Opening Plenary, 2023 World Conference against A and H Bombs Nagasaki (August 7, 2023)
Kate Hudson
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
U.K.
Greetings to the 2023 World Conference against A & H Bombs, onbehalf of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. We are very
aware that our government here in Britain plays a significant role
in worsening the nuclear problems facing the world today. As aresult, we take our disarmament responsibilities very seriously
and are doing everything we can to reverse our government’s
policies at this time when nuclear dangers are escalating.
In June, the Stockholm International Peace Research Instituteannounced that the decades’ long trend of nuclear weapons
reductions, has gone into reverse. There has been a small but
significant global increase in operational warheads. We were
disturbed to see that Britain got a special mention, for as thereport said, while it “is not thought to have increased its nuclear
weapon arsenal in 2022, the warhead stockpile is expected togrow” in the future. This follows the 2021 decision to increase
Britain’s warhead limit by over 40 percent.
This increase in nuclear warheads is mirrored by increasing
British spending on nuclear weapons. As announced in thegovernment’s Defence Command Paper in July, the Ministry of
Defence will receive an extra £6 billion over the next few years, forspending on the so-called defence nuclear enterprise. This is on
top of the extra £3 billion already announced in this year’s budget,and the over £205 billion being spent on replacing the current
system.

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The wider context for this nuclear escalation is the ongoing
conflict in Ukraine. The war has increased both the risk of nuclear
use and its normalisation in the public consciousness.
Inflammatory rhetoric by the Russian president, the reported
movement of Russian ‘tactical’ nukes to Belarus, and theanticipated movement of US upgraded B61-12 nuclear weapons toEurope – including to Britain – significantly increase these risks.
Of course nuclear dangers are not limited to the Eurasianlandmass. Increasing tensions internationally contribute to global
dangers. These are exacerbated by the AUKUS pact of which theUK is part, with its widely condemned capacity for nuclear
proliferation. Global NATO ambitions, and the assignment of UK
nukes to NATO, risk UK involvement in wider conflicts.
So we face many challenges here in Britain, as we do in all nuclear
weapons states. As we prepare for our annual conference thisautumn, we are giving priority to increasing public awareness ofnuclear dangers and of the impact of nuclear weapons use. Ourstrong determination, as a mass campaigning organisation, is tomaximise the impact of public opinion to prevent nuclear use. We
well remember our slogan from the 1980s: Protest and Survive,
and that message is just as relevant today as it was at the height ofthe cold war.
We are determined to bring the impact of nuclear use home to ourcommunities, emphasising the return of US nukes to Britain andhow it puts us all on the front line.
Central to all this work is the crucial importance of strengthening
our movement, rebuilding our civil society alliances, andstrengthening our activist base.

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International cooperation and solidarity is central to our work andwe join you today in recommitting to a world free of nuclearweapons.
We say: No more Hiroshimas – No more Nagasakis!

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