Nuclear weapons

1 June 2019News

David Polden surveys three recent UK peace movement actions

Here are three notable peace movement street actions that took place recently.

On 18 May, the Gareloch Hortis Women’s Peace Group took to the streets of Newcastle to make the links between their anti-nuclear campaigning and other concerns held by members of the group.

Their colourful banners attracted curious passers-by who wanted to discuss climate justice, an end to austerity and poverty, and ATOS assessments and their effect on people with disabilities. The banners had…

1 April 2019News in Brief

An independent Scotland should give the UK government a strict deadline for removing the Trident from Scottish soil.

That’s the message of a motion going to the 27–28 April party conference of the Scottish National Party (SNP). The motion calls on the party to develop a detailed ‘roadmap’, ‘a practical description of the process and timescale to safely remove nuclear weapons at the very earliest opportunity on Scotland regaining our independence’.

Faslane, just north of…

1 April 2019News in Brief

On 1 February, the US government announced that it was no longer bound by the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, and that it would withdraw completely in August.

On 4 March, the Russian government officially suspended its participation in the treaty as well.

Kate Hudson, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, described the US action as ‘a reckless move’.

The INF treaty banned all US and Soviet ground-launched missiles…

1 April 2019News

Action challenges EU countries to expel US nukes

MEPs block runway, USAF Kleine Brogel, 20 February. Photo: Agir Pour La Paix

On 20 February, seven peace activists climbed over the fence of the US military base of Kleine Brogel in the north-east of Belgium. Four were activists from Belgium’s Agir Pour La Paix (Act for Peace). Three were Green MEPs (Michèle Rivasi from France, Molly Scott Cato from the UK, and Tilly Metz from Luxembourg).

The seven symbolically blocked the F-16 runway to demand the withdrawal of around 20 US…

1 April 2019News

Aberystwyth holds packed meeting US campaigner

US campaigner Linda Pentz Gunter (white scarf) and Welsh peace activists in Aberystwyth, 16 February. Photo: Robat Idris

‘Truth versus Power’ was the theme of a public meeting in Aberystwyth organised by CND Cymru on 16 February.

A packed room was inspired by Linda Pentz Gunter talking about the work of Beyond Nuclear, a US peace group she founded, particularly on a Green New Deal.

She explained how not even the smallest of nuclear reactors is safe or efficient and…

1 April 2019Feature

A Scottish peace initiative focused on the power of money

The ‘Don’t Bank on the Bomb’ campaign for Scotland was launched at a public meeting in Edinburgh on 16 November 2015. Photo: Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre

In September 2018, the ‘Don’t Bank on the Bomb Scotland’ campaign group (DBOTB Scotland) published a guide for divestment from nuclear weapons entitled Stop Funding the End of the World – Working to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons Through Divestment: A Guide for Scotland.

The guide was launched as part of the Nae…

1 April 2019Comment

'Weapons are supposed to bring security”

I still have a scar on my left hand. It is a reminder of a school fight that took place many long years ago. The street knife violence of today comes out of the same stable.

In my area of north London, criminal violence is far from unknown.

There was a row on a bus some years ago between older boys from two different schools. One boy got off the bus not far from his home. But another boy followed him up the street and stabbed him to death. His companion escaped…

1 February 2019Comment

Milan Rai recaps the history of US nuclear threats against North Korea

President Truman signs a proclamation initiating US involvement in the Korean War. Photo: US National Archives

As we head towards another inconclusive summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US president Donald Trump, here is some inconvenient background that is unlikely to feature in mainstream coverage of the meeting. We recommend you take the time to forget each of these facts. The media already has.

Why is Korea divided?

Korea was a united nation-state…

1 February 2019News

Doomsday clock still 'closest it has ever been to apocalypse'

The world remains as dangerous as it’s ever been. On 24 January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board revealed that its famous Doomsday Clock remained set at two minutes to midnight, ‘the closest it has ever been to apocalypse’.

The clock setting was designed to highlight ‘an unacceptable reality that remains largely unrecognized by the public at large: The future of the world is now in extreme danger from multiple intersecting and potentially…

1 February 2019News

Anti-nuke campaigners in court this April

Photo: Awel Irene.

Four Welsh Trident Ploughshares members who took part in a blockade of the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Burghfield appeared in court on 22 November (above). The three entrances to the Burghfield nuclear warhead factory were closed down at 6.30am on 24 October, preventing workers from entering. The four are part of a group of eight who will appear before Reading magistrates’ court on 23–24 April charged with ‘willfully obstructing the highway’.

1 December 2018News

Nine charged after anti-nuke action

Julia Mercer locked-on, AWE Burghfield, 24 October. Photo: Trident Ploughshares

There was a five-hour blockade of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Burghfield, in Berkshire, where British nuclear warheads are assembled, by activists from Trident Ploughshares. The blockade started at 6.30am on 24 October, the 73rd anniversary of the birth of the UN.

Blockader Jim Davies, a 70-year-old retired civil servant, said: ‘I’ve never been involved in an action like this before and…

1 December 2018News

Aberystwyth campaigner delivers anti-nuke petition to PM

PHOTO: Hereford Peace Council

On 24 October, Aberystwyth peace activist Mary Millington travelled to Shrewsbury with messages for Theresa May, Jeremy Hunt and other MPs, writes Lotte Reimer. The locally-collected letters and petitions demanded that Britain sign up to the UN’s Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Having picked up more signatures at stations along the way, handed over by local activists, Mary (pictured with her placard at Shrewsbury railway station) got on the ‘…

1 December 2018Comment

'We've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it!'

We all have to thank, if that is the right word, the late Ernest Bevin for getting us into our nuclear weapons mess. He was late for a meeting called by the then British prime minister, Labour’s Clement Attlee, in October 1946. Attlee wanted to discuss whether to plan for a British nuclear weapon or not.

Bevin, the foreign secretary, went to Downing Street to discover that Attlee’s meeting had started and the general consensus was not to go for a British atomic bomb. Too expensive…

1 October 2018News in Brief

Devonport and Rosyth dockyards cannot host Britain’s Trident submarines, which carry nuclear missiles, because they are full up with 20 obsolete nuclear submarines which have not been decommissioned. Nine of these subs still hold nuclear fuel. The public accounts committee criticised the ministry of defence for its lack of action in late September.

The infrastructure supporting Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet is no longer ‘fit for purpose’, according to the parliamentary select…

1 October 2018News

Blockade celebrates global campaign against nuclear weapons

More than 600 demonstrators took part in the ‘Nae Nukes, Anywhere’ demo at the Faslane Trident submarine base, 22 September. Photo: ivon bartholomew

For a few hours on 22 September, the gate to Faslane, the Clyde estuary home of the UK’s Trident submarines, became a ‘hostile environment’ for nuclear weapons.

In putting together the ‘Nae Nukes, Anywhere’ event, Scottish CND planned something more than a demo or a protest. The vision was for a celebration of transnational…