Labour Hub Editors

No Wars, No Nukes – act now!

By Carol Turner, London CND

As if last year wasn’t bad enough, 2024 is already shaping up to be very bleak indeed. Over 22,000 dead in Gaza, the spectre of mass starvation and disease wiping out even more Palestinians, the situation facing the Occupied Territories getting worse by the day, and the prospect of regional conflict drawing closer.

Two weeks into the new year, the list is already long and growing. No resolution to the Ukraine war on the horizon, civil war in Sudan ongoing, a long drawn-out conflict in the Niger Delta, no end to Yemen’s civil war in sight, and now the threat of action against Houthi solidarity attacks on commercial shipping as a US aircraft carrier steams towards the Red Sea. There are so many regional and local conflicts across the world that many never make it into Western news.

London CND’s annual conference couldn’t be more aptly named, although No Wars, No Nukes as its name implies is particularly focused on the growing likelihood of nuclear weapons use in conflicts involving nuclear weapons states – the United States, Britain, Russia, Israel. The Israeli far right have even raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons in the Gaza conflict.

Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu suggested in a radio interview reported in the Times of Israel that the nuclear option “was one way” of dealing with Gaza. Thankfully, he was not a member of Benjamin Netanyahu’s wartime cabinet which takes these decisions.

Nuclear War Clouds Gathering

As unrealistic as it sounds to consider dropping a nuclear weapon on your own doorstep, Israel is believed to have tactical nuclear weapons, and a section of the political and military establishment could consider threatening their use, or even using them, should Iran become an issue. What seemed like a hollow threat from a few Israeli government outliers last autumn could be a step closer as the consequences spread across the Middle East and North Africa.

The conference kicks off with a keynote speech from Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP and a panel which will consider the immediate nuclear threats facing Britain and the world, including the return of US nukes to Lakenheath air base and the likelihood of expanding the Aukus Agreement. It will note too that 2024 is the year in which the US and UK reaffirm the decennial Mutual Defence Agreement, a nuclear and intelligence-sharing pact first signed in 1958.

Prospects for the Occupied Territories

The second panel of the conference is devoted to Gaza. Palestinian Ambassador Humas Zomlot’s keynote speech on the Prospect for Palestine is followed by a panel chaired by Murad Qureshi with Raghad Altikriti, Chair of the Muslim Association of Britain which is one of the six organisations organising the mass mobilisations in support of Gaza. She’s joined by Jenny Manson, a founder member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and Co-Chair of Jewish Voice for Labour, and Sami Ramadani of Iraqi Democrats Against War.