Pax Christi hands anti-nuclear petition in to Downing Street

Downing Street

The Director of Pax Christi UK - Theresa Alessandro - joined a delegation of peace organisations to hand a petition into Downing Street on 26 September calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. She said, "Pax Christi continues to call for our government to engage with the Nuclear Weapons Ban and work seriously towards ridding our world of nuclear weapons; as Pope Francis says, the threat of their use as well as their very possession is to be firmly condemned." Leading Catholic anti-nuclear campaigner Bruce Kent wore his UN blue tie since the action marked the UN Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.

The letter text:

Dear Prime Minister,

Today, on the UN's International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, we urge the UK government to honour its commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. This has been a longstanding commitment of successive governments since the UK's ratification of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1970.

In an increasingly dangerous world, where the threat of nuclear war is rising, this goal has never been so important.

The UK cannot claim to support this goal whilst prioritising the replacement of Trident, at vast expense and considerable opportunity cost to other forms of security and spending beneficial to our country. This is particularly so when the government's own National Security Strategy identifies the real security threats we face today as terrorism, cyber-attacks and the imminent consequences of climate change.

We urge the government to scrap Trident and fully engage with the fresh multilateral disarmament initiatives that are taking place. More than 120 countries voted in the UN General Assembly for an historic United Nations treaty to ban nuclear weapons - the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and it is well on the way to ratification. It is the UK government's responsibility to engage with this process and we urge you to do so.

Clearly there is an urgent need for states to build common ground on disarmament and steps should be taken by the UK to build bridges with nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states. This must include signalling unmistakable progress towards the UK's own obligation to disarm.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Kate Hudson
General Secretary
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Bruce Kent
Vice Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Lindsey German
Stop the War Coalition

Olivia Beach
United Nations Association

Daniel Jakopovic
Quakers UK

Theresa Alessandro
Pax Christi

Link: Service on 2 October 2019 to celebrate International Day of Nonviolence