On 22 September, five more countries signed the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and two more ratified it, making 91 signatories and 68 ratifiers in total.
Barbados, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti and Sierra Leone were the signers, and the Dominican Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo the latest ratifiers.
They were called the ‘Magnificent Seven’ by the chair of Britain’s Nuclear Free Local Authorities, David Blackburn of Leeds city…
Every time the US has increased its military support for Ukraine, Russia has responded by escalating in some way.
We’re approaching a very dangerous point now, where a Russian nuclear attack starts to become a real possibility (see p7), with catastrophic consequences not just for Ukraine, but almost certainly for the world.
However, as Noam Chomsky recently pointed out to Truthout: ‘The impact of the war goes far beyond: to the millions facing starvation with the…
In late August, Costa Rica put forward a statement at the UN in New York calling for the total elimination of all nuclear weapons. 147 of the 193 UN member states supported this statement.
Scotland should be Nation 148.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are the key elements in gaining a world without nuclear weapons.
ICAN is a network started…
Nuclear disarmament campaigns have often focused on hardware, on warheads and missiles and submarines.
Nuclear doctrine, or how governments plan to use their nuclear weapons, have had a lot less attention.
This is a pity because there are a lot of easy wins available for the peace movement on doctrine. (Also, the strength of the movement in the 1980s was as much to do with doctrine as it was to do with hardware, I would argue.)
As I noted last issue, an…
‘If the choice for Russia is fighting a losing war, and losing badly and Putin falling, or some kind of nuclear demonstration, I wouldn’t bet that they wouldn’t go for the nuclear demonstration.’ That was Tony Brenton, a former UK ambassador to Russia, talking to Reuters in August.
Western experts have explained some of the ‘demonstration’ options for Putin, if he does use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, detonating a single ‘low-yield’ warhead in a way that does not kill anyone: ‘It could…
According to Scottish CND and Nukewatch, there were nuclear warhead convoys at the end of the month in May, June and July.
The convoys do a return journey from AWE Burghfield in southern England (where the bombs are maintained) to Coulport on the west coast of Scotland (where they’re loaded onto Trident submarines). They travel through Glasgow, a city of 1.6 million people.
Each truck was probably carrying two nuclear warheads.
On 10 June, according to Nukewatch, a…
1982: Since I have been asked to do so, and not because I have any exclusive wisdom, experience or success in this field, I would like to share a few thoughts on the work of trying to mobilise public opinion for disarmament.
In recent years, public opinion for disarmament has been mobilised on a massive scale. That process has now to continue to the point when public opinion actually forces changes in national policies. To gather in a park is a most impressive act of witness. To…
‘Just like the people of Kazakhstan reclaimed their agency [their ability to make their own decisions and to affect things], non-nuclear weapons states can reclaim their agency through the TPNW’, said Togzhan Kassenova, a Kazakh activist, speaking at ICAN's Nuclear Ban Forum in Vienna in June.
Togzhan, the author of Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb (Stanford University Press, 2022), used personal testimony and research to set the tone for the week ahead. She…
Of the many causes that Bruce Kent fought for, the one he is most identified with is unilateral nuclear disarmament. Bruce was general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from 1980 to 1985, and CND chair from 1987 to 1990. CND’s core demand is for unilateral nuclear disarmament – for the UK government to dismantle all its nuclear weapons immediately, whether or not other countries also disarm.
…
If you’re a Western disarmament group, and you choose not to mention or engage with the long history of Western nuclear threats against non-nuclear weapon states, I think that’s a problem, morally, politically and in terms of strategy – but it’s kind of business as usual.
If you’re a Western disarmament group, and you choose to engage with the threatened use of nuclear weapons in international crisis situations, but you choose to talk only about nuclear threats issued by enemies of…
A new YouGov poll has found that 8 in 10 of UK adults (79 percent) would support No First Use: all countries with nuclear weapons committing to a policy of never using nuclear weapons first in a conflict. (The British government and NATO refuse to rule out First Use.)
The Nuclear Education Trust poll, carried out on 4 – 5 July, also found that 68 percent of people believe the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstances is unacceptable, and that 56 percent are worried that a nuclear…
On 16 June, an International Day of Action was held to call on all countries to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), and for all nuclear weapon states to get rid of them.
There were demonstrations making these demands in Paris and Berlin, and letters were handed in to the British nuclear weapons bases at Faslane and Coulport.
The day of action was just ahead of the first review meeting (in Vienna) of the 65 countries who have so far ratified or…
In August, the Nuclear Information Service (NIS) will be unveiling the first digitised documents from the research archive of the late Scottish CND co-ordinator John Ainslie (see his obituary in PN 2600 – 2601). As well as taking part in campaigning and direct action in support of disarmament, John was ‘an authoritative and internationally respected nuclear researcher’ (the Guardian…
Extreme Circumstances, an important new report from Nuclear Information Service (NIS), will be published on 16 August.
It looks into what’s happening with the UK’s Replacement Warhead Programme, tries to understand the strategic thinking behind it, and provides some informed thoughts about what it’s design specs are likely to be.
Much of the information NIS has drawn on comes from US public documents about their new W93 warhead – which the UK warhead depends on.
…
‘No US nukes in Britain!’ That was the message of over 150 activists from around the UK (and from the Continent) who joined the CND demonstration at USAF Lakenheath on 21 May.
The news that the US air force might be returning nuclear weapons to its base in north Suffolk broke on 11 April with a tweet from US researcher Hans Kristensen: ‘Looks like RAF Lakenheath air base has quietly been added to the list of nuclear weapons storage sites receiving upgrades in Europe.’
…
