27 more countries need to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) for it to come into force. 50 states need to not only sign the treaty, but ratify it (in democracies, this usually requires parliament to pass a law).
The first three countries to ratify the TPNW were Guyana, Thailand and the Vatican (all on 20 September 2017).
The other ratifiers are (in chronological order): Mexico, Cuba, Palestine, Venezuela, Palau, Austria, Vietnam, Costa Rica,…
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The Shadow Collector. On 7 August 1945, the day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Shogō Nagaoka, a geologist from Hiroshima University, began walking through the city collecting rubble. The A-bomb’s heat burned shadows of vapourised people and objects onto streets and buildings and it changed the formation of rocks. Nagaoka filled his rucksack and then his house with specimens. He believed they were vital to telling the story of…
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…
‘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 urged us to continue our work to reject nuclear and promote renewable energy.
We also discussed the UN Treaty on the…
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 Nukes international series of events in Scotland including a march and demonstration at Faslane. The aim of the divestment movement in Scotland is to persuade Scottish…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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’.
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…
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 ‘…
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…
