Rae Street, a long time CND and WILPF speaker, spoke out against NATO’S shameful nuclear policies, involving not only having nuclear weapons at their disposal in bases across the world, including in Europe, but also their policy of first use of these obscene weapons should NATO’s conventional forces face defeat anywhere.  She denounced the nuclear proliferation that occurs when NATO nuclear weapons bases transform individual NATO member countries into nuclear weapon states. The UK has admitted that it cannot abandon nuclear weapons: our ‘obligations to NATO’ mean that the supposedly independent Trident submarine is integrated into NATO.

 
(from left) Pat Sanchez, Cath Bann and Rae Street 

The implications of belonging to NATO were further spelled out by MSP Bill Kidd: "All those countries who shelter under the nuclear umbrella, those countries which maintain Trident and other weapons of mass destruction, are as guilty as any US president who threatens to use them in a first strike," he said.  

All speakers called for an end to the war in Afghanistan.  We hear mainly of the military casualties of war but Rae Street reminded us strongly that Afghan civilian victims grossly outnumber them, and that attacks on civilians, accidental or not, fuel conflict and swell the ranks of ‘insurgents’.

Delegates from the Parliamentary Assembly, peace groups, students and union groups also joined the protest.  Many were deeply moved at the simple words of the grandmother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan this summer: ‘I’d like the troops to come home walking – not on stretchers or in body bags.’

Thanks to Pat Sanchez for this report.