Hudson, Kate

Peace News contacted folk around Britain to ask their opinions on the 12 December general election – people who’ve contributed to PN or helped organise Peace News Summer Camp. These are the eight campaigners who managed to meet our very tight deadline, giving their varied views on tactical voting, the Trident nuclear weapon system, climate, the arms trade and much else. (Unusually, we don’t have someone urging people not to vote, which has been a theme in past election…

It’s 10 years now since US president Barack Obama made his famous Prague speech, committing to a nuclear weapons-free world. I remember hearing his words broadcast, amid the tumultuous cheers of the crowd in Hradčany Square, as if it were yesterday…

One of the key debates in CND from its inception was the role of ‘direct action’ and whether breaking the law was a permissible way of campaigning against nuclear weapons.

The first Aldermaston march in April 1958, which was organised by the Direct Action Committee (DAC) and supported by CND, really launched the new movement into the public eye and onto the political agenda. CND went on after the march to pursue a range of campaigning and lobbying activities, building local groups…

Tell us a bit about your involvement with the antinuclear movement.

I first took part in anti-nuclear actions in the early 1980s. I went on the big anti-cruise demonstrations and went to Greenham a couple of times, for events like “Embrace the Base”. I didn't do anything much on the issue after that until the late 1990s, when I started to get alarmed about war and US foreign policy, particularly in relation to nuclear weapons. The two things that worried me were the expansion of NATO…

CND has never and will never advocate military spending.

What we have done is explain the impact that replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system will have on jobs in the defence sector.

Why have we done this? To explode the myth that Trident is good for jobs. As the controversial briefing Trident, jobs and the UK economy was aimed at a trade union audience, which is understandably most concerned about the jobs issue, we thought it was right to spell out in full…

Five years ago, I went to visit [the former Labour Party leader] Michael Foot, when I was writing a history of CND. He was kind, witty and utterly committed to nuclear disarmament. His vision for nuclear abolition, here and internationally, was far-sighted.

It cannot have been lost on him that many of his views, for which he had been so pilloried in the past, are now common currency at the highest levels and across the political spectrum.

We talked about his role in…

Anniversaries are daunting occasions. Inevitably judgements will be made, achievements weighed up and failures raked over – and CND’s 50th anniversary was no exception. Of course there are those who hasten to point out that Britain still has nuclear weapons, as if this is entirely due to our failure to campaign hard enough!

When this has been said to me, I have pointed out that there has also been the small matter of the balance of world forces, superpowers, the Cold War, and enormous…

Are the US, UK and others that are increasing the pressure on Iran genuinely concerned about nuclear proliferation? After all, the IAEA reports that there is no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.

Many people feel that the US has another agenda. Cynicism about the stated concerns of the US is not surprising, given that the case for war against Iraq was based on lies about possession of WMD.

And if you look at the record of nuclear weapons states on…

Hard on the heels of the great victory at the TUC -- an overwhelming vote in support of an RMT resolution against replacing Trident -- the issue has, however, been kept off the agenda at the Labour Party Conference.

This is another sad reflection of how out of touch the current government is with public opinion; 59% oppose Trident replacement, yet the party of government won't allow a debate on the issue. On the eve of the conference, tens of thousands of people marched through…

The Defence Committee's first report on Trident replacement was much better than I had dared hope for.

Of course it didn't oppose a replacement, but the fact that it listed abolition as one of the options on the table was positive in itself. Most importantly , at this moment in the political process, it added its voice --with considerable force--to the demand for a full debate,with proper government participation. But ever larger numbers of people are actually now explicitly…

There is strong public demand for debate about the future of Britain's nuclear weapons system, to which the government has recently appeared to acquiesce. But there are serious problems about the way in which it is trying to frame the debate.

The recent Greenpeace-commissioned MORI poll results show a popular preference for non-replacement, particularly when it is made clear how much taxpayers' money is actually spent on these weapons of mass destruction and what could be bought…

CND has been working hard at local and national level, in parliament, in the media, and working closely with other groups, to raise awareness of the NPT and the 13 steps to nuclear disarmament agreed in 2000. It has been a lively and busy time, with debates, meetings, speeches, interviews, petitions and postcard campaigns.

Highlighting the UK' s shocking nuclear hypocrisy has -- sadly -- been all too easy . Peter Hain promised in 2000 that “we are unequivocally committed to the…