It has been a month full of sharp reminders of how the military dominates our lives.
During the last week of April a group of activists peacefully blockaded the Defence Munitions Depot at Beith in Scotland (see PN2461). This huge depot has a workforce of 500, and its main work is to store, produce, test and issue a range of missiles (including Tomahawks) and torpedoes.
In an arcane twist, HMG contracts big arms companies like BAE Systems to do the manufacturing and these…
On 9 May, as the first BtB protester was being released from prison - after receiving a 14-day sentence for wanton vandalism in protest at new developments at AWE Aldermaston - Block the Builders (BtB) finally swung into action, with an early morning
The Blackaby Papers are a series of occasional papers on defence and disarmament issues in memory of Frank Blackaby, sometime president of Abolition2000UK. The sixth paper -- available now -- is entitled “The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Rebuilding Confidence” and was written by Ernie Regehr, Director and CoFounder of Project Ploughshares. It is available free from http://www.abolition2000uk. gn.apc.org or for #2.50 by calling…
As an antidote to election nausea I have turned again to Lewis Carrol's Alice. Since both Tweedles have now decided that “playing by the rules” is the thing, the obvious passage is from Alice's trial:
At this moment the King,who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book,called out “Silence!” and read out from his book, “Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court.”
Everybody looked at Alice.
”I'm not a mile high,” said Alice.…
The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is up for review at the UN in New York between 2 and 27 May 2005.
This Peace News NPT special section provides a basic introduction to what the NPT is and focuses on what some British groups and NGOs are doing around the forthcoming Review Conference.
We aim to show the diversity in ways in which different groups are working towards disarmament. Some focus entirely on the treaty, collecting names for petitions or finding means to…
In the 1990s something extraordinary happened. We saw a treaty to stop the emission of the gases which cause climate change. And we saw the signing of a treaty to stop nuclear testing.
Building an atomic bomb which can fit on a long distance missile cannot be done without testing. Like successful heart surgery the skills needed to do it can't be put down on paper. It can only be done through regular practice which develops the tacit skills needed. The U2 song isn't utopian.…
It is outrageous that the nuclear weapons club still tries to ensure security by threatening to incinerate and irradiate enormous millions. This does not match the way most of us try to live. Nuclear weapons violate our values. When we believe something is outrageous we want it to be unlawful as well.
The concept of the “public conscience” links law and values. Our sense of justice says that all human beings matter and they should not suffer or die fortuitously, just because they…
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…
At the last NPT Review Conference in 2000, against all expectations, the 188 signatories, including the five acknowledged nuclear weapon states (NWS) agreed “an unequivocal undertaking by the NWS to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament” as one of the Thirteen Steps drawn up to implement the Treaty. As Brian Wicker of Pax Christi writes, “You have to be a very clever lawyer or politician not to recognise this as a promise.”
“Counter-…Most of the nations of the world have joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which has its seventh Review Conference in New York this month. India, Israel and Pakistan remain outside, and North Korea announced its withdrawal from the treaty in 2003. Yet the NPT is weak and getting weaker, and forecasts suggest that the conference will fail to find solutions to the most pressing challenges.
Up to the job?Though the NPT is usually represented as a…
As the UK delegation to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference pack their suitcases, their speeches on verification and a shiny new presentation about some decommissioning they did several years ago, will they also have room in their briefcases for the Aldermaston Site Development Strategy Plan (SDSP?
We suspect that the government's massive investment in a new building programme at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) Aldermaston won't quite fit into the…
At least 500 international activists were arrested on 16 April after a thousand gathered in Belgium to carry out a “citizens' nuclear weapons inspection”.
A massive police presence greeted the simultaneous actions at NATO HQ in Brussels, SHAPE NATO military HQ) in Mons, and Kleine Brogel airbase where 20 US nuclear weapons are stored. There was also an unannounced inspection of a NATO satellite base in Gooik, which is involved in communication between these bases.
Activists were…
The dismantling of the model Trident submarine in Edinburgh on 10 March (see news item on p2) was a dramatic performance in which different elements, with varying degrees of willingness, played essential parts. The activists inside and around the sub had an ideal plot in mind but realised that it might have to be adjusted as circumstances changed. In the end it went almost entirely to script.
The late evening denouement put the police centre stage. They increased the dramatic…
May is the month of the review of the NPT in New York and we are calling all those activists with a wish for social justice to join the protests in Plymouth. Plymouth contains one of the most deprived wards in Europe and isthe city with the most “looked after” children in the country. May 2005 is the time to point out that Trident weapons do not grow good communities.
Many of you are working towards events at the G8 in Scotland. We invite you to a vivid practice run in Plymouth at the…
Early on 11 March officers from Lothian and Borders Police dismantled a large model Trident nuclear weapon submarine which had blocked the street outside the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh for 14 hours in a challenge to the Parliament to take a stand against Britain's weapons of mass destruction.
At 10am on 10 March the submarine had approached the Parliament building and, as it crossed the Canongate, peace activists on the inside, from Trident Ploughshares and the Theatre of War…
