London Arms Fair Protests

Over 100 peace activists were arrested during protests against the DSEI arms fair, 4-11 September, including Angie Zelter a high-profile Trident Ploughshares campaigner.  Angie, who was part of the anti-nuclear themed protest on Wednesday, told journalists:  ‘I said with my action that selling components of illegal weapons of mass destruction is not done in my name, she told journalists. ‘I consider that nuclear arms deals are part of an ongoing conspiracy to commit a war crime.’

DSEI, the Defence and Security Equipment International is the world’s largest arms fair which is held biennially at the ExCel Centre in London’s Docklands. Stop the Arms Fair network, which includes many peace movement groups, organised a week of protest again this year, with CND contingents from Yorkshire, Manchester and elsewhere taking part, as well as many from London CND.

Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, chair of Parliamentary CND, called the arms fair a ‘gross spectacle.  Chris Cole, who runs Drone Wars UK website, took part in Tuesday’s No Faith in War protests, said: ‘It’s important sometimes to put your body on the line and to try to stop the normalcy of the arms trade.'

TUC Congress back Defence Diversification Agency

London CND welcomes the decision of the TUC Congress 2017 to lobby the Labour Party to set up a Shadow Defence Diversification Agency before the next general election, and work to develop a national industrial strategy which includes the possibility of arms conversion.

The Unite union’s support for the motion is particularly welcome, but the GMB opposed it. CND general secretary, Kate Hudson welcomed the news. ‘Jobs are often presented as an argument in favour of Trident replacement, so it's essential that there is a plan to secure alternative high-skilled jobs and to create many more jobs.’

Motion 17, Defence, jobs and diversification, from the Artists Union England, recalled the ground-breaking plan for alternative, socially useful work pioneered by the Lucas Aerospace workers in 1976. It highlighted ‘a convergence of crises – militarism and nuclear weapons, climate chaos, and the destruction of jobs by automation’, but acknowledged that defence workers ‘are rightly concerned about the potential loss of jobs, for example if Trident replacement is cancelled’.  Read the text in full 

London CND statement Korean Peninsula: War is not the answer

London CND statement Korean Peninsula

WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER

London Region Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is alarmed by the threat of nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula and the wider Pacific region. North Korea continues to test nuclear weapons and missiles in defiance of the international community, while the US and its allies continue provocative actions, threats and exercises in or near North East Asia and the Pacific.

There is a real danger that these actions will lead to the use of nuclear weapons by intention or miscalculation. There are no safe hands for nuclear weapons and any detonation of a nuclear device would be a humanitarian catastrophe with global impacts. Threatening and isolating the North Korean regime risks escalating the conflict rather than encouraging solutions.

CND calls on the UK Government to use all appropriate diplomatic, international and legal means to end nuclear threats, to push for negotiations with North Korea and a return to the Six-Party Talks involving China, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the US.

Both immediate and longer term solutions are needed including creating a zone free of nuclear weapons in North East Asia, a process to address the underlying causes of regional insecurity and conflict on the Korean Peninsula, and the promotion of peace, development and cooperative co-existence and security for all peoples in the region.

We call on the UK Government to reject a military solution to the conflict and urgently use its influence to press for all involved to avoid and refrain from further provocative rhetoric or military exercises and tests.

• Visit the London CND website at www.londoncnd.org for more information on what’s going on, including a report of a visit from a South Korean Peace Expedition.

• Visit the CND UK website at www.cnduk.org for actions we can all take:
• Ask your MP to sign Caroline Lucas’s Early Day Motion
• Sign our letter to Theresa May, and  
• Join CND’s protest:

No Nuclear War

5pm • Thursday 28 September

Downing Street