Ban Treaty
Posted: 7th March 2025
The UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities laments that a joint appeal made to the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary to send a British representative to an important nuclear disarmament conference being held at the United Nations this week has fallen on deaf ears. Alongside academics and other peace campaigners, NFLA Chair Councillor Lawrence O’Neill and NFLA Secretary Richard Outram were two of the co-signatories to a letter drafted by the United Nations Association UK (UNA-UK) that was sent to the two senior British politicians asking the UK Government to send an observer to the 3rd Meeting of States Parties (3MSP) to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) which is being held in New York until 7 March. The invitation was not taken up as the meeting has been boycotted by Britain and the other eight nuclear weapons states, which continue to refuse to engage with the treaty despite around half of the UN’s membership – 94 states – having become signatories to it, with 73 also having completed formal ratification.
NFLA 5th March 2025
THE UK Government is flouting the international laws it has subscribed to by refusing to discuss banning nuclear weaponry, leading experts have said. It comes after the Labour Government dismissed a UN summit on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) out of hand, saying they would not attend even as an observer. However, the majority of the world’s countries are present at the TPNW meeting in New York, where a total ban on nuclear weapon testing, development, or use is being discussed. The UK Government is not a signatory to the TPNW – but like the US, France, Russia, and China it is signed up to the earlier Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). This obliges states to prevent new countries from acquiring nuclear weapons – but also obliges signatories to work towards complete disarmament.
The National 5th March 2025
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24985203.ukgovernment-ignoring-international-law-nuclear-weapons—experts/
In 2016 the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly in favour of renewing the UK’s nuclear deterrent. Then hardly a second thought was given to undertaking the upgrade programme without the full involvement of the US military. Ever since the British government first opted to introduce the Continuous at Sea Deterrent (CASD) model to deliver our nuclear weapons capability – replacing the Royal Air Force’s airborne Vulcan system – it has been an article of faith that the project should be a joint US-UK undertaking. The tumult caused by US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has inevitably raised concerns both about the wisdom of relying so heavily on US support for our own nuclear deterrent, especially in the wake of Trump’s less-than-friendly treatment of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky when he visited the White House last week. If the leader of the free world can treat someone like Zelensky, who is supposed to be one of Washington’s key allies, with such studied contempt, then why not other allies, such as the UK?
Telegraph 5th March 2025
SNP grandee breaks with party on nuclear disarmament. Ian Blackford writes in The Times that Scotland should only give up Trident under agreements that oblige other nuclear-armed states to do the same.
Times 5th March 2025