Titanic battle over
nuclear weapons
ICEBERGS ahead! chattered the Morse printer. Too late. All too soon it was SOS.
But the catastrophe had
been long in the making. The “unsinkable” tag was a creation of overweening pride. Now, men boasted, we have conquered chance and nature.
Eastbourne peace campaigners can feel like the Titanic’s radio operator. For years we have been hanging around Eastbourne, warning about nuclear weapons. Put simply, people are not machines. The brightest of us
can do very silly things under pressure. Irrationality is always on the cards.
We are not fit to play games with monstrous engines of destruction which can blast, fry and irradiate millions of our own kind.
Many people have grasped the point. Ever growing numbers want Britain to dump its nuclear weapons.
True, our count is quite small compared to the tens of thousands still deployed by the USA and Russia, many on hair-trigger alert. If a fraction of these were launched it might well be curtains for most of us.
Even Britain’s share could
still wipe out a fair portion of the world’s capital cities. Global nuclear disarmament has to start somewhere. Why not with us?
But our leaders are deaf to this. At all costs, they must hang on to our nuclear-armed status.
Somehow, they argue, we need this to count in the world. So we have to update the subs that carry the missiles.
How many readers feel safer because of this? Do their chests swell with pride at the thought of our country’s willingness to wield such a monstrous bludgeon?
We should use every opportunity to let our politicians know that we have no confidence in Britain’s nuclear posturing.
Whatever the safeguards on such a titanic stratagem, nothing is 100 per cent certain.
We must not gamble, at enormous expense, with all our futures.
GEORGE FAREBROTHER
Secretary for Eastbourne for Peace and Liberty.
Summerheath Road
Gazette, Wednesday, October 20 2010
'The evidence is overwhelming'
KEITH Newberry, mentioning the Iraq War, said “Britain did enter that conflict illegally and it’s possible evidence will one day emerge which will be sufficient to see Tony Blair arraigned as a war criminal” (Gazette, October 6 2010).
Illegal? Certainly. The evidence is overwhelming. Tony Blair in the dock? Appealing but not so easy.
An illegal invasion of a sovereign state is a crime of aggression – the worst of all crimes because so much harm flows from it.
Individuals, not governments, can be held responsible.
This June, all the states supporting the International Criminal Court, including the UK, finally agreed on a definition of this crime. This provides a legal test for the invasion of Iraq.
The next step is for an Act
of Parliament making this definition part of English law.
Individuals could then be
tried in our courts for the Crime of Aggression. Even if Tony Blair is not brought to trial, it would mean that future Prime Ministers could never launch an illegal war on a sovereign state without looking over their shoulders to see what English courts might do.
So far, so good. But the Foreign Office has stated that Parliament is unlikely to act until 2017.
This will provide time to “analyse the legal implications”? of the definition.
Seven years for this? It sounds like a rearguard action to avoid trouble.
We hope that our MP, Stephen Lloyd, will take an interest in this matter.
George Farebrother
Secretary, Eastbourne for Peace and Liberty
Summerheath Road,
Hailsham
