Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Assuring Destruction Forever - Reaching Critical Will

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Published on Wednesday, 10 June 2020 13:55

Reaching Critical Will are a partner organisation of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and they have just released an updated study exploring the ongoing and planned nuclear weapon modernisation programmes in China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Our vice-chair Janet Fenton wrote the UK Chapter for this report which you can read through this link.

As of early 2020, the nuclear-armed states are estimated to possess approximately 13,410 nuclear weapons, most of which are many times more powerful than the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima. All the nuclear-armed states have plans to modernise—upgrade and/or extend the lives of—their nuclear weapons. 

This report is an update of a study that Reaching Critical Will initiated in 2012.  Each chapter of the Assuring destruction forever: 2020 edition has been prepared by experts on national nuclear weapon programmes. Each goes through the current status of nuclear weapon forces; modernisation programmes and plans; the costs of these programmes; the countries’ positions on international nuclear weapon law and policy; and public discourse related to nuclear weapons. You can read the full report through this link.

Black Lives Matter

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Published on Wednesday, 03 June 2020 11:05

Black Lives Matter.

It may be the 21st Century but racism still has a firm foothold in our institutions, in the policies and actions of the state, and in our own attitudes and reflexes.

This is another moment when its ugly nature is palpable, and it is a moment to take a side and stand with the oppressed. In the peace movement, we have always recognised that nuclear weapons are not a thing on their own, but are a particular expression of corrupt, patriarchal and racist power.

Their roots are in early 20th century fantasies of a Superweapon that could wipe out inferior races and establish white supremacy forever, a fantasy enacted at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, on the very clear basis that these were lives that did not matter.

None of the specious gloss of justification since has made an iota of difference to their hideous rationale. This is also a time for us in the anti-nuclear movement to hang our own heads and admit that we have often failed to take the stand and failed to spell out the connections.

It's time to wake up.

SUPPORT:

Support US actions: https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/

Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights: https://www.crer.scot/

Ethnic Minority National Resilience Network: https://bemis.org.uk/emnrn/

Justice for Sheku Bayoh: https://www.change.org/p/police-scotland-investigate-the-death-of-sheku-bayoh-in-police-custody

Scots Show Solidarity with US Anti-Nuke Protesters

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Published on Thursday, 28 May 2020 11:37

MSPs among those signing letter to judge.

Scots, including 11 MSPs, have registered their support and solidarity with seven US peace activists as they face the possibility of long prison sentences following a protest at a nuclear weapon submarine base in Georgia.

On April 4th, 2018, seven Catholic Plowshares activists - Carmen Trotta Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Steve Kelly, Martha Hennessy, Elizabeth (Liz) McAlister, Patrick O’Neill - entered King's Bay nuclear weapon submarine base in St. Mary’s, Georgia, USA, carrying hammers and baby bottles of their own blood. They went to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command to “beat swords into plowshares”. They were convicted in October last year on charges of destruction and depredation of government property in excess of $1,000, trespassing, and conspiracy, and could be facing up to 20 years in prison. Sentencing is expected on the 8th, 28th and 29th June.

The letter of support1 asks the sentencing judge to consider the risks to the seven of jail time in the middle of the COVID-19 emergency and points out that they pose no risk to the public. The signing MSPs2 are members of the parliament's Cross-Party Group on Nuclear Disarmament.

Janet Fenton, Vice-Chair of Scotish CND, said:

When the UN adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on that wonderful day in July 2017 I was privileged to be in the room in new York, sitting with the Plowshares nuns who, along with Liz McAllister had given me hospitality a few years earlier in a US Catholic worker house. Together we had distributed essential food to some of America’s poorest in the morning and helped immigrant children speak Engish in the afternoon, and in the evening we swapped action and arrest stories, Faslane and Y12, Coulport and King's Bay, but the long prison sentences and the stigma that is faced in the US for taking peaceful action requires a very deep and lifelong kind of courage. From Scotland, we can recognise the loving bravery of the seven and we are writing to Judge Wood in hopes of gaining some degree of humanity for them in a brutal and repressive prison system. But fully honouring the courage of the US peace activists requires an and to these weapons end any system that considers them to have utility.”

Contact: Janet Fenton 07795 594573 Lynn Jamieson 07974 631397

Alarm as US Considers Resumption of Nuclear Weapon Testing

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Published on Monday, 25 May 2020 11:35

Scottish anti-nuclear campaigners have reacted with alarm at the news that the US is considering a resumption of the live testing of nuclear weapons as a further sign of the roll-back of global nuclear arms control measures.

Live testing of nuclear weapons by the US ceased in 1992. There were tests by India and Pakistan until 1998. Since then the only live tests have been by North Korea, most recently in 2017. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was adopted by the UN in 1996 but has failed to acquire the necessary state ratifications (including that of the US) to enter into force. Since the cessation of live tests the US and the UK have relied on computer modelling. To date, computer modelling has been assumed to be adequate for testing the validity of the weapons, leading to the suggestion that the US announcement is a political move. The announcement adds to concern around the erosion of nuclear arms control measures. 

Lynn Jamieson, chair of Scottish CND said:

"It is chilling to see the hard-won restraints on nuclear weapons being deliberately struck down by the current US administration. Posturing about nuclear testing makes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty the latest treaty in line for provocative disregard. A new Cold War is too tame a description for their reckless conduct. As COVID-19 and climate change remind us, the world is an interconnected system - any nuclear exchange threatens all life on Earth. The risk of global disaster is so great and so continuous that the only sane response is the total elimination of nuclear weapons. There is a route-map for that - the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons."

Emma Cockburn, SCND's Campaign Worker said:

"While healthcare providers are being pushed to breaking point across the world and hundreds of thousands of people have died due to the pandemic, the nuclear states continue to pour billions into nuclear weapons, increasing global instability and blatantly ignoring the ongoing climate emergency. Our world is on fire and people are drowning and the last thing we should be considering is the threat of nuclear winter and even more poisoned land from testing. It is time we redirected our focus from military power to tackle these threats to humanity and put people and planet first." 

CONTACT: Lynn Jamieson - 0797 4631 397, Emma Cockburn - 0746 0856 568

Nuclear Convoy on Roads during Pandemic Emergency

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Published on Wednesday, 13 May 2020 11:29

Scottish CND has learned from Nukewatch UK that the MoD is today transporting nuclear weapons from the Aldermaston/Burghfield complex in Berkshire to the atomic weapon store facility at Coulport on Loch Long, in spite of the COVID-19 crisis.

The MoD routinely moves nuclear warheads (each with the destructive power of eight Hiroshima bombs) to and from Burghfield and Coulport for maintenance and refurbishment. The warheads are stored at Coulport and loaded there onto the US-leased missiles on the Trident submarines. In the road convoy, huge warhead carriers are supported by up to twenty other police and ancillary vehicles, with at least 50 personnel involved. This raises the additional concern about transferring COVID-19 risk to and from the Scottish bases, which are already known to have infection.