Today marks the 73rd anniversary of the nuclear bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on 9 August, the city of Nagasaki was bombed.

To mark this anniversary, Jean Lambert, London’s Green MEP, said:

“This week, we remember the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was 73 years ago – within living memory – that 129,000 people were killed and entire cities razed to the ground by these needlessly destructive weapons.

We should have learnt our lesson. Instead, some fifty years after countries first signed the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, there remain nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons scattered across our planet.

We have every reason to fear these weapons. This year we’ve witnessed infantile and trigger-happy world leaders play chicken with their nuclear arsenals. President Trump is planning to build more ‘usable’ warheads, and make them easier to deploy.

According to experts, the use of a nuclear weapon is now more likely than any time since the Cold War.

Thankfully it’s not too late to make our planet a safer place. Last July the UN General Assembly adopted an historic treaty seeking to ban nuclear weapons – backed by the majority of the world’s nations. To its shame, the UK Government boycotted this process. [1] [2]

On this important anniversary, I’m calling on ministers to open their eyes to the very real dangers posed by nuclear weapons. It’s time to get off the side-lines and join the Greens on the right side of history. If not, our planet will pay the price.”

–

Notes

[1] The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 7 July 2017. See
https://www.un.org/disarmament/tpnw/index.html.

[2] 122 countries voted for the treaty. The UK decided not take part in the process. You can see how countries voted at https://s3.amazonaws.com/unoda-web/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/A.Conf_.229.2017.L.3.Rev_.1.pdf.

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Jean Lambert, London’s Green MEP, said:

“This week, we remember the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 72 years ago, more than 129,000 people were killed due to the use of these needlessly destructive weapons.

We should have learnt our lesson. Unfortunately, many world leaders remain recklessly committed to their nuclear arsenals, leaving the safety and security of people across the globe hanging by a thread.

It doesn’t have to be this way. In a promising development, the UN General Assembly last month adopted an historic treaty which seeks to ban nuclear weapons. However, none of the nine key nuclear states turned up at the negotiations and all boycotted the vote. Shamefully, the UK was among them.

Meanwhile – despite this rising tide of opposition – the UK Government intends to pay £200bn to replace Trident, while the country slides deeper into an economic downturn and public spending crisis.

It’s time for ministers to listen to the international community, and support this global ban which could prevent us from repeating the darkest days in human history. On this important anniversary, the Greens remain clear – we will continue to work for a safe and clean, nuclear-free world.”

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The ceremony, organised by the London branch of the Campaign Against Nuclear Disarmament, will take place by the Japanese cherry tree planted in the Square in 1967 as a memorial to the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives on the 6th August 1945. Symbolic poetry and music will be heard during the hour long event, and a minute’s silence will be held to honour the victims.

The aim of the day is to ensure that the death and suffering caused by the use of nuclear weapons in war is never forgotten, nor repeated. It is estimated that 140,000 people were killed in Hiroshima, and 74,000 in Nagasaki where the second, bigger bomb was dropped three days later.

Speaking ahead of the ceremony, Jean, a longstanding campaigner for peace, said: “Just one year on from the devastating leak at the Fukushima power plant, we mark the 67th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs with a disquieting sense of familiarity with the devastating consequences of nuclear technology. If one damaged nuclear reactor can cause so much grief and harm, it isn’t difficult to imagine what absolute havoc would be unleashed on the world as a result of nuclear warfare.

“The senseless destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be the most eloquent and chilling testimony against nuclear weapons, yet the UK is still willing to spend millions on a replacement to the Trident nuclear weapons programme when we could be leading the way in nuclear disarmament. The world has witnessed enough of the horrific realities of living and dying through nuclear contamination, and on this day, some 67 years later, we can only hope that the lessons of the past will one day be heard.”

Notes to Editor

1. The ceremony will take place at Tavistock Square, WCI, from midday. The event will also be attended by Jeremy Corbyn MP, Heather Johnson, the Mayor of Camden and Ken Livingstone.

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SPEECH TO THE CLOSING SESSION OF THE ATOMIC AND HYDROGEN BOMB CONFERENCE
NAGASAKI, JAPAN, 9TH AUGUST 2001

Dear Friends,

There has been a recurring reminder throughout this Conference that this is the first one this century. So what sort of century do we want for ourselves, our children and the young people present here today and throughout the world?

Obviously we want a future which is free of nuclear weapons. I believe that we have to aim for a future which is free of nuclear production all together. Every aspect of the nuclear cycle produces real and potential victims.

We have to stop producing the material that makes a nuclear weapon possible anywhere in the world. We also have to stop production because we do not know how to clean up the toxic waste that the entire nuclear industry produces. We have heard all too much in this conference about the horrific realities of living and dying through the effects of nuclear contamination.

But to achieve a nuclear-free future, we have to challenge the nuclear-supporting decision-makers in politics and those who support them.

They have to explain to us, the people, why they think we can best secure the future of the world by possessing the fire-power that threatens to blow it up. My own government – the United Kingdom – has nuclear warheads capable of delivering 1000 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. The nuclear powers will tell us the genocide in Rwanda was wrong and against international law; the holocaust was wrong and against international law; yet, for them, it is not wrong to prepare the means of indiscriminate slaughter of thousands. Why not?

Next year, in September 2002, our heads of Government will meet in South Africa to discuss the progress they have made towards making this planet a more sustainable place. They will talk about crucial issues such as global warming, biodiversity and the involvement of local people in deciding how best to protect their environment. Some of those governments will still possess nuclear weapons and will see no contradiction in their fine speeches about protecting the planet while having the means to destroy it.

We have to challenge those contradictions. This conference has not been short of proposals as to how to do that.

To protect our planet – the life-force on which we all depend – requires co-operation and taking responsibility. Just as the young people here have spoken of taking responsibility for passing on the experience of the hibakusha*.

Maintaining nuclear weapons means seeing others as enemies and creating them where they do not exist in order to keep the profits rolling and the people’s attention away from problems in their own country.

There have been many calls at this conference for the peace movement to deepen and widen our contacts – to see the truth behind the propaganda.

In closing, I want to say what has touched me most deeply about this, my first visit to both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. There are many parts of the world where those who have suffered deeply from the actions of others are seeking vengeance – blood for blood, suffering for suffering. All that I have heard in these two great cities is a desire for peace and that no-one else should suffer such agony.

That is a powerful lesson that you have to teach the world. All of us here will do everything we can to pass that teaching on.

Jean Lambert
Member of the European Parliament (Green Party, London)

*Originally used to refer to survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Now also used for all those affected by nuclear weaponry including development testing.

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JAPAN – THE CHANGING RELATIONSHIP WITH THE USA.
Contribution to a workshop 5/8/2001

Many of the issues raised this morning sound very familiar to me. For example:
• the change of port status. We saw this in the British base at Gibraltar, where the base status was changed from rest only in order to accommodate repairs to a nuclear-powered submarine;
• the tensions between private and public. We privatised the base which deals with the repairs to nuclear-powered submarines, so to whom is that company mainly responsible? Its shareholders, the Government, the public?
• the danger to shipping from submarines. We have seen many unexplained deaths and sinkings of fishing boats. We have a choice of culprits – the Russians, USA or the British.

You should resist all efforts to make Japan the UK of the so-called “Pacific NATO”.

You are quite right when you describe the threats to democracy of such a relationship. As militarisation develops, transparency disappears.

The European Union of 15 member states is currently developing a Common Foreign and Security Policy. The Union’s Ombudsman, responsible for overseeing good governance and the implementation of the rules, has said that the CFSP is “poisoning freedom of access to information”. That is a very strong statement.

When we look at the UK Government, we see there power concentrated in the hands of the Executive. Parliament does not even have to be consulted on whether we embark upon any military intervention, as we have no modern written constitution to ensure that. We find that questions tabled by Members of Parliament are not always answered if they touch upon matters of national security and we have a Freedom of Information Act which is badly named. We could not have the crucial debate you are having about Article 9 of your constitution. For us, the Executive decides.

I would also add a warning about how such a relationship will poison your dealings with your neighbours. They will not know whether to trust you or not. You may think you are creating friends everywhere – you may end up with not having friends anywhere!

As the British equivalent, you will be expected to be the first to support any military intervention as the USA wants – as we were in the Gulf and in Kosovo. DU weapons were used in both those missions.

At the moment, the European Parliament has a temporary Committee of Enquiry underway which is looking at the operation of the intelligence gathering system known as ECHELON. The UK has been using its facilities (as has New Zealand) to gather information in a number of areas, which has then been passed to the USA. This information covers both military and commercial information. There is some evidence that suggests that commercial information, provided by the UK, has been used against our Treaty partners in the EU by America. So what are our partners supposed to make of this? Why should they trust us? In many instances, it would appear that the UK may not even know what it has passed on, so this is an equal relationship and it never is if the USA is involved.

Resistance to the USA using those same intelligence-gathering facilities for the Missile Defence System is now a key campaign for the British Campaign against Nuclear Weapons.

You should also remember that when the Bush administration walked out of the negotiations on the Chemical Weapons Verification Treaty, one of the reasons it gave was that it could compromise intellectual property rights and commercial secrecy.

This link between the military and the commercial is a growing one. What will it mean for Japan?

I know that this workshop is focussing on the USA but I would urge you not to forget that others are also increasing their nuclear capability – in China, Russia and –to my shame – the UK. We also need to consider what we should make of the Russia/China friendship agreement and the implications of that.

American actions provide both a reason and an alibi for nuclear expansion. We have to develop our contacts in those other countries too, so that we have as strong an international movement as possible.

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