanted a choice in their own hometown.

Burke was one of two dozen people at the memorial. More than 100,000 people died after the US bombed Hiroshima in 1945, and a further 70,000 were killed days later in the bombing of Nagasaki. The mayor of Hiroshima marked the 81st anniversary that day, warning that nuclear deterrence "simply pushes a world without nuclear weapons into the distance".

Also attending were Councillors Barbara Beeley, Alicia Marland and Garth Harkness.

"I think this is the fourth time I've stood here in August to commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Cllr Beeley said. "But has the world become a safer place in those four years? I don't think so.

"But we, as peace champions and those committed to peace, must carry on doing what we're doing. We have got to constantly say, no, that's not right. No, we don't agree with that.

"As the voice of the ordinary person in the street like you and me, sometimes you think you don't get heard. But if enough of us say no, then perhaps we will be."

The Saddleworth Peace Group is one of hundreds of peace groups spread across the UK. The group holds several events each year, including memorials for Armistice Day and for victims of the Holocaust.

Volunteer Steve Chick said the group was first started by his friend Ken Loach "a long, long time ago". He added: "When Ken died, the group started to fall apart, and then I volunteered to host it. For the next couple of years, the meetings were all at my house."

Last year marked the eightieth anniversary of the bombing, and was again recalled at a memorial in Uppermill's Square. As living memory fades, Steve and the rest of the Peace Group volunteers are adamant that the memorials in Saddleworth will continue.

"The further we get away from the 1945 bombing, the more it becomes like, 'Well, no, maybe it didn't really happen'," he said. "So it's about not taking your eye off the ball.

"We don't think for one moment anybody's going to go, 'Oh, Saddleworth Peace Group don't want a bomb, we'll cancel it'. We know that's not going to happen, but it's a question of if you like standing up and being counted.

"We do it publicly because even though people don't often stop and join us, at least we're here, you know?"