Nuclear weapons

We can cancel Trident replacement without massive job losses. Defence Diversification, a report published by the Nuclear Education Trust in June, sums up lessons in conversion from Estonia, Germany, Italy, South Africa and the US.

One lesson is that ‘workers and communities must take the lead in making decisions’, as part of ‘a broad partnership’ including every interest that’s involved.

Also: it’s better to have a five-year plan for diversification and to take…

On 7 July, the synod of the Church of England decided (by 260 to 26) to call on the British government to ‘respond positively’ to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

There was an attempt to strengthen the wording to ask the government to actually sign the treaty, but that amendment was lost.

The motion asks the government to explain its strategy for meeting its obligations under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: ‘to pursue negotiations in…

The 26th annual conference of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space (GN) was held from 22–24 June at the Friends Meeting House in Oxford.

Will Griffin, Mary Beth Sullivan and I went a week early to Leeds and GN board convener Dave Webb organised talks…

At 1.30pm on 20 June, while Britain's Westminster parliament was sitting inside, 60 activists from across the UK chained themselves to the railings outside the houses of parliament in central London. They are calling for the UK to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and disarm the Trident nuclear weapon system.

This action echoes similar actions by women’s suffrage campaigners 100 years ago.

The activists from the campaign group Trident Ploughshares…

We decided to celebrate the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s 60th anniversary with a profile of one of its regional branches. The Yorkshire CND office is in Bradford, opposite the university. One of the branch’s contributions to the peace movement is its fundraising ‘Day of Dance’, which in Saltaire this April had 30 workshops at the event’s 46th outing. Benjamin Kaplan (BK) interviewed Matt Fawcett (MF) of Yorkshire CND more generally, on behalf of PN.

BK: How did Yorkshire CND…

'We need to recognise that we can change the debate in this country and this treaty gives us the means to do so' said Rebecca Johnson on 7 April, at a WILPF UK training day on realising the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Dr Johnson is a member of the British branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF UK) and founding…

CND Cymru

CND Cymru is the center of the Welsh anti-nuclear movement. Before it was established in 1981, the Welsh branch of the CND was made up of a collection of smaller groups spread out across the region. This network of local associations shared a commitment to decreasing the significant role of nuclear power and nuclear proliferation in Wales through mass protest of local nuclear power plants and loud opposition to military campaigns. In the last…

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…

Daniel Ellsberg is famous as the Pentagon analyst who leaked thousands of pages of top secret…

A new, aggressive US nuclear posture review was released on 2 February. The review advises removing restrictions on the use of nuclear weapons, as well as the development of new low-yield, or tactical, warheads.

The US is looking to add a number of long-range weapons to its arsenal, with accompanying sea/air-based delivery systems. One is a modified Trident D5 submarine-launched missile that can be equipped with either a conventional or a low-yield nuclear warhead. These less-…

On 25 January, Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, announced: ‘Because of the extraordinary danger of the current moment, the Science and Security Board [of the Bulletin] today moves the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock 30 seconds closer to catastrophe. It is now two minutes to midnight – the closest the clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War.’

The central concern of the…

On 24 January, Peter Anderson and Jamie Watson were both found guilty of ‘breach of the peace’ at Dumbarton justice of the peace court for blockading the Coulport nuclear weapons store during the Trident Ploughshares summer disarmament camp last July.

Two Finns who were arrested and charged with them, Esa Noresvuo and Kaj Raninen, did not turn up. Peter and Jamie accepted prosecution evidence that none of the four who locked-on across an access road to Coulport had moved when asked to…

Nukewatch report that the first British nuclear warhead convoy of 2018 took a new route from the nuclear bomb factory in Burghfield in Berkshire, England, to the Coulport nuclear weapons store north of Glasgow, Scotland.

Four warhead carriers left Burghfield on 31 January. After a break at Glencorse Barracks, south of Edinburgh, the convoy departed from its usual route: ‘Unusually it then took the M8 west passing Livingston and Bathgate, and then through the centre of Glasgow…

Three members of Nukewatch UK briefly stopped a convoy carrying nuclear bombs on 16 November. The vehicles were leaving a base near Bannockburn on their way from Atomic Weapons Establishment Burghfield to the royal naval arms depot at Coulport near Helensburgh where the warheads are loaded onto Trident submarines.

On 6 October, the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Executive director Beatrice Fihn laughed in disbelief when the committee rang to inform her.

ICAN was awarded the prize for drawing attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons, and for its work on a nuclear…