WHY THE TPNW MUST BE A RED LINE IN THIS ELECTION

Remember Polly Toynbee and “Forget Trident: Labour needs to focus on issues that matter.”? This attitude is however not restricted to partisan Guardian columnists – it persists in the standard reference to “bread and butter”, “the daily lives of ordinary people”, etc., etc., so that even in an election phase the architects and defenders of the nuclear weapon status quo will tend only to raise the issue to signal their meek compliance with Valentine Day messages like Triple Lock.

Take a few examples. Sane economics: not just the obvious scandal of human, material and financial resources wasted on hideous weaponry, but also the way our current malign and distorted finance system depends ultimately on deadly competition between economic blocks, and on coercion, with nuclear weapons at the peak of that structural violence. And from that deadly nexus austerity, poverty and chronic ill-health follow as night from day. Diversity and inclusion: if you back the so-called “deterrent” you are per se asserting that the citizens, including the bairns, of some other country are of no value compared to those of your own. Realism and prudence: if you consider the current and grave risks attached to nuclear weapons for one rational minute you will have them, along with the climate, right at the top of your agenda. Violence reduction: if you assert that the unspeakable violence of nuclear weapons is necessary for our security how can you present any honest advocacy for reducing violence in our homes and streets? Global justice and equality: mainstream politics in the Northern Hemisphere proceeds as if its southern counterpart does not exist, or only as a well of resources to tap and exploit with criminal carelessness. Most of the signatories and ratifiers of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) are from there while all the WMD toters are from the top (if you exclude nuclear fellow-travellers like Australia). And maybe in connection to this you could split the election hopefuls into two rough categories – those who know the score but who do not want to unravel a status quo that suits their personal and tribal interests, and those whose intent is genuine and positive but who have not yet got the connections. It is the second group that should undergo our gentle cross-examination.

The thing is – the UK is a nuclear-armed states and while its arsenal is small in comparison to the big boys – the US and Russia, we can still kill millions in a single strike, and, even more to the point, ignite the whole global catastrophe. Let’s start there and everything else will come in, unasked. Here’s an analogy. Our nation state has a handy set of mass extermination units, gas chambers, incinerators, whatever, mothballed maybe, but ready to be set to work if the need arises.

And their existence is public knowledge. How do you fit everything else around that hellish reality, not to mention that fact that their use will unseam civilisation as we know it? For the general election our message must clear: nuclear weapons are a red line. See the people and parliament page to take action.

My sister has been watching a Cold War series on TV and we were reminiscing about these days. She was 10 during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and I was in sixth year at Aberdeen Grammar. Jeannie remembers that our parents were in a state of fear, but at the time she did not know what was going on. She was hardly alone. I am astonished to realise on reflection that I myself knew only a little. There was a radio in our Bedford Road flat but the news usually got switched off by our father after the headlines and it may indeed have been deliberately left quiet in those days. My awakening came on during a school games session at Rubislaw, probably on Wednesday 17^th October. On that day pal Willie Burt cheerfully predicted that this was the day the bombs would fall and then he filled me in. I blanked it out as much as possible but the terror was threaded through my dreams.

Then the insane stand-off of the early eighties when parenthood forced me to face the reality of the threat more squarely, though the response was largely limited to middle-of-the night half-arsed planning for emergency evacuation, sleeping bags, rations etc., tied to a kind of paralysis. Fortunately there were others who responded actively and responsibly, in the large demonstrations in the US and Europe, at Greenham Common, and in small grass-roots groups all over. Their good work did have its effect, not least in provoking films like The Day After and Threads which did so much in spreading awareness of the potential horror, even nudging Ronald Reagan towards a measure of reality so that he and Gorbachev could reach a (tragically temporary) realisation that nuclear weapons not only had to be gotten rid of, but that it could be done. And so, by a modest margin, we edged away from the brink.

And now they tell us, very plausibly, that the present risk of nuclear war is as grave as in 1962 and the early eighties. We have an escalating threat and counter-threat pattern, which has now gone as far as first-stage preparations for resurrecting live nuclear weapon testing by Russia, China and the US, plus the virtual collapse of arms control measures, the modernisation of weapon systems and the emergence of ever more unhinged leaders with access to doomsday arsenals. And there can be no doubt about the horrific and catastrophic reality of nuclear conflict. Annie Jacobsen, author of Nuclear War – A Scenario said “ . . it doesn’t take but one weapon to set off a chain reaction to unleash the current (US) arsenal, which is forward deployed in launch-on-warning positions and could be fired in as little as a minute—15 minutes for the submarines. There are enough weapons in those positions right now to bring on a nuclear winter that would kill an estimated 5 billion people.” There is only a single target for nuclear weapons – humanity itself.

Existential threats are threats to the future of the human race and nuclear war is right up there with climate and bio-diversity collapse. These twin horrors should be high on the election agenda. There is talk about “managing” the risks of nuclear war, but that is a very dodgy word in its implication of a process in some kind of rational control. Moving the petrol can a little bit further away from the open fire is not managing the risk, it’s at best a temporary emergency step that might give us a breathing space. Getting rid of nuclear weapons is ultimately the only rational response to the risk they pose.

This is why all candidates in this election should be asked whether they will, if elected, sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge in support of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

This is a red line issue for progressing nuclear disarmament, for in Scotland at least, we will have the choice of a candidate who is unambiguous about the route to nuclear weapons elimination.

Go to our People and Parliament page to see all the candidates. More information and model letter at this link.

International humanitarian law looks threadbare at the moment, not least because the cynicism behind much of the “rule-based international order” rhetoric from major world players has been further exposed by Gaza. Yet our very survival, in the face of existential threats, depends on the sincerity, agreement and co-operation which is its very basis, so it is not a time to give up, but a time to repair, restore and renew. It is precisely in this scenario that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has its place. The Treaty entered into force three years ago. It prohibits nations which have acceded to it from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory. It also prohibits them from assisting, encouraging or inducing anyone to engage in any of these activities.

As of this month 70 UN states have formally bound themselves to its provisions and 93 have taken the initial step of signing. Whenever the Treaty is on the agenda of the UN General Assembly is regularly has the support of around 130 states. Year by year it is growing in strength and credibility. Its emergence has led major financial institutions across the globe to cease investing in nuclear weapons. It has effected significant changes in the public and political discourse around nuclear weapons. It has acquired popular assent even with nuclear-armed states. It is regarded as a possible model for responding to the climate crisis, since it has mobilised those at the sharp end of a particular threat to challenge the behaviour of those powerful nations that present it.

The Treaty is founded on the long-standing principles of humanitarian law (from the 7^th century Adomnan of Iona’s Law of Innocents onward) which are so blatantly disregarded right now.

From the Preamble:

“Basing themselves on the principles and rules of international humanitarian law, in particular the principle that the right of parties to an armed conflict to choose methods or means of warfare is not unlimited, the rule of distinction, the prohibition against indiscriminate attacks, the rules on proportionality and precautions in attack, the prohibition on the use of weapons of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering, and the rules for the protection of the natural environment,”

For us in Scotland the TPNW is an opportunity to contribute again to the repair and rebuilding of the basic laws of humanity, whether as an independent state able to banish nuclear weapons from our shores and cause the UK to disarm, or by showing our readiness right now to join the majority world in its aspiration for a world free of that catastrophic scourge. There are ample opportunities in 2024 for people, institutions and government to express our complete intolerance of the risks and shame of what is being prepared at Faslane and Coulport.

Second Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW in New York in November (2MSP)

See full information at https://www.icanw.org/tpnw_meeting_of_states_parties.The nuclearban.scot website (re-launched) will be regularly updated. Campaigners committed to public meetings, writing blogs and generally spreading the message after returning to Scotland will be very useful! There will be an ICAN Campaigners Meeting on the 26th of November in New York

Registration dates are on the ICAN website at the link above.

• Everyone attending needs to be registered by a UN-accredited organisation
• Registration by a civil society group does not commit the group to paying costs incurred
• Anyone attending should commit to UN expectations of conduct
• Scottish ICAN Partners can all be seen on this website (not all of them will register)

Bill Kidd MSP, chair of the Scottish Parliament Nuclear Disarmament and Maggie Chapman MSP will attend and other MSPs or Scottish MPs can be encouraged to join them. It is really important that the international community get to see that Scotland really does want bairns, not bombs, and the UK has no mandate for the weapons they deploy here!

There will be an informal online meeting on Friday 6th October at 2:00 for anyone in Scotland who has expressed interest in attending or promoting from home what happens in Nw York. Please help keep tabs on who is attending from Scotland to ensure that they are informed, connected and registered, by emailing hello@nuclearban.scot