West Midlands CND Various issues for information from CND Winter Council meeting
Posted: 7th December 2021
I attended (virtually) national CND council on Saturday. A wide range of issues were discussed, some of which I was not aware of. I thought it might be useful (at the risk of depressing you all) to outline a few current concerns and issues :-
1) The Police and criminal evidence bill has been amended by the government to make it even more draconian. https://www.campaigncc.org/police_bill_new_threat
There is a demonstration , organised by Birmingham TUC and CoP 26 coalition , in Birmingham this Wednesday at 5pm outside Waterstones to protest against this.
2) Talks with Iran on restoring the 2015 nuclear deal may be suspended https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/03/talks-with-iran-on-restoring-2015-nuclear-deal-suspended.
3) Several unions including GMB and Unite have persuaded the TUC to pass a resolution in favour of nuclear power. They then presented a paper at CoP 26 in favour of Nuclear power and called – I have attached a paper prepared by a member of CNDs Trade Union Advisory Group opposing and debunking this.
4) The Nuclear energy bill which had its second reading last month will mean that UK energy consumers will pay in advance to build new nuclear power stations when renewables would be much cheaper. https://cnduk.org/westminster-diary/
5) Tensions with Russia and China are increasing . https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/03/boris-johnson-britain-deadly-interventions-russia-china .Nukewatch (who have also been monitoring planes) believe that American bombers based in the UK have been patrolling the Russian border.
6) The new German government (which includes the Green party) has reluctantly agreed to continue to host US tactical nuclear weapons in Germany. This may partly be because they are concerned that if they did not the weapons might be moved further east -destabilising the situation with Russia further. However Germany is hoping to go as an observer to the conference of those signed up to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear weapons in March (as is Norway).
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