Snippets for peace 2016/7

MEMBERS of Bromley and Beckenham CND are appalled at the decision to renew the Trident missile system at a cost of many billions when money is badly needed for the NHS, education, public services and creating jobs in alternative industries and civilian ship-building.

We’re now more vulnerable as a target and there is a constant danger of a nuclear accident. The manufacture of nuclear weapons also causes pollution for both workers and civilians.

A big thank you to the courage and wisdom of the 171 MPs who voted to oppose Trident renewal and shame on those who agreed. As the Tory MP Crispin Blunt said, “this a colossal investment in a system that will become increasingly vulnerable”.

Much of the technology of the four nuclear submarines is outdated, and launching the missiles is unwieldy. If Theresa May ‘pressed the button’, as she said she would, the UK could already have been annihilated.

The Trident deterrent is a dangerous fallacy. Nuclear weapons are immoral and also illegal under the terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

The UK should set an example to the rest of the world and would then be a position to influence negotiations for unilateral disarmament.

ANN GARRETT

Secretary of Bromley and Beckenham CND
Bromley Borough News : 22/7/2016
http://www.biggin-hill-today.co.uk/article.cfm?id=107876&headline=UK%20should%20lead%20the%20way%20on%20unilateral%20disarmament&sectionIs=letters&searchyear=2016

Parliament Square peace camp comes to the Tate

A reconstruction of peace campaigner Brian Haw’s anti-war protest camp in Parliament Square is to have a permanent home at the Tate. 

The work by artist Mark Wallinger, called State Britain 2007, shows Haw’s encampment complete with flags bearing slogans alongside graphic images of victims of conflict. Haw, who died in 2011 aged 62 of lung cancer, spent 10 years camped outside Parliament fighting off attempts to move him while protesting against British military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson said the work, originally commissioned for the gallery in 2007, was “highly charged” and a “meticulous reconstruction” of the original.

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Treaty banning nuclear weapons approved at UN

More than 70 years after the world witnessed the devastating power of nuclear weapons, a global treaty has been approved to ban the bombs, a move that supporters hope will lead to the eventual elimination of all nuclear arms.

The treaty was endorsed by 122 countries at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Friday after months of talks in the face of strong opposition from nuclear-armed states and their allies. Only the Netherlands, which took part in the discussion, despite having US nuclear weapons on its territory, voted against the treaty.

All of the countries that bear nuclear arms and many others that either come under their protection or host weapons on their soil boycotted the negotiations. The most vocal critic of the discussions, the US, pointed to the escalation of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programme as one reason to retain its nuclear capability. The UK did not attend the talks despite government claims to support multilateral disarmament.

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