London celebrates CND at 60

Bruce Kent (front row, right) was the guest speaker at London CND's March to Aldermaston - CND at 60 event

London CND celebrated the Campaign’s 60th anniversary on Saturday 17 February, with a film show hosted by Sands Film Club, Rotherhithe. Forty to fifty people attended the March to Aldermaston: CND at 60 event. Referring to the Lindsey Anderson documentary of the 1958 Easter march to the Aldermaston bomb-making factory, guest speaker Bruce Kent (front row, right) explained: ‘I was a humble London curate at the time. It wasn’t until later that I became convinced about the issue of nuclear weapons.’ Olivier Stockman who runs Sands Studios with colleague Christine Edzard, noted that the two short films he also showed – Genie in a bottle unleashed and Embrace! a world free of nuclear weapons – were chosen from the UN library of films which advocate a nuclear free world.

Lindsey Anderson’s short documentary of the three-day Ban the Bomb march of Easter 1958, narrated by Richard Burton, enjoys landmark status as a campaigning documentary. It was a milestone too for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which emerged onto the political stage as an organisation capable of uniting disparate political currents and concerned citizens from across the country.

The volunteers responsible for the film organised the Film and Television Committee for Nuclear Disarmament, brought together a range of skills across the film industry to make an impressive and professional piece of documentary footage. Lindsey Anderson was the dominant influence, who became the acknowledged leader of Free Cinema, a British documentary revival of the 1950s which prefigured the British New Wave movement. March to Aldermaston is included in the British Film Institute’s box set, Free Cinema, available from http://shop.bfi.org.uk/

You can watch a clip from March to Aldermaston here.

The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review explained!

On Friday, the Pentagon unveiled the US’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, a document which has already been the subject of intense debate and concern since a copy was leaked last month. Here's a brief guide to what it is and why it matters. 

What is a nuclear posture review?

The Nuclear Posture Review is published periodically by the US department of defense, and it sets out the role of nuclear weapons in the country’s military. It is often used to signal a change in nuclear policy: for example, Barack Obama’s 2010 NPR ruled out for the first time a nuclear attack against non-nuclear-weapon states who are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

What is in the 2018 NPR?

The main policy change signalled by this review is the move to introduce so-called ‘low yield’ nuclear weapons into the US’ arsenal, in order to combat the perception that its current nuclear weapons are ‘too big to be used’ and thus redundant.

‘Low yield’ nuclear weapons have a strength of up to 20 kilotons. The bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki would today be classed as ‘low yield’ despite the fact that it killed over 70,000 people.

Why does it matter?

This change in policy is designed to make nuclear weapons more ‘usable.’ That means it is much more likely that they could be used in a ‘conventional’ (non-nuclear) conflict. Far from moving towards disarmament, President Trump is creating a situation in which an escalation to nuclear war is a real risk.

CND General Secretary Kate Hudson says:

“Essentially, the lid is being taken off the restraints on both new-build and nuclear weapons use. The most significant element of the review is commitment to a whole new generation of nuclear weapons, with the emphasis on low-yield, often described as ‘usable’.

“It should be pointed out here that the bombs used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are technically low-yield in today’s parlance, so we are not talking about something small.

“The excuse underpinning this approach is supposedly that there are no real options between conventional weapons and all-out nuclear war, and that there should be more rungs on the ‘escalatory ladder’. Personally I would rather see more rungs on the de-escalatory ladder.”

Drop All Charges Against Arrested Okinawa Anti-Bases Activists - petition

Japanese peace activist Hiroji Yamashiro was detained for five months from October 2016 for leading a group of activists in protest against the relocation of a US Marine Corps Airbase. Last summer he was released on bail but he and other activists now face long sentences. He has accused the Japanese authorities of human rights violations. 

You can read more about Yamashiro's story here. Click here to sign the petition to drop all charges against him and his fellow activists.