TO FIND OUT WHAT THEY THINK

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Politics and government is really all about deciding things. When we elect people to Parliament we are electing them to decide things for us, or in practice electing a government to decide things for us. We should be thankful that at least some of the issues come before Parliament, to be subject to debate and a vote by our elected representatives.

What we need to know as electors is how will they vote on crucial issues like renewing Trident. At the very least, and in so far as they can decide for themselves, how would they like to vote?  Will they have a free vote on what for many is a moral issue, a matter of conscience, or will they be constrained by party whip or loyalties? Knowing this would inform us as electors in a genuinely democratic system.

On this particular issue, of renewing our weapons of mass destruction, we have offered our local candidates a very simple method to define their position on the basic principles. All our four local candidates have been invited to complete the on-line interactive decision flowchart on the ethics of nuclear deterrence. http://nuclearmorality.com/

Tabulated below is the list of candidates for the constituency of Feltham and Heston in the 2015 General Election. As they respond to our request, a link will be added to each name, which will bring up their own personal solution to this moral problem.

Roger Crouch (Liberal Democrat)

Tony Firkins (Green Party)

Seema Malhotra (Labour)

Simon Nayyar     (Conservative)

Nuclear Weapons and Democracy

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Thoughts from Christian CND

One of our greatest responsibilities in a democracy is to elect our Members of Parliament. Often we think that our responsibility ends there and we leave the policy decisions to those we elect and the experts, frequently encouraged by our political leaders. Robert Dahl, in his essay “Democracy versus Guardianship” says “We have, in fact, turned over to a small group of people decisions of incalculable importance to ourselves and mankind” So we have given this special class of people sole responsibility for the decision whether or not to kill millions of people and destroy vast areas of the planet by firing nuclear weapons- without any participation by the people who paid for those weapons with their taxes or by those who voted for the leaders who gave the final orders-Where is democracy here?

Once citizens no longer feel qualified to participate in discussions about their very survival, the connection between the governing and the governed is severed. Is this democracy?

In her book “Thermonuclear Monarchy — the Choice between Democracy and Doom”, Elaine Scarry argues that the very existence of nuclear arsenals betrays the basic purpose of the social contract that governs any civil society. “Nuclear weapons undo governments and undo anything that could be meant by “democracy’. They put the population completely outside the realm of overseeing our entry into war or having a say in their own survival or destruction. We have to choose between nuclear weapons or democracy.”

Nuclear weapons are what she calls “out-of-ratio” weapons: ones that give a very small number of people the power to annihilate very large numbers of people. “An out-of-ratio weapon makes the presence of the population at the authorisation end (of an attack) a structural impossibility. New weapons inevitably change the nature of warfare’; she says “but out- of- ratio weapons have changed the nature of government.”

The nuclear-armed submarine, this obscenely powerful engine of destruction and death, when deep under the ocean at a time of political tension, is difficult to communicate with. The Extra Low Frequency radio waves that can penetrate such depths take many minutes to arrive, so at the most critical moment it is almost,.. incommunicado.

There is no transparency if you have to wait 30 years to get information on Cabinet decisions. There is no transparency if treaties can be signed without discussion in Parliament (e.g. 50 year Teutates Treaty):

“The two artifacts, the social contract and the nuclear array are mutually exclusive. To exist, each requires that the other be destroyed. Which one will it be?” Elaine Scarry.

Information and quotes from `Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ (columnist; Kennette Benedict) and “Harvard Magazine’ (columnist: Craig Lambert).

What next – The Case for the Moral Case

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Are we really awake, or are we in a mad dream?  It seems like that, when we see the daily need to make a case for something that is blindingly obvious.  Nearly everyone agrees that nuclear weapons are terribly dangerous, that they could destroy all of Earthly creation and that this could happen, by accident, madness or evil design. But still the political establishment and a significant minority of the population think we must continue to deploy nuclear weapons, at enormous cost, for the next forty years. We are surely trapped in a nightmare.

And yet we know we are awake; we know we have to persevere, patiently explaining the case against retention of nuclear weapons. 

Where to start? 

It is easy to show the cost – an economic case is nearly always the best approach for short-term gains with the electorate.

A political case might work better with the Establishment – weapons retained for power and status might lose their charm now that 155 countries are calling for their total elimination. The nine nuclear weapons nations  could come to be regarded as as pariah states.  http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/files/000057366.pdf

There is already a good legal case – in 1996 the International Court of Justice declared that the world’s states have a binding duty to accomplish nuclear disarmament.   http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/95/7497.pdf

We all crave security.  For that we commit billions of dollars, compromise our reputation with the rest of humanity and argue with the highest legal judgement on the planet. But for those who want to believe that nuclear weapons make us more secure there is more evidence every day that they have to ignore.

However, the humanitarian case has proved to be the way to wake up the world to the danger and to the injustice – the injustice of exceptionalism that allows a few rich nations to put at risk the rest of humanity for their own misjudged view of security.  Thanks to three major international conferences on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons the idea of asserting the right to possess them is becoming stigmatised in the eyes of the world, and no doubt in the eye of history.  Nuclear weapon states choosing to ignore this process, come to the table at the ongoing NPT conferences with no moral clothes to wear.

And having reached this stage of global awareness, the next phase (short of a new draft abolition treaty) is for the nuclear weapons states to be held to account morally for the destructive power that they persist in retaining.    Morals can be seen as standards by which we are enabled to live together, but most people can also see that there are intrinsic autonomous values which should rule our individual lives.  Therefore the moral case has power both at national and individual level, because to be defended by nuclear weapons is to accept a situation which is totally inconsistent with nearly every other aspect of our lives.

People can live with this inconsistency only until they see it clearly.  Governments can live with it only until their people can see it, and have the courage to hold them to account for it. So, beyond the humanitarian case there is the moral case.  When we can make it clear that nuclear deterrence (which is at the heart of all the so-called justifications for nuclear weapons) cannot function without a commitment to mass murder and human suffering on a scale never before imagined, then humanity has to reject it. 

And this in fact is the key to abolition.  Abolition is forever.  How can that be achieved?  How can we be sure that nuclear weapons are rejected for all time?  We will achieve this permanence only when there is a profound and widespread moral dimension to the decision. There is a close parallel with the abolition of slavery.  We still struggle to prevent slavery but collectively, as a global society, we can never go back to it, because after centuries of acceptance for economic reasons, we finally came to see that it was morally repugnant and incompatible with universally accepted values.

 When that is achieved for nuclear weapons we have a good chance to banish them forever.  To maintain the technology and the vast amount of engineering needed for creating even one nuclear weapon is not easy.  Even Britain, one of the smallest nuclear powers, has more than 5000 highly qualified people engaged in the task. In the face of a universal moral awareness and global censure, such a high level of activity could never be hidden or sustained. It will be abolished.

There is hope for our world.

 

 

For God’s sake, use your heart

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  “I would like you to sit down in a calm place, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and focus on the future of your grandchildren.”

It is my priviledge to publish this letter here. About ten years ago Mrs Deep Sandhu sent it to the leaders of every country in the world. She gave me a copy during my talk for Ealing U3A on Ethics of Nuclear Deterrence. That was a serious discussion on how to resolve the difficult moral questions, but here, heart speaks to hearts, and in the end they must listen. God help us if they can’t.

I am not a politician —just an ordinary seventy years old woman. When I was 22 years old I suffered from Tuberculosis. I still remember how awful it was watching people dying around me and thinking I might be next. It felt so great to be alive when I left the hospital. I decided to make good health my top priority in life. One can face or cope with anything as long as one is healthy.

I have always tried my best to tell my friends and family how important our health is.      I am not Mother Teresa, but I would do ANYTHING to turn our world around from its present destructive course. The first step is to plant a seed in your brain, which hopefully will grow to ring alarm bells in time to save the world before it is too late.

You have children of your own, and one day, God willing, you may have grandchild as I have. It scares me to death what sort of world we are going to leave for them. The way things are going we can easily start World War three. It would not be like the last 2 World Wars, It will be the end of our planet, as we know it. Surely just thinking of that makes you feel that you want to be rid of all those nuclear weapons on the planet.

We are all one God’s children — drops of the same ocean. Surely we don’t want to poison the sea, as it will affect all of us? There will be no escape from it. Instead, why don’t we learn to take care of each other? We need to create balance in the world. In this day and age every human being should have the dignity to have at least their basic needs met – of food and shelter.

I am sure we can change things around and really start caring for each other. Instead of spending millions and trillions on war, we could feed humanity.

I have a very dear old friend who is a writer. In 1991 he wrote a book about Hiroshima. This book is about the endless suffering and pain of innocent people caused by Americans when they dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, and three days later another in Nagasaki when more than million people were killed. As a result, for decades there were a great many disabled and malformed, badly distorted faces and bodies. As you read the book you hear the cries of the wounded, see thousands of scattered parts of the blown up bodies, and smell the stench of huge piles of rotting dead bodies. These scenes keep playing over and over again in your mind, as if you are watching a video. After intensive research and talking to people who lived through those horrific experiences, the writer explains exactly the enormity of the pain and damage caused by those acts of madness. Years later, thousands of people are still suffering from leukemia, blindness, cancer and other dreadful diseases because of the poisonous gases.

Any thinking person must realize the danger of any nuclear weapons on this planet. There have been mistakes made, either through human beings or technology, that could have resulted in World War three — e.g. the Cuban Missile Crisis, not forgetting Chernobyl.

After reading my letter, I would like you to sit down in a calm place, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and focus on the future of your grandchildren.

What would they inherit from us, a planet full of poisonous gases?

Yours sincerely

Deep Sandhu

 Footnotes

 “This is what we are about:

We plant seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted,

knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces effects

beyond our capabilities.”

Archbishop Oscar Romero

And now the world is listening:                                                                      http://www.icanw.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/BanPoster.pdf

And only two months ago, at the UN, 125 nations signed up to a statement demanding bold action to ban nuclear weapons: http://www.icanw.org/campaign-news/the-tipping-point-125-states-at-unga-first-committee-demand-bold-action/

 

The Treaty and the Banner – and another kind of treaty

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[from Kingston Peace News]

It seems that governments are addicted to power, almost by definition.  Thus when the whole world longs to be free from the threat of annihilation that is implicit in the continued existence of weapons of nuclear mass destruction, the nuclear nations cling to their bad-boy status.  In defiance of the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Britain and France have agreed to collaborate on nuclear weapons technology, by sharing research facilities for the next 50 years!  How ironically appropriate that they have named this irresponsible retrograde treaty after a Celtic war god.  Teutates (Tutatis of the Asterix comics) is not funny any more.  However, collaboration at dinosaur government level is being matched by international cooperation among peace campaigners.

I was privileged to be one of eleven campaigners on the Christian CND journey to Valduc and Paris, linking with local and international activists to protest the Teutates Treaty.   Valduc is the French nuclear weapons facility, hidden away in forests about twenty miles from Dijon.  It is more remote than Aldermaston but of similar size and we think around 1000 people work there.  Just as at Aldermaston or Burghfield, the workers are all inside while the protesters bring their message to a highly defended but otherwise deserted gateway.

Police presence was quite intensive – it was only thanks to patient negotiation by local activists that we were allowed to walk past and no photography was allowed.  However, also thanks to our friends at Dijon, we had a TV journalist walking ahead of us.  Her film and subsequent interview got us three minutes on television  http://bourgogne.france3.fr/node/297751.  The odd thing about this coverage is that the rather oppressive police presence, in cars and motorbikes etc, is not visible.  We were supposed to walk past without stopping but at the gate they let us stop for one prayer. Then we all got back in our van and went to a local village, an agreed place to do the TV interview. One police car followed us around for hours.

The real Anglo-French solidarity

The first thing you see in this footage is our “Aldermaston to Valduc – Nukes are Immoral” banner.  This was made by a member of Wimbledon CND.  I first saw it on our recent (KPC) trip to Burghfield – we were encouraged to sign it for solidarity with French activists for the visit to Valduc.  It got signed by more people at the National Justice and Peace Network Conference and all these messages were taken right to the gates of Valduc.  And it gets better: on 6th August – Hiroshima Day – we were able to introduce the idea of the banner in our report to all those participating in the international “Non aux armes nucleares!” vigil and fast at the Mur de la Paix in Paris. Many more people spontaneously signed it.  Now it is a truly international symbol of solidarity for peace.

We carried the banner amongst many others in the subsequent demonstration walk and ‘die-in’ at the Eiffel tower and then we took it to the UK Embassy, where, however, an intensive police presence prevented any demonstration or contact with the embassy.  I think the banner is back in Wimbledon by now.  Well done to whoever had this idea.

Another idea is in hand: in response to the manifestly bad government-level Teutates treaty we shall have an equivalent document: a treaty for cooperation between peace activists of Britain and France.  The “Eirene Treaty” is in preparation.  Eirene was a Greek goddess, their personification of Peace.

For more photo coverage see

Youtube video about the trip with commentary from Angela Rayner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsJIQ8KjaAE

French language video about the fast and die-in in Paris:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OeANmGzmvI

Photos of the trip to Valduc:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67400030@N04/sets/72157635029376566/

Photos from the fast at Burghfield:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67400030@N04/sets/72157635004696005/

Syria

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It seems like an endless cycle. How long will it be till people can see that violence is not the answer to violence? Even a limited violence, imposed on Syria by Western nations is likely to have negative effects throughout the region. It would be a natural response from our militaristic culture, but could prolong the evils for which, historically, we bear some responsibility.

The situation in Syria is now so terrible that an intervention by a United Nations force might be justified. However, for reasons of credibility and natural justice it would be imperative to exclude from such a force the British and American forces that are, and are seen to be, responsible for so much of the historical chaos of the Middle East.

The extreme irony that this emergency is taking place at the very time of the DSEi arms fair in London, where up to 28,000 will gather to participate in the evil trade that largely relies on, and indeed ferments, insecurity in the Middle East, will, we hope, be noticed.

Banner from London demo

Yesterday in London thousands of people demonstrated against any new act of war in Syria.

There are some times when, fortunately, MPs and Representatives can make a difference.

Please, US Congress, make it now.

 

Early Morning Aldermaston

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    (From AAWE Newsletter)

The very idea of a nuclear weapons-owning democracy is terrible in the extreme                –   a mass consent to commit mass murder (or how else would deterrence work?)

It is of course not so conscious a consent. The Government is trapped in ‘political necessities’ and the people are unaware, unconsciously or wilfully.  What is there to see?  Destructive potential so vast that it can only be understood by numbers is impossible to visualise.  It’s just a big weapon isn’t it?  We need it for security don’t we?

So, for those who have chosen to be aware, where do we start?  We need to tell the Government, tell the people, make them see what is happening and what really can be done about it, give them hope that could overcome their universally suppressed fears.   Anti-nuclear weapons campaigners know how hard this is.  Governments and public opinion are something we chip away at.  These are quite elusive things and neither is based at Aldermaston or Burghfield.    So why do we go there?

We go because there is an instinctive and real need to confront the evil where it lies. No amount of writing and talking elsewhere can substitute for facing these five miles of wire, behind which five thousand highly technical creative people work to engineer a new Armageddon.  We go there to be seen and sometimes even when there is nobody there to see us.

The CND event on Easter Monday, observed by minimal media and a few kindly police, was hugely successful – an affirmation, a rally, a physical prayer, an outpouring of the human spirit confronting a mindless capability for destruction.

And what about the people who put themselves behind this wire every day?  Certainly we have a message for them.  We ask them to think, to think outside the conventional oversimplified deterrence wisdom.  To think it through in a historical, global and moral context.  We would like to create for them the intellectual and moral climate where they are free to do this and to act on their conclusions.

It is quite hard to think rationally if it might cost you your job.  And we know from experience that what is even harder than putting your job on the line is to be different.  It takes intellectual and moral courage to openly ‘question the mission’. But, in principle, AWE staff should be free to do the same as we do.  They have colleagues and family to talk it over with. They have MPs and newspapers to write to. They have a right, like anyone else, to protest against government policy.

Unless their management see fit to deny them these rights, it should not even jeopardise their jobs, because we have come to a point where the global dismantling of the nuclear threat to the world will require a huge investment of equivalent skills and engineering facilities.  If the UK takes a lead on this, grasping the necessary outcomes of a nuclear weapons treaty, there will be work for many years.

The idea for the current Early Morning Aldermaston pickets probably started three years ago on 15th February 2010 when we blockaded all the gates at Aldermaston starting at 7.00 a.m.  That is the time to be there if you want to meet staff arriving.  On that occasion we were there all night for a Christian CND vigil at Tadley Gate.  We were quite happy to stand there with our lanterns and symbols of all faiths, defended by the police against local hooligans (though not against the cold); but around 5.30 a.m., when it should have been really quiet, things began to happen.

One car, then another, then hundreds, pouring through the gate to get to work ahead of our blockade.  You have to admire this, but it was so frustrating.  I did not even have my usual “WMD” placard, as thousands of people drove past in the morning darkness.  However, I resolved to come back.

Now I find there are many people coming back, at all sorts of times.  Several of us, with the benefit of similar experiences, come back about once a month for this early shift. It still seems like the most appropriate time because the workers are at that moment placing themselves ‘inside the wire’, where they will help to maintain and enhance our genocidal weapons.

They will not stop to take a leaflet – you get a bit of eye contact if you are lucky – but they cannot help but read the simple, polite, strong messages on our placards.  And they come in their thousands.  To get 600 cars an hour through Home Office Gate without clogging up the local country roads is quite an achievement in traffic management.  And this happens every morning.  We intend to continue to play our occasional part in this drama. Our next appearance will be around 7.00 a.m. on 21st May.  If we are well organised then one car-load of demonstrators can get the message to about a thousand staff. We must never let these people forget what they are doing.

Contact: martin@nuclearmorality.com

Easter Peace Thoughts

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Next time anyone attempts to justify the current global arms spend of £1,134,320,000,000 a year, by citing the muddle we were in in 1939, send them the link to this enlightening discussion.

Christians (thoughtful Christians) always struggle to reconcile the teaching and example of Jesus with our present day military ethics and just war formulation, and never more so than on Good Friday.  In discussion last night we came eventually to the World War II, 1939 question.  What would you have done, or think you ought to have done, in that situation and at that time?

This is certainly a challenge, the more so because this one situation is a defining episode for our military culture.  Growing up in the fifties and sixties it was part of our life – the lesson that had been learned the hard way and almost too late.  One had to be prepared (in two senses of the word) to fight, and appeasement was a bad thing.  However, it is time for us to recognise that this has become the paradigm that we are in; it affects every aspect of security policy in the UK and to some extent globally.  It is as if all our wisdom is hinged on one historical situation.

Time to move on?  Or at least, time to re-examine the criteria, just in case they are leading us to a global doom?  I think so.

Susan Clarkson helped to enlighten us at a recent talk she gave to the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament (CCADD). The following is from the report of the discussion:

How can the pacifist position be sustained, for example in face of WW2 and Hitler?

A non-violent stance means working all the time towards it and living a life of non-violence when there isn’t a war. It does usually work.  There were people even in this country who liked Hitler, but always there are people who believe that war is wrong. Some people, in some ways, effectively defeated Hitler by non-violent means, e.g. the Danes defeated a plan to round up the Jews by declaring that all citizens were Jews.  Everyone knows that the seeds of WW2 were sown by the victors after WW1 and that a different approach after WW2 was hugely successful.  We all have to face the question, for ourselves, of what we would have done at start of WW2, but far more important is what to do now.  Start from here.

So if we can’t all be pacifists (or those Christians trying to really follow Christ) then we have to start from where we are now and judge the situation with the help of history; that means all the relevant history we can see, including the times when we made mistakes.  If we base all our ideas and policy on one particular episode, then we really are in trouble.

MB 30 3 13

Time for Iranian participation?

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The Nuclear Morality Flowchart is currently available in English, Dutch and Farsi.  This logical flowchart is designed to enable ordinary people to come to a rational assessment, for themselves, of the ethics of nuclear weapons and in particular of the morality of deterrence.  It is relevant to everyone, not least the citizens of the nuclear nations, and relevant to Iran because the world still anxiously watches the alleged progress of Iran towards a nuclear weapons capability, while the religious establishment there has unequivocally condemned nuclear weapons.  When the world sees the Iranian people making a popular and logical rejection of nuclear weapons for sound moral reasons then the nuclear arsenals of the West will be more than ever untenable.  Governments will be shamed into real progress towards disarmament and sanctions on Iran will appear more than ever ridiculous.

Inadequate UK response to Hiroshima children

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Update on what happened when Japanese children sent a gift of 1000 Origami cranes to David Cameron with a letter asking for him to support the proposed UN treaty to abolish nuclear weapons (see last post: Hiroshima Cranes):

Eventually the Hiroshima Youth Committee received a letter from the Ministry of Defence!

How sad that “The UK position” is still to “continue to work with the NPT” while the world can see that in most respects we continue to defy Article VI of the NPT (the commitment to disarm), starting on a new generation of Nuclear Weapons.

We have to assume that the PM has not seen this yet among the thousands of letters (and gifts?) that he receives. The responses from MOD and No.10 are effectively anonymous.  But how poor it would look to have a letter signed by a “Desk Officer” at the MOD alongside all the letters from presidents, prime ministers and the UN Secretary-General! (see responses so far at: http://www.icanw.org/resources/paper-crane-project/#.UQ2CI8WalOI )

We know Britain can do better.  So what to do next?

Among the ideas we have received so far is this:

“I suggest that your organisation or CND ask local schools to make and send 1,000 cranes to Hiroshima with a thank you note for theirs to the PM. We know that the majority in our country want a nuclear-free world. If the Min of Defence reply to the youngsters proves to be inadequate, our young people can apologise for them.  Maybe Nick Clegg would have a Mr Nice day and thank the youngsters?”

Anyone who can take this on please let us know.   And more ideas are welcome.

Martin@nuclearmorality.com