A Stand Against Nuclear Weapons:
First formed in 1958, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament continues the struggle, in the 21st century, to rid the world of nuclear weapons. CND will be needed as long as there are nuclear weapons.
In 1945 two nuclear weapons destroyed, in seconds, the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then the capacity for nuclear destruction has increased dramatically and there have been times when there was an imminent threat of nuclear war. To try to avoid war many treaties have been signed, including the Non-Proliferation Treaty (1967) and the Anti-Ballistic Treaty (1972), but nuclear weapons continue to threaten our destruction.
- Between them, Britain, the US, France, Russia and China now possess 36,000 nuclear weapons - enough to destroy the world many times over.
- Other states, such as Israel, India and Pakistan, now possess nuclear weapons. · NATO, a military alliance that depends on nuclear weapons, plans to expand eastwards towards Russia by including countries from the former Warsaw Pact; in response, Russia says it will defend itself by increasing its already formidable nuclear arsenal.
- The US is planning a Ballistic Missile Defence system ('Son of Star Wars') against missile attack. The British Government supports the plan. It would mean the end of agreements that have helped to restrain the nuclear powers. Russia and China are opposed and fear a new arms race.
- In Scotland we harbour the British Trident system originally designed to destroy Russia. It has four nuclear-powered submarines based at Faslane on the Clyde. Each submarine carries inter-continental missiles armed with nuclear warheads with a total destructive capacity greater than 1000 Hiroshima bombs.
CND exists to oppose these threats to peace. Scottish CND provides opportunities to support this opposition in Scotland. The primary purpose of Scottish CND is to get rid of Britain's Trident system based at Faslane. At the same time, Scottish CND shares CND's larger aim of ridding the world of all nuclear weapons.
There are a number of reasons for opposing nuclear weapons in general and Trident in particular.
- Moral: nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction whose use would kill millions of innocent citizens.
- Legal: nuclear weapons violate international law; the International Court of Justice has ruled that nuclear weapons are illegal in any conceivable circumstances.
- Economic: nuclear weapons are an enormous drain on the world's economic resources; the British Trident system alone costs about £1.5 billion per year.
- Military: many senior military figures from around the world have condemned nuclear weapons as having no military value; it is no longer clear what military purpose a system like Trident could serve.
- Environmental: nuclear testing has already irrevocably damaged the environment in various parts of the world, and the manufacture and maintenance of nuclear weapons carries the risk of further pollution; the actual use of nuclear weapons would pollute the world for millions of years.
- Safety: an accident at a nuclear base such as Faslane, near a large centre of population, could kill hundreds of thousands of people; the existence of the Faslane base makes the west of Scotland a potential target.
- Religious: the possession and potential use of weapons of mass destruction are incompatible with the religious beliefs of most of the world's faiths.
Scottish CND provides a focus for those people in Scotland who are opposed to nuclear weapons for some or all of the above reasons. Members take part in the distribution of leaflets, the confronting of politicians, fund raising, demonstrations, and blockading nuclear bases. These activities are supported by local groups and by an executive in Glasgow that arranges events and distributes information to individuals, to the media, and to schools and colleges.
Scottish CND welcomes those who want to play an active part in the campaign as well as those who simply want to be part of the membership.
For more info on joining SCND, click here.