A case for nuclear disarmament this Easter – Yorkshire Post Letters

I WRITE following news that Britain is increasing its arsenal of nuclear warheads by 40 per cent and building four new Trident nuclear submarines.

The continued threat of nuclear weapons is an existential one – the present pandemic has illustrated, as clearly as anything could, that nobody is safe until we are all safe.

This applies to nuclear weapons policies.

The vast majority of non-nuclear states have set a pathway with the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which came into being on January 22, 2021.

This is being totally ignored by the nuclear weapons states as if the non-nuclear states had no business getting themselves involved.

It brings to mind the Hans Andersen story of the small boy and The Emperor’s New Clothes.

We cannot escape from the fact that the nuclear threat is real and growing.

Kathleen Lonsdale, a committed Quaker and pacifist, said at the beginning of the nuclear age: “The real horror is not that we may be bombed but that we should ever think 
of using the bomb on anyone else.”

At this Easter time particularly, the moral imperative for nuclear disarmament is absolute.

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