 rhagwb am ddechrau'r gweithio hon ac yn oes ydw'n gwneud mhobbwyngau, yn gefnogi'r ddechrau, mewn gwmwysgfawr yn y cyfeirionedd yn ysgawr byd, ac yn ymweithig am ymdweud ei werthio ymddangoseth i ymddangoseth ymddangoseth yn rhoi hanfodol. Mae'n ddweud ddim i gael ymddiolion gyffredinol gyffredinol ymddangosedd ac yn ysgawr ymddiol, oherwydd nesaf, ar gyfer gyfynig. Dwi wedi gweithio5 anodl yn rhan drwy'r ddwybedfa cwestiynau eu bod nhw'n gael ei wneud o'r ffordd ystod yn ymddangos i'n mynd i'r cynnigol yn sgol i gynnwys. Felly, rydyn ni'n ffawr i'r ffraeg i'r gweithio i'r gweithio i'r holl o'r gweithio gyda'r gweithio, fel o'n gallu'n credu i chi'n gwneud i chi i chi'n rhan o'r rhan oed. Un hwnna, unrhyw fy ngwrsedd y gwirioneddau ffurmersiaith yn deerwch yn ei llwythio'u cyfle, os yw'r ydw ydwg yn halw'r bobl, byddwn ei wneud digyfodol sy'n gweithio ein cheisio'r wneud ond ond yn gweithio'r munud yn hynny. Y cyfathau ffwrdd o'r rhan o'r unrhyw sy'n gwirioneddau yw unrhyw fflad hynny. yng nghymru, flynyddiau cyfnod, y rhesoedau a'r rhesoedau, y rheswm ni'n mynd i'r gwreithio gwleidau yn gwybod i'r hyn o'r hyn o'r Llywodraeth Ymgol Llywodraeth Ymgylchedd. Rwy'n dweud ychydig bod y dyfodol o'r hyn, a'r hyn o'n rheswm i'n gwybod i'r gwleidau i'r rhagol iawn o'r byd a'r risg o'r program y Llywodraeth Ymgylchedd. fo Would it be an opportunity either find out back the organisation on the Internet if you can this is the 20th year, I think it's a fantastic achievement in industry that could be quite squeezed. But today is going to work, if we've got five short갉s followed by the question and answers session. Felly, mae'n rhaid i'n fwyaf i gael gweithio'r cwmence o'r cwestiynau sylwg ar gyfer y ffaint gwahanol ar gyfer Zoom. Mae'n meddwl i gael ei wneud, mae'n ddweud i'r cyfnod ar gyfer y tro. A gwych i ddweud o'r ddweud o fe allan ar fynd yma yn gwneud. Felly mae'n ddweud i fynd i ffaint gwahanol ar gyfer Ynys. So, dwi'n cael ei wneud hyn yn diolch yn ëDavid Cullení, y cwestiwn生rwr wrth hynny, ac wedyn yn hynnyír Jonathan Porritt, yr cwestiwn sgwrn yn ei wneud yw yng Nghymru, a yng Nghyrch yn Fylo Llamade. Mae hanesrwydd fan gyrraedd a lliwyr ddim yn Llesoedd pan Llywodraeth, mae'n ryngwysbryd yn gennym oedd Jeremy Corbyn, yn fathbeth yng Nghymru i'i rwylo cynyddiad maesfaenol ar y Lai astrur, ac rydw i adael yn byw Kate Hudson, Who is currently General Secretary of CND. I will hand over straight away to David Cullen to begin his talk. Thank you very much, David. Thanks, Henrietta, and thank you to everyone for joining us. Thanks also for the intro to Nuclear Information Service. For those of you who have not come across as before, just very few quick facts roeddwn i gynnwetsid yng Ngheilchethol Cymru – Yn gyflaen i'r gweithredu'r haneswn o gyflaen iawn. Gweithredu'r cyflaen iawn nid o ddegi i gael yng Ngheilchethol Cyngorau Galerol, a gweithredu'r cyflaen iawn a eithefn i ddegi ynghyd i Gwyrdd三 Blwydwerth Cymru, gwnewch i'r ffordd iawn yn gyflaen iawn o brif. Wrth gwrs, gwneud am y gwyllid hynny oherwydd rydyn ni'n bwysig rhyngwil yn y UK i'r meddwl, bo'r meddwl yn siŵr ddeilig o'r cyfrnod ymlaen, yn y llwyfodol yn y cyfrnod ddyliadau. Roeddwn i'r meddwl, yma, bod yn unig ymddangos yn y US, mae'n gwell o ddysbarul yn y cyfrnod sydd yn y meddwl. Mae'r meddwl yn ymddangos yn ymddangos. Ond roeddwn i'r meddwl am hynny'n gael hynny. Ersgol, mae'n meddwl, rydw i'n galw, mae'n meddwl o'r ffordd dros AWE, ymddangos ymddangos ymddangos. roedd yn ymdegol, fel yn ffocor ar gyflodd, yn rhan, yn ddechrau daith ymdegol yn fwrdd o yn bach. Bryddol y gallwn gennym oeth bod wedi'u ffordd o bwrdd o'r ffordd o'r ffo'r ffordd, cwrs mae i ffwrdd wedi gondol yn rhynghau oedd ymweliadol yn y ffordd rhai, oherwydd â ghrifau'r gafd o'r cyfleoedd. Roeddwn ni'n wneud o bobl am ddod o'r ffordd o Unedig ond wedi'u lรwg ddechrau, so rwy'n dyn ni'n wneud skoedd ychydig, Ac yn y Ddechrau'r iawn i ddwyfodol i gyntaf i gael y byddwyr ac i gael y byddwyr ar gael y projess. Mae'n ddweud o'r ffawr yn rhan oedd eich gweithio, ac mae'r ffawr yn rhan o'r hyn o'r fawr yn cymhiliadau o'r gwirioneddol i fy nghymru a chwylo'r cymdeithasol yn ei ffawr. A'r ffawr hyn o ffuns o gael y projess o'r gael y byddwyr, mae'n rhan o'r gwaith o'r costau a'r fawr hyn o'r gwirioneddol. I think it's probably going to get more keen in a post coronavirus environment where the questions of priorities of government spending will be more acute and in all likelihood the fiscal situation will be tighter. There are of course wider questions about nuclear weapons upgrades that our other speakers will be talking about questions of contributions to global instability, threats to the non-proliferation treaty. As NIS, we don't directly address those questions but we try and point towards them. We want to provide a solid factual basis for that debate to take place and we very much welcome it. So turning to our sort of future work and the warhead upgrade, this was the last element of the upgrades to be officially announced. It was announced with quite a telling chronology first of all in the US Congress and then laterally to the UK Parliament in February. We played some role in NIS in bringing that announcement to the attention of the UK press and that prompted the UK government to announce their plans but the plans were long expected. We've followed what's now a 15-year program at AWE, the Nuclear Weapons Capability Sustainment Programme, which has been laying the groundwork for this upgrade. We of course will focus in a big way on the nuclear weapons upgrade and we're planning a major report which will come out late next year or early the following year on the upgrade and I just want to talk you through some of the key questions we'll be looking at. We'll be looking at the links with the US so the reason that this announcement came first in the US is that the planned warhead is said to be a parallel development with a planned US warhead called the WB93 and I think there are very big questions over whether the timetable for the US warhead is being driven by factors in the US or by the needs of the UK programme. Of course all of this will raise the I think rightly into question the claim that the UK programme is independent of the US. I think that's quite a dubious claim and we will talk to some extent about that. I think there's a very very large and very vital question about whether the upgraded warhead will involve an increase in destructive capability. The WB93 warhead is very likely to be a much higher yield than the current UK warhead. The current UK warhead very closely resembles a US warhead called W76. It's sometimes called by people in the US the UK version of the W76 so it's very much an open question whether the UK is planning to develop a weapon that won't have an equivalent warhead in the US arsenal or whether they're planning to change the destructive capability of the UK warhead. Obviously if it's the latter that would be very controversial and potentially destabilising. It's possible that we may see a reduction in warhead numbers in the UK alongside an increase in destructive capability. That's something analogous has happened in the current refurbishment of the UK warhead. They've made it more accurate and at the same time they've reduced the number of deployed warheads. Obviously the reduction is to be welcomed but the fact that it isn't actually relinquishing any destructive capability should be emphasised I think. We'll be looking a lot at the infrastructure footprint of the upgrade so despite the nuclear warhead capability sustainment programme being a £20 billion investment programme some elements of it have been dropped because of cost overruns elsewhere particularly in the Mensa, the warhead assembly facility in AWB Burfield. So they've dropped particularly the most expensive one I believe is Pegasus a planned uranium manufacturing facility which now appears to be going ahead. I'm assuming that that will fall under the budget of the new warhead and it may well be that other supposedly deferred infrastructure projects will also be moved over into the warhead upgrade so that will have cost implications and obviously we'll be looking more broadly at cost. My calculations for the trouble ahead report suggested that the warhead upgrade would cost about £10 billion but that was a conservative figure and I could well believe that it will be higher than that and more broadly we want to ask and as best we can answer what has currently been decided and what is yet still to be decided about this new warhead that the government will be pursuing and as with all our work we will want to point towards wider questions what is the opportunity cost of the UK being a nuclear weapon state what are we giving up by retaining these weapons and why are the threats that nuclear weapons are supposed to defend us against worth apparently spending hundreds of billions of pounds on but it's apparently not worth spending a fraction of the cost on maintaining a PPE stockpile or an in-house government IT capability that could well allow to test and trace programme I think there's very vital questions right now when will the UK government deliver on its 50-year commitment to disarm under the number of ferasion treaty and why are we spending this much money on trying to keep a submarine permanently at sea if we're not certain that we're going to be able to over the next decade and I think most vitally how can the public exercise democratic control over a programme where so much is hidden from them so thank you so much for your interest and support for our work over the last 20 years I very much look forward to looking into these issues further and I hope you'll join us. Thank you very much David really amazing overview of the range of work you do in a short timeframe and a really fantastic reminder about how important it is that people know and understand the decision making that goes into these technologies it matters in terms of the destructive capability of the of the of the weapon systems it matters in terms of the usability and it matters in terms of whether the UK can even do what they're claiming they can do and the extent to which US resources are are are called on so thank you very much I notice we've got questions coming in by the Q&A panel and some notes coming in via the chat so thank you very much to the audience for that please do keep on submitting them I'm going to be monitoring the questions and feeding them to the panellist at the end of all the talk and for now I'm going to hand over to our second speaker Jonathan Porritt who's been an environmental campaigner for 45 years and throughout this time he's been involved in anti-nuclear campaigning as well I could I could name any number of things that he's been involved in to be honest but I'm just cherry picking a couple who was director of Friends of the Earth from 1984 to 1991 he co-founded the Forum for the Future in 1996 and he was chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission between 2000 and 2009 so thank you very much Jonathan it's it's great to have you here. Henry thank you very much and delighted to be taking part in this not least as a very active supporter of NIS and a long-standing member of CND as well as all the other things so I feel lots of different elements are coming together in this particular session I want to just touch on something that David was talking about there which is the likely pressure on the public finances over the course of the next few years basically and however long it takes us to pay down some of the incredible costs associated with COVID-19 and in that context of course the costs associated with the renewal of the Trident program and maintenance of nuclear capability in that regard is going to be subject to much greater scrutiny and I think that is going to be a really critical dimension and one has to hope that that will lead to a much higher profile for these issues in the media as people begin to understand the massive drain on the public finances that is associated at the moment with seeking to retain that independent notionally independent nuclear defense capability and therefore I'm going to come at it from a slightly different angle which is the lengths to which the defense establishment now would appear to be going in order to mask some of the of the aspects of the costs of that program and in that regard to make the links which are of course very well established historically between nuclear weapons and civil nuclear energy. I say very well established historically because of course there's no dispute about that historical record the degree to which our nuclear energy program here in the UK is a by-product if you like of our determination to become a nuclear power after the Second World War and those two things now are inextricably linked in the record and nobody disputes that but of course at a certain point it was more and more uncomfortable for the nuclear energy industry at that time although it was of course then still part of government to be associated with a nuclear weapons program to be associated with the degree to which the UK was a nuclear power in that regard and bit by bit therefore significant efforts were made to conceal or to mask the degree of interdependencies between the civil capability and the military capability and that was done very effectively over many years so that the denials that were issued at that point were constant and to a certain extent people began no longer to raise those issues and it's really only in the last few years I would suggest that people are beginning to open up again to this whole question about what these links actually amount to and the implication of those links both from a nuclear weapons capability and from the nuclear energy program here in the UK this happens to be an issue of significant personal concern to me I was chair of the Sustainable Development Commission from the year 2000 through to 2009 during Tony Blair's time as prime minister and the Sustainable Development Commission was very involved in the 2003 energy white paper which was a extremely significant milestone in energy policy in the UK because essentially it said that nuclear power should be kicked into the long grass that the future energy needs of the UK should no longer be dependent on nuclear power and that we should seek increasingly to diversify through improved efficiency through renewables and so on. There was a lot of what turned out to be premature celebration at that time in that I think we honestly all thought that that was the end of nuclear power. Low and behold of course a couple of years later in 2005 Tony Blair suddenly announced that there would be a new review of energy strategy gave a very upbeat speech to the CBI saying that he wanted to bring back those energy considerations with a vengeance and hey presto in May 2006 the Labour Party confirmed that it would again rely on nuclear power as a very significant net contributor to the energy needs of this country now this was completely baffling to everybody involved in the nuclear power sector at that time nobody could understand how this change of heart had happened none of the external circumstances had changed at all there was literally not one germane relevant factor that was any different in 2006 from what had obtained in 2003 at the time of the energy white paper so inevitably people began to unearth the degree to which Tony Blair personally and of course that strong pro nuclear faction inside the Labour Party were subject to a lot of lobbying from the nuclear weapons establishment here in the UK to persuade then Labour Prime Minister that it would be crucial to maintain a nuclear power program in order to provide additional resource in the provision of nuclear skills for the future and this is not a conspiracy theory by any stretch of the imagination because if you look at our energy policy today with its dependence on nuclear power there is there is literally no other explanation as to why we would be so gungho about nuclear power today no other nation is intent in Europe is intent on maintaining a nuclear power capability of this kind and we all know the costs are massively out of control we all know them far more expensive in terms of generating the energy that we need base the government department acknowledges this the national audit office has been outstandingly critical in all of those different issues we know that it nuclear power is not an effective way of accelerating co2 abatement of supporting the UK on its decarbonisation story edf was unwise enough to admit the other day that it would take 20 years of size well see being in operation before it paid back its full carbon footprint so we wouldn't really be getting any benefits at all from that in terms of co2 abatement and we also know that this old story that we have to have nuclear is baseload in order to maintain grid security the national grid has has pretty much put paid to that as an argument so there isn't really any residual reason why a government would stubbornly continue with a policy that is going to cost the consumers of this country a lot of money an enormous amount of money over time has in itself raised highly significant security issues because as you will know Hinkley see at the moment is only being built with the very significant support of the chinese nuclear industry size well coming after Hinkley if it gets approval would be in a similar situation and Bradwell where we did push ahead with that proposal would be a 100% nuclear facility built and owned by the chinese so there are just too many mysteries associated with why we've got nuclear power any longer in this country until you begin to think through the degree to which there is a concerted effort continuing to be made to mask some of the otherwise insupportable costs associated with the trident program and the renewal of the trident program through the civil arm of the nuclear industry this case has been strengthened recently by a concerted effort now to bring forward plans for small modular reactors as they're known there is now a big battle going on inside government as to whether we should be whether the government should be putting money into size or sea or whether it should be putting money into small modular reactors that is the option much supported by Dominic Cummings and of course where that to be the case it would strengthen the argument that this is really as much about a nuclear weapons side of things as about nuclear energy because much of that money would then be filtered through Rolls Royce and that is where a lot of these nuclear skills would be maintained now much of this analysis has been done over the last few years with incredible persistence and forensic determination by Phil Johnston and Andy Sterling at Sussex University and I would urge anybody who wants to understand more about the ways in which this heist has been perpetrated to dig into their research work it's on their websites and it is a it's a brilliant piece of work and the interesting thing for a lot of people now is that the defense side of things they're not really denying this there isn't any attempt any longer to pretend that this isn't what's going on but from the government perspective there is still total secrecy associated with that and I just want to end with this quote from Andy Sterling who kind of sum this up so he says by means of levels of secrecy that are of course routine in nuclear defense issues a military industrial base that would be simply unaffordable in the absence of new nuclear construction can therefore be maintained without increasingly awkward public scrutiny outside of the defense budget and entirely off the public books and that is the situation that we're in at the moment and it is truly disgraceful and the more like that we can shed on that continuing effort to park a substantial part of the total cost under the civil side of things the better it'll be. Thank you Henry. Thank you Jonathan really a fantastic overview of this sense that you can't take statements about government decisions on nuclear matters at face value there are other things going on and it takes the dogged research of Phil Johnson, Andy Sterling and people at NIS and similar to to really uncover these things and people need to pay attention to them. So thank you I also have to say you're pre-empting a lot of the questions that I've had in already so that's great we'll extend the discussion later on thank you very much. So now I'm going to hand over to Dr Alamaday Samuel who is a senior teaching fellow at SOAS the University of London and alongside his teaching he researches nuclear weapons and disarmament options and strategies among multiple different frameworks and he's really prominent in supporting student advocacy projects thank you very much Ella. Thank you very much Henrietta. I would like to thank the nuclear information service for their invitation to speak today alongside such a distinguished panel. For the past 20 years the NIS has informed influenced and encouraged initiatives towards the verifiable disarmament of British nuclear weapons and I would like to congratulate them on this 20th anniversary milestone. Today I'll be speaking about the future of advocacy in nuclear disarmament looking forward to the next 20 years. So I was watching Erica Gregory's TED talk on YouTube the other day titled the world doesn't need more nuclear weapons. It was inspiring and creative call to action. Erica was communicating directly to Generation Possible explaining the dangers of nuclear weapons but also highlighting the uniqueness of Generation Possible and the resources available to them to implement change. Change that will presumably lead to nuclear disarmament in 2045. Generation Possible in her estimation includes those that were born in and after the year 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. By this estimation I am part of Generation Possible and many of her remarks I think were incredibly important for Generation Possible to internalize and act upon. Consequently I decided to scroll through the comment section to see what the rest of Generation Possible thought of her remarks. Now aside from the numerous trolls dropping hateful comments and random emojis in the comments section there are quite a number of people who seemed genuinely concerned about the threats of nuclear warfare. Interestingly among those concerned many of them simply could not see how nuclear disarmament could ever be achieved. Some comments called them super weapons others claimed that nuclear weapons have so far saved us from World War III. But a cross cutting theme in the comment section was that nuclear weapons these weapons were the potential to extinguish all life on earth as we know it. These weapons are normal. My generation physically and mentally are enslaved by nuclear weapons. I don't need to talk about the physical threat of nuclear weapons here as distinguished members of the panel have and will discuss this in more detail. However my generation is mentally enslaved by nuclear weapons in the most interesting ways. We don't seem to have the same fear of these weapons. We haven't experienced or heard about a world order without nuclear weapons and so we struggle to imagine what a future without these weapons might look like. Our collective imagination is enslaved by the existence of nuclear weapons. Today our world is facing a number of severe crises which make nuclear use more likely and requires us to take nuclear disarmament more seriously. Earlier this year the Dune's Day clock was set at 100 seconds to midnight closer than ever to catastrophe even if we include the height of tensions during the Cold War. So there's a paradox where we live in times of heightened danger of nuclear extinction but also in a time where this danger is routinely ignored, forgotten even by the majority of the young population. In my experience compared to other causes it is very difficult to mobilise generation possible. It is difficult to even interest them when other activities, consumables and problems are competing for attention. The lessons learned by older generations are struggling to trickle down into the consciousness of the younger generation. So I'm left thinking what would this mean for the future of advocacy for nuclear disarmament? On one hand I can't think of a single nuclear weapons state that has shown any serious signs of willingness to give up this weapons. These weapons are thought to provide status, prestige and deterrent capability. There is still no progress on the negotiation of a ffysal material cut-up treaty, an important element for a world without nuclear weapons. The comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty, the CTBT, which was adopted in response to political concerns and public pressure on the issue of nuclear testing has not yet entered into force. See I was three years old when it opened for signature but I'm here talking about the pending ratifications from key states. More recently we have been watching a dangerous military situation unfold. Driven most alarmingly by the US we have seen a withdrawal from important nuclear reduction and control treaties and we have heard about the possible resumption of nuclear testing. We have also seen the introduction of so-called usable nuclear weapons. Now considering all these developments together shows just how disturbing the situation really is and how important it is for us to double our efforts towards a nuclear weapons free work. I still remain optimistic regardless because there are disarmament opportunities within reach. Instead of waiting on nuclear weapons states for the so-called conducive environment for nuclear disarmament, the world negotiated a treaty which comprehensively bans nuclear weapons. We are only three ratifications away from the entry into force of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and this is a welcome development. It shows courageous leadership from those that champion the treaty. It also shows the rise of information technology which has eased high-speed communication around the globe allowing for individuals and groups to connect and to coordinate advocacy globally. The reach and influence of the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons amongst others is evidence of this relatively new form of power. Non-nuclear weapons states and CIP society will continue to bring pressure to bear on nuclear weapons states bilaterally and multilaterally at the 2021 MPT review conference in the UN and also in domestic politics because collective pressure is harder to ignore than bilateral pressure. I understand that without the participation of nuclear weapons states the ban treaty would have limited effect but the important thing is that the treaty clearly outlaws nuclear weapons. After its entry into force legal speculation will not be able to justify the threat of the use of nuclear weapons by anyone. We will see a crystallisation of norms against nuclear weapons possession and these norms would increasingly have increasingly affect the thinking of people around the world as they become concerned about the loss of traditional arms control agreements, the legal development of new weapons and new arms races. Now don't get me wrong the MPT would remain the cornerstone of non-proliferation and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. I don't think we would see a mass exit of states from the treaty anytime soon but without change this treaty would likely suffer a slower but equally painful death. Lower ranked officials will come and give routine speeches at MPT meetings but with little movement because nothing necessarily would happen because states don't prioritise the treaty. In many ways it might resemble the UN conference on the summit which has not completed a treaty in more than 20 years. The gulf between nuclear non-proliferation and the summit efforts I think were widen as the MPT loses relevance in the summit first but I also predict that a number of states and civil society organisations will aim to fill the gulf until serious disarmament commitment is demonstrated by nuclear weapons states. See as citizens around the world begin to internalise this norm against nuclear weapons possession champions of the ban treaty will capitalise on this and this champions have made it clear that they're not going anywhere therefore beginning a process of greatly reducing the number of nuclear weapons would be much easier for those nuclear weapon states who recognise the illegality of their possession and the hostility of public opinion towards these weapons. Also nuclear sharing or nuclear weapons sharing I think will become a historical relic over the next two decades at least in Europe. My prediction for the next 20 years is that we'll be entering an era of mediators and go-betweens actors who would strive to maintain strategic partnerships with nuclear weapons states and good relations with other nations around the world to help build bridges and close the gaps in positions on many critical issues. At this point help us here. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. You've given us a really clear overview of the importance of all of this work. The very clear evidence that we have problems and continued dangers that actually are increasing that the treaty regimes that we have got are deteriorating in different dimensions and at the same time nuclear weapons states not only are not fulfilling their article 6 disarmament commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty they're all modernising their arsenals and reflecting David's comments too. I'm glad that you gave us some rays of hope there that you see some possibilities for disarmament in the future. You see some possibilities of mobilising advocacy work still further despite the competing attention draws from other from other areas so thank you very very much. I understand that Jeremy Corbyn is in the room but he hasn't logged on in his own name so I'm just going to see if he can join now or if I'm going to move straight to Kate Hudson. Jeremy Corbyn, can you join the room yet? For a few minutes I'll just reflect a bit more on the sort of thing that Ola was talking about. Ola is a coordinator for a project, a student advocacy project based at SOAS. It's called the Scrap Weapons Project which mobilises students at SOAS to be thinking about general and complete disarmament and how that might work internationally. So it's a really exciting project to students you know they get to see how international treaty making really happens they're looking at treaties that have worked in the past that people have signed up to and thinking about how these lessons learned could be applied. I am aware Ola that this is one project in one university in London and at the same time the youth of the world are being asked to solve a lot of problems so that there's a sense that they're expected to solve climate change so while we're waiting for Jeremy to maybe connect I'm going to ask Ola if you might reflect on your students at the Scrap project. If they feel torn between different priorities or if they see them as integrated holes, if people who are interested in nuclear disarmament tend to be stuck in nuclear disarmament or if they see it as an integrated matter in the sort of way that Jonathan Horwick was outlining. Thank you very much for that question. I think what I've observed over time working with the Scrap project and working with a lot of young advocates like myself we don't have a shortage of problems to think about whether it's climate change or nuclear weapons or even the misuse of conventional weapons by states all over the world especially more recently in the global south my home country of Nigeria were actively fighting to ban a portion of our police force which is called the Special Anti-Rubbery Squad which essentially have been engaged in the killing and robbery of a lot of young Nigerians so we have a lot of problems to solve and a lot of these problems were inherited and we're expected to come up with the creative solutions that would work to solve these problems and while at times I feel overwhelming to think about the future of the world in just 20 years what I see is that there's passionate energy from a lot of youth advocates around the world at Scrap we routinely have synergy meetings between advocates from completely seemingly unrelated fields there's lots of overlap between the climate movement and the nuclear weapons ban movement for example there's lots of overlap between the advocates for the equal treatment of refugees in Europe and nuclear disarmament advocates that highlight the historical remnants of nuclear imperialism and colonialism and so what I'm seeing is the development of dynamic and interesting diverse advocates that know how to find the synergies between these movements and can leverage the benefits of collective action and I think it is important for advocates in the future to have these qualities another instance I'm seeing is that part of I spoke earlier about generation normalizing nuclear weapons in their collective consciousness and part of this is because of how nuclear weapons have been normalized in popular media and also in social media we play video games that normalize nuclear weapons we've watched some movies wherein it's joked about it's seen as a distant reality but we also have you know the impact of social media and public popular media is that they are very interesting enterprises that you know aggressively vie for our generation's attention and so when you're pushing for something like nuclear disarmament which is already hard to imagine the threat is really hard to envision we have to find creative solutions that can better capture the attention of the younger generation and motivate them to take proactive action and we're seeing you know projects that are involved in the arts and the sciences and you know even game developers you know referring to n-square collaboration in the US where they try to find you know seemingly unrelated expertise and bring them together towards a meaningful goal so I think over the next coming years we'll see much more innovative ways of performing advocacy and I don't think there'll be a reduction in our collective energy and passion to secure our future essentially. Thank you Ola that was really exciting you know it's a really really nice insight into how how you work and the things that you see emerging from different students and your own work as well yes good luck with carrying on with that you know you've clearly lots to do yeah so I understand that Jeremy Corbyn's having difficulty logging on so I am going to move to Kate I hope that's not putting you on the spot Kate I know you're expecting to go last thank you Kate so just to introduce you Kate Hudson if you need any introduction that is disarmament activist and academic formally head of social and policy studies at the London Southbank University and has combined high-level academia with campaigning on a variety of fronts so I know her best for her work with the campaign to nuclear disarmament she was the chair of that between 2003 and 2010 and now she's general secretary she's also being involved in the stock the war coalition so thank you very much Kate. Thanks very much Henrietta of course I want to start off by congratulating nuclear information surface on your 20th anniversary we really hugely value the work that you do your rigorous approach which I would like to describe as both scholarly and accessible that's not always easy to achieve but you do that so well and we also thank you for your cooperative approach and your invaluable participation in the no trident replacement core group so big thank you to all of you really so in terms of global threats which was my brief we are living in a time of multiple and interlocking crises and increasing global threats the scale of the threats are shown thrown sharply into relief by the decision of the bulletin of atomic scientists to set the hands of the doomsday clock at 100 100 seconds to midnight that's the closest ever as Dr Samuel has just mentioned the two great existential threats which they identify are nuclear war and climate change and I would say that both of these are increased and exacerbated by the policies of the current US president but of course he's not alone in pursuing policies which would have been unthinkable even in recent years and of course we need to recognise that the perspective of our own government also needs to change if we are to save our planet from total catastrophe so we're coming up to the next US presidential election in just a few weeks time and I think it's timely to assess how President Trump's policies and his strategic approach have contributed to this increasingly dangerous scenario perhaps of chief concern in terms of the danger of nuclear war is Trump's increasingly hostile attitude to China there was a very interesting editorial in the financial times just a few days ago about what they described as the new cold war developing new cold war China of course is still a developing country it's emerged as a great economic powerhouse but it has been identified by the US leadership as a kind of increasing let's say rival for some time and in the Obama years of course US policy oriented increasingly towards the Asia Pacific region the so-called pivot to Asia I think was the term which Hillary Clinton used when she was secretary of state at that time but this pivot has accelerated and become more hostile since President Trump's election and policy documents indicate a shift from what you might describe as a containment approach towards one more of confrontation for example in 2018 the national defense strategy identified the central challenge to US prosperity and security as the reemergence of long-term strategic competition by China and Russia and in this document the US administration described them as revisionist powers that want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model there was no consideration of course of the impact that continual expansion of NATO for almost 30 years now and its military alliances too have had on such countries and their own policies so the US goal is to be able to defeat those countries militarily and to prepare for war on a massive scale and Trump's policies repeatedly articulate the mantra of compete deter and win and indeed the emphasis across US strategies is on lethality fighting and winning wars but there have been some developments in how those wars are conceived of so they're no longer seen as just wars on land on sea and in the air for over 20 years the US vision has been one of full spectrum dominance over land sea air and space and most recently information and cyber space have been added to that too Trump has ramped up the militarization of space as well as its commercialization of course which is a a big theme too last year the US space force was launched and Trump said at the time that it marked a big moment and that there was going to be a lot of things happening in space because space is the world's newest war fighting domain I mean terribly disturbing and of course last year it was keep space for peace week so there are many activists and campaigners who are trying to you know roll back and prevent this kind of seeing of space as a war fighting domain but it's a very very strong agenda this new generation of space weapons kind of revisiting Reagan's Star Wars some of some of us may remember that from the 1980s that's now on the cards and of course to these arenas we can add the terrain of fake news anti science lies and misinformation and of course these are things which were again touched on by the bulletin of atomic scientists when they made their prediction for the doomsday clock Trump's policies usually assert the old perspective that the US is standing up for freedom and the rules based international order whereas he says that his competitors strive to undermine that but in fact I would say that no country has done as much to undermine international legal structures as the US under trump I can name a few I'm sure we can all think of many he's withdrawn from the climate accords and the world health organization he's trashed a whole range of arms control treaties and raised the possibility of the resumption of nuclear testing he's withdrawn from the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty the iran nuclear deal the open skies treaty and is at risk of demolishing the outer space treaty and the new start treaty that's the bilateral reductions treaty between the US and Russia signed by Obama and Medvedev that's reduced the the nuclear arsenals of those two countries so of course all these actions increase the risk of nuclear war and we understand the context for this many fine books have been written explaining why you know the US is a declining power economically and it seeks to assert itself militarily and this isn't new it's been the case for some time again those of us who've been around and active for a little while will think immediately of the bush administration where president bush sought to compel non-compliant states to bend to us will unleashing the so-called war on terror in advance of the neocon project for a new american century remember that just before the war on iraq um but i would say that trump's drive to war is far more dangerous than that terrible though that was particularly for the middle eastern region while trump's national security strategy focused on potential war with china and russia his nuclear posture review was a massive escalation of nuclear risk and essentially it took the lid off the restraints on both new build and nuclear weapons use and there was commitment to a whole new generation of so-called usable nuclear weapons and an increase in the number of scenarios in which nuclear weapons could be used and of course we all know that previously the case had always been made that nuclear weapons weren't actually intended for use they're intended to deter but now use is part of the policy and it's not just trumpian rhetoric we can't just dismiss it as oh he he says those things um these new usable nuclear weapons have now been produced and they have been deployed so taking these two strategies together it's clear that there is significant danger of the us war on china in which nuclear weapons could be used and i would say alongside many other peace campaigns and organisations that opposing this is a fundamental task for our movement today and i'm pleased to say that cnd is working to promote peace and dialogue to work with all our strength to prevent such a war because if conflict comes between two nuclear armed states the future of the whole world will be put in doubt so this is a time when we need maximum global cooperation to deal with the huge challenges we face today climate catastrophe pandemics racist discrimination economic crisis all countries need to work together and where there are differences they must be dealt with through the appropriate international bodies the imminent ratification of the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons shows the powerful international cooperation that exists for nuclear abolition and we must build on this too in other areas so to conclude Henrietta we look forward to continuing to work with nis and other organisations who share our goal of a world of peace and justice free from the threat of nuclear weapons thank you very much thank you case and i'm glad you finished on that note because the lead up to to that final message of hope was was terribly gloomy you know and appropriately so there's there's so many problems facing us and not only is the problem of nuclear weapons not adequately being addressed yet at an international level it's it's increasing and there are more risks to to join it so thank you for reminding us that there are things that can be done about that yeah great so now i'm sure we've all noticed Jeremy Corbyn has managed to join us and i'm delighted to be able to give him an opportunity to reflect on today's themes he's been a Labour MP since 1983 and he was Labour of the leader excuse me of the Labour party and of the opposition between 2015 to 20 he is a long time opponent of nuclear weapons and has demonstrated this in numerous ways in his parliamentary work and this is his support for cnd and he's also attended many of the international meetings of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty including its preparatory commissions and its review conferences so thank you very much Jeremy really happy that you're able to be with us thank you very much Henry in fact i've heard pretty well all of it so far i think there was a slight confusion over the link up but never mind we we are here now which is good first of all huge congratulations on the 20th anniversary it's an amazing achievement and you've done incredible work for a very long time and i think i couldn't have put it better than the way Kate did that you've managed to bring together oh dear so this is now seems to have frozen the intellectual and i think that is absolutely i was a bit late to the how is that now you seem to have caught up so yes carry on okay um i've been a member of cnd since i was in my teens and still am and very proud to be a member of cnd because the fundamental argument has always been of the immorality of nuclear weapons that are weapons of mass destruction that can only be indiscriminate in their effect and their usage and whilst we commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki in august of every year the reality is those incredibly expensive weapons for the time and they were incredibly expensive were indiscriminate in killing hundreds of thousands of people who bore no responsibility whatsoever for what was happening in the second world war but they set off the nuclear arms race which we've all lived with and experienced ever since and so i think one should never leave the moral case against nuclear weapons out of the equation because it's too easy often to get into all kinds of scenario planning about what may or may not happen and leave out the sheer horror and enormity of what nuclear weapons actually are the opportunities now to do something about it are actually very considerable in britain as we do after every general election we have a strategic defence and security review and that is being undertaken by parliamentary committees at the moment and anyone that looks at the strategic needs of any country now you would look at issues of poverty you would look at issues of environmental disaster you would look at issues of trade you'd look at issues of refugees you'd look at many many issues on top of that the whole world would now look at the effect of the coronavirus on national economies on the global economy and so on you'd also look at the various terrorist incidents that have happened over the past few months and years and then you'd factor into it and say well hang on a minute how do nuclear weapons deal with any of these issues Were nuclear weapons any use to the USA on September 11th 2001 any more than anyone else that suffered a horrible attack like that and so you have to ask yourself the question why are we pursuing apparently yet another generation of nuclear weapons the nuclear proliferation treaty was an enormous step forward no question about that and whilst it is much ignored and denigrated by the declared nuclear weapons states the reality is the vast majority of the world states support the NPT have abided by the NPT and indeed the UN General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly for a nuclear weapons free world in the future. I think this is an opportunity such as there's not been for a very long time in order to capture the public imagination on this Jonathan was pointing out quite rightly that every government has put itself into much greater debt as a result of having to deal with the corona crisis that means that most economies and most governments are running at a big spending deficit at the moment and the only way forward then is to invest in a sustainable economy for the future the need to absolutely there for investment in green energy green technologies improved biodiversity and different and better farming methods the needs are also there to recognize that the economic inequalities around the world as well as the illegal wars of the last few years have fed the refugee flow which is now probably somewhere around 70 million people around the world more than ever in recorded history who are people without a place to call their own they're human beings just like all of us and they want somewhere to live and they want to be able to make their contribution during their lifetime so I think this is an opportunity to campaign very strongly on this and the delay of the NPT review conference because of corona might be a bit of a blessing in disguise because it gives us more time and more chance to get a global movement going to put pressure on that conference because I the danger is that we've all been involved in this for a very long time you become almost institutionalized into going to these conferences and opposing these things without any real expectation of change I hope this time we can mobilize global opinion on the on the issues that we all face this is the year when global temperatures have risen the most there's been more forest fires than anywhere else anytime else there's now significant melting of the permafrost in northern Russia just as much as there's extremely high temperatures in other parts of the world and obviously melting of the polar ice caps as well as increased numbers of really extreme weather patterns all over the world surely if that's not a warning I don't know what is the levels of pollution which aren't necessarily the same thing of seas rivers and air around the world are incredibly high and getting much worse but again this is a sort of perverse thing that's come out of the corona crisis but people living in New Delhi for the first time they saw the beauty of the historic centre of their city why for the first time because the first time in the lifetime of many people the air has been clear enough to see across the city to see the mountains in the distance and so on so people have had some view of how we could do things very very differently in the world but my concern is that there's a whole generation that have grown up with the vague knowledge at the back of their minds that nuclear weapons exist they don't really know what they are they do not fully unappreciate the destructive power of them and as far as they're concerned it's just another debate about weaponry and I think we have to be much blunter in explaining what a nuclear weapon is and what it does because as we're doing that the USA and China are both increasing nuclear capacity Russia apparently doing the same and Britain in a rather convoluted way is developing fewer new warheads with greater destructive capability as was outlined at the beginning of our webinar this afternoon this is the chance when Britain could lead the way in solidarity's arm living standards and our contribution to the world's environmental issues but we have to be out there doing that. Jonathan also quite rightly raised the issues of the connection between civil nuclear power and nuclear weapons and I remember discussing this at great length with Tony Ben who was explaining his former energy secretary and very important figure in the labour party until he died about the connection and the very high cost of nuclear power which was born in the 50s and 60s particularly as a way of providing the basis for nuclear warheads I suppose and this then feeds into a debate about the environment as far as I'm concerned we should be developing renewable energy, windwaves, solar, geothermal and so on. There has to be a base production of energy by some form because obviously solar and wind is slightly variable but that I believe can be achieved and my whole strategy would be to emphasise much more on renewable energy and whilst there is the development going ahead of Hinkley Point at the present time I think all the other nuclear power stations proposed in Britain are very much in the balance as indeed nuclear energy is in the balance all around the world. You only have to read the financial times at weekends to realise that those who have invested in nuclear energy in the past are very sceptical of it at the moment and the last point to make is this that the NPT has achieved nuclear weapons free zones has helped with that in Latin America in parts of Asia and in Africa of course it has not yet managed to persuade India and Pakistan to disarm or not to or to agree on non-use or some steps towards that and because of the way in which the Trump administration has undermined the Iran nuclear agreement there is a grave danger that Iran will end up going back into the potential development of at least the development of a nuclear weapon facility and that of course will then lead to extensive rearmament in the region. Every NPT review conference I've been to has said it believes in a Middle East of weapons of mass destruction free zone and that surely is something that we should ensure comes back to the next NPT. The danger of the rhetoric building up between the USA and China and military arguments about the South China Sea, the growth of US bases in Australia and elsewhere is extremely dangerous. On the other side of it the huge economic interdependence between the USA and China leads me to think that both sides will pull back at some point. The difference between that and the Cold War with the Soviet Union was the Cold War with the Soviet Union did not have the same degree of economic interrelation and interdependence that China has with the USA and with the rest of the world but we have to mobilise people give them hope that things can be done differently but also quite bluntly say why should we be spending all this money on weapons of mass destruction when the corona crisis have shown the most pressing need in the world is health service for all and environmental sustainability to protect our planet for the future. Thank you very much. Another fantastic rich talk. I'm really struck by the overlaps between these talks which maybe could have been anticipated giving the themes. Nevertheless I've learned a lot from them. I think time and time again through the talks there's been a sense that we don't always understand the decisions that are being made or how we don't always have access to the decisions and what's really steering some of these things. We've heard about how expensive the UK's nuclear weapons are and how there are other risks that that money could be better spent on and also through the talks there's been a sense about what advocacy is possible what advocacy is happening and how to mobilise out to to make even more impact on on the world. So we've got a stack of questions. Thank you very much to everybody and we've got about 20 minutes left of the webinar so what I've done is I've divided the questions into four rough themes the first being the mechanics of the UK's UK the UK's infrastructures and decision making. So I'm going to put these to all of you at once I don't know if you've got a pen and you can be jotting them down then and give you each a chance to reflect on a set of questions rather than one at a time because I think that's more efficient. So our first question came in ahead of time from Phil Johnston from Sussex University who Jonathan Porritt invotes this work already. Phil Johnston along with Andy Sterling at Sussex University have been researching the civil military links between the submarine industry and the civil nuclear new built here in the UK. They've had a lot of interactions with policy makers about this and in particular they had interactions with influential figures in the Labour Party but despite having clearly explained the dynamics it felt as though they're being stopped at some point in getting the information through to the people that could make decisions on it. So a question specifically to Jeremy is if you could shed any light on whether there are pressures on the Labour Party not to consider these sorts of things or to the rest of the panel if you've got any insights into the challenges people in Britain face on getting these sorts of issues aired by political parties. So that's question number one on different mechanics of the UK's infrastructure. We also had a number of questions from Mike Keely on these sorts of mechanics sorts of questions or questions. He asked quite simply and maybe this is most appropriate to you David why is a new warhead being considered and why is continuous at sea deterrents continuing and how are the links with the civil military program being maintained when there's clear evidence of links between the US and the UK militaries. So that's quite a lot of quite big questions to work through in the first instance. I'm going to see if Jeremy could start us off please because the first question was had a clear steer to you. Thanks Phil, thanks for your question and thanks for the work that you do. I am acutely aware of political, economic and military pressures that are put on decision makers and in Parliament and there is a huge continuous very conventional line of arguments about strategic defence that flows through in Parliament and it's regurgitated all the time by the Ministry of Defence and anyone that goes away from that is seen to be very deviant in some way. Shami Chakrabarti and I worked very hard during my period as leader of the party to develop a war powers bill which would become a war powers act which would mean that the power of the Prime Minister to go to war by the use of the royal prerogative would be ended instead they would have to be specific parliamentary approval for it and we worked very hard on that and I was very keen to develop a different narrative surrounding defence expenditure and nuclear weapons. There are two huge stumbling box that come across anyone trying to do this as everyone on this call would recognise. The first one is the question about jobs and security and the huge expenditure on through and by British arms manufacturers to manufacture arms in Britain to sell elsewhere to manufacture planes to be used as war planes elsewhere and also to develop nuclear vessels, nuclear submarines and so on nuclear powered vessels as well as nuclear weapons issues. The biggest rebellion that happened during my time as leader of the party was wait for it when I proposed a motion to Parliament that we end arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of their bombardment of Yemen. The biggest opposition I had in Parliament was on that all framed around the issue of jobs for those working for BAE systems that develop those and deliver those weapons to Yemen and I was and still am developing work on alternative jobs and also on guaranteeing jobs in manufacturing industry whilst we begin to redefine the purpose of manufacturing industry in Britain which I do think has to be done because there's not much point in complaining about the use of British weapons by Saudi Arabia in bombing the Yemen unless you're actually prepared to do something about it and that means taking the fear of job loss away from those that manufacture those weapons by investing in that skill set of shipbuilding of aircraft and manufacturing capability to achieve something very, very different. The second one is the way in which the military think tanks and the ministry defence spend a huge amount of time trying to influence members of Parliament into believing that there is an immediate strategic threat to Britain from usually from Russia or from other states. Now I think the build up of troops on both sides of the border between Russia and the states of central Europe is serious and dangerous. The only way you get around that is by reducing tensions, is by dialogue and also being quite robust about human rights abuses with any country with which you deal and I do not approve support or condone human rights abuses by any state by any government any in any part of the world and I think you have to be universal and consistent on that but the pressures are on policy makers to believe that the only way of dealing with the threat or perceived threat of Russia or China is to develop our own nuclear weapons. The reality is that Britain's nuclear weapons are not that many. The USA has far more and basically Britain is in nuclear umbrella with the United States. It is a question of changing that thinking and that means that the imagination of millions of young people in Europe, the USA and other parts of the world that have been raised by their support for Black Lives Matters as a recognition of what injustice looks like have been raised by their concerns about environmental destruction need also to be raised about the issues of the danger of war and peace otherwise the danger by accident of tipping over into a military conflict with China which could become a nuclear one later on now obviously nobody on this call wants that to happen but you have to do something about it by reducing tensions and increasing understanding. Okay thank you very much last given a sense of the challenges you faced in trying to get these things addressed and some possible ways of thinking that through um given that just very briefly to that one thing I didn't say and it'd be very quick because I know there's not much time I do think we have to look at the way in which the mainstream media frame all these arguments all the time in two days I was day one was condemned for being a danger to Britain because I'd indicated I was not prepared to use nuclear weapons day two I was condemned as being a threat to Britain because I'd have my hand on the nuclear trigger it can't be both right yes so thank you yes another insight into uh high political you know the challenges that place people in political office I want to rotate I want to put the the question the same question about uh how to get issues aired in the UK government or or in democratic processes first to Jonathan then to David and then if it's okay with the panellist I'm going to set up a different set of questions so that we run through some of the other issues as well please thank you Jonathan I'm very happy to pass to colleagues on this other than to say as Jeremy's already intimated the level of pressure that not just parliamentarians but people involved in politics comes under from the defence establishment is is utterly astonishing it's just non-stop and it is constantly there the whole time so I think um I can only imagine what it felt like when Jeremy was put under that pressure put anybody in those positions is exposed to exactly the same uh do you have any advice or thoughts about people wanting to bypass uh the the those huge hurdles those huge other interests I think that what I think what we're looking at is the possibility of some of the old truths about what made this country what people think it is are going to be seen very differently post COVID I mean the idea of us seeking to maintain what our image was in the world in the same way as we did pre-COVID after COVID just doesn't make any sense to me at all and we have to be absolutely alert to the possibility of shifting perceptions about that and the very different approaches that we're going to need to national security which needs to look completely different and what we need to deem to be essential investments in the well-being of people in this country particularly the health service and social care right thank you yes so there is a sense there's all sorts of shifting structures happening right now yeah thank you very much uh David have you got anything to add to to the question about how to get these issues aired or also to Mike Keely's questions about why new warhead why are we carrying on with continuous sewage deterrents I appreciate these are large questions uh for sure yeah I mean the questions if I could answer comprehensively then perhaps our situation would be what it is and we would be improving situation in this country I mean I've spoken with Andy and Phil about the work which I also value very highly and about these issues to some extent and I would just reflect that it's it's very interesting that when you posit to people this link between civil and military nuclear that uh there's a real uh disparity when you know when you speak to people who are not within that world that it's it comes across to them like this is a massive conspiracy theory and it can possibly be happening to me so we get to people who are so closely within that world that they say yes of course this is the case this is exactly what happens and no nobody's going to talk about it because it's because nobody wants to to concede that there is this obvious overlap and yeah and and that's the investment in civil nuclear is a subsidy to the nuclear weapons program on uh coming to Mike's question why why is a new warhead being developed why is Kazdi continuing there are lots of reasons and some of them are bound up in in I think poor and unsubstantiated uh sort of intellectual frameworks around deterrents and and what threats to the well-being of people in this country are privileged and how they can conceive and how they it's imagined they can be tackled but I think also we really shouldn't underestimate the fact that almost a sort of bureaucratic force of habit that the idea that that these postures must be maintained and that that they are bound up with a certain national prestige and international standing and uh I I think probably not unreasonably quite a lot of politicians believe that there is more to be lost by taking the necessary step of of going down the path of disarmament and there is to be gained for them and I think there's you know there's there's some cynicism and then there's some you know belief that this is how we've always been doing things and we should we should continue thank you uh that was very succinct and to the point and yes it's really it's really uh surprising this kind of mismatch between people who understand how the world of this kind of cloak and dagger world work and and also to kind of feel that it's more surprising than a fictional account might be yeah so thank you very much I'm going to move the theme of the questions to a set of questions about risks and I'm going to ask Kate please to be the person to first comment on those we had a question from Bevis Gillett pointing out that Bill Perry's analysis saying that the risks of nuclear catastrophe are now more likely than ever while a deliberate nuclear war is unlikely so that's the Bevis was asking for comments on that and if panel agrees with that there's also a question about whether planetary sustainability could ever be uh compatible with militarism from Breeze Cadbury uh thank you very much and then a final question on risks um is um from Alan Dun, Deco Lolo, Mahungu, I hope I pronounced that right um we're talking about interest conflicts escalating around the world um and that uh weapons of mass destruction might be seen as a way of protecting interest but so asking for your comments on the sense which a nuclear weapons three world uh is possible yeah uh thank you Kate if you could if you could start us off on those ones okay not sure of my note caping you know taken kept up with that um great questions I mean there are so many great questions in both Q&A and chat uh first of all Bevis hi Bevis good to hear from you um yes there's there's quite a lot of research and data available about near misses and of course Bruce Kent is one of the great champions of people being alert to how many times over the past period you know since 1945 we've come incredibly close to nuclear exchange and then all out nuclear war as a result of an accident and there's um you know many many times where fortunately individuals have used their own judgment you know during the cold war in particular not to press press the button you know and often it was being like a bear trying to climb over a fence into the defense establishment or whatever you know into the base um so I think yes it is it is right to say that there is a very very great risk of unintentional nuclear exchange but I also think that increasingly there is the risk of actual intentional nuclear warfare and I think this is very much increased by the development of these so-called um low low yield nuclear weapons you know in fact many of the low yield nuclear weapons are almost as big as the Hiroshima bomb anyway but in so in some in some strange way there's the thinking developed that if you have smaller nuclear weapons then there's less likely to be nuclear war well it seems to me if you have smaller nuclear weapons which are described as low yield or you know battlefield nukes or something like that they are far more likely to be used and where is the stop mechanism when you've used a small nuclear weapon against somebody you know it's a it's a disastrous development so I think yes there are very great dangers of unintentional usage but there are increasingly grave dangers of intentional usage and and that's why people like Perry and others you know former people that have been kind of great uh hawks you know military hawks have come to the view that it's just too dangerous to have nuclear weapons you know and that they should be globally abolished and I think that that's what we have to build on you know and as a campaigning organisation we try and keep that vision really clear yes there are all kinds of nuts and bolts on the way of reductions and this and that but the goal of global abolition you know that has to be up there really central and I absolutely agree with the point that Jonathan was making about you know changes as a result of Covid you know there's so many people and organisations saying you know no going back to the way things were before build back better uh not as hijacked by Boris Johnson you know it was initially stated by the Secretary General of the United Nations you know we have there's a window of opportunity for doing things differently for seeing security in a different way and we have to seize upon that to ensure that policies change and we're not faced with any form of nuclear warfare intentional or unintentional. Thank you very much Kate um we've now got three minutes until the time's up for this webinar so I'm sure we're going to run slightly if that's okay with everybody um and what I'm going to do is I'm going to skip straight to the questions that focus on disarmament because I think it'd be nice to finish with a sense of discrete steps that might be possible um after looking at some of the problems that we're facing so Mike Keely asked all the panellists to reflect on if what the discrete steps to the UK getting to zero nuclear weapons might look like and I would add to that what what do the international situation need to what are the international conditions for the UK to to be at that point and John Mason also asked a question asking about the effect of the US election on the possibilities for disarmament and we also had an interesting question from Bill Ramsey the SNP CND person asking about the implications of Scottish independence and and how long there would be for trying to be removed from Scotland should it vote for independence so once again I appreciate there's a lot of questions there so I'm going to circulate round the panel in the order that you each spoken asking for some reflections on those sorts of questions um and some final comments thank you very much I'll start with David Cullen thank you wow it's a really big question um yeah concrete steps to disarmament that I looked at this a little bit in the trouble ahead report it wasn't a major focus um and and uh yeah it the this material got relegated slightly to um one of the annexes but I was interested in looking at to what extent the the current upgrade programmes were cancelable and and to what extent uh uh fight money already be committed to them I I think that if the UK decided not to produce all of the submarines that it's going to that would be an immediate first step it looks like they're in terms of contract law are committed to producing a couple um but you could imagine a future where uh a government decided to disarm and only those two were produced the number of deployed weapons went down I think I think stopping patrol would be a really important early step towards disarmament it's I think an unacceptable risk to have those weapons at sea all the time they you know while they are still in existence they should be kept in a secure location and they should not be deployable I think it's really unacceptable that they are so those would be the initial first steps um if if you're interested in what things we look at the atomic weapons establishment my predecessor Peter Burke wrote an excellent report on how that could be converted to civilian usage I really recommend that you take the time to look at that because it's a very interesting report uh thank you David so some very discreet steps to do with managing the technologies whether it's to turn to the actual submarines a bits of kit for the labs that produce the work on the instrumental to the UK's nuclear weapons programs so thank you for that I'm going to move to Jonathan Porist and I'll point out that we've got another question just finally come in about possible disarmament actions relating to Jeremy Corbyn saying the other generation needs to understand the nuclear threats more bluntly so questioning whether it could be put on the national syllabus so I'll just put that out there as well in case Ola or Jeremy have anything to say about that Jonathan have you got any comments about the disarmament questions we found Henry thanks I'm really sorry I'm going to have to drop off the call in a minute and I'll leave that question to the significant expertise on this panel there was the question about is planetary sustainability compatible with militarism and I can say as quickly as possible absolutely not and for anybody involved in sustainability work who thinks that we can work our way towards a just compassionate sustainable world without dismantling the edifice of militarism they're insane on which note I will leave you I'm so sorry to have to go but thank you well thank you very much for being here and thank you for being so clear about that that was an ambiguous and to the point yes thank you very much and see you soon so I'll move now to Ola please if you've got any comments about the disarmament questions yes thank you very much Henrietta so just very briefly concrete steps for nuclear disarmament the very first thing that comes to mind is that all campaigners for their disarmament campaigners are non-proliferation experts should encourage the US and Russia to unconditionally extend a new start and not necessarily attach unfeasible conditions to the extension of new start as we have seen in the past couple of months. Thinking a little bit further someone raised the strategy of the the band treaty champions to divest from the bomb and I think this is a very important strategy in the sense that you know it's a death by a thousand cut strategy wherein they push the UK and other governments around the world to become more aware of the perspectives that have been raised and ignored for so long and I think looking at these innovative ways to stifle the ecosystem that supports nuclear weapons is the way to go definitely but my final point is actually more related to the issue of nuclear risks within the context of steps for eventual disarmament. I notice that there hasn't been enough or considerably noticeable engagement between nuclear disarmament campaigners and some of the options on the table for nuclear risk reduction as champion by the United Nations by the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and it's understandable because perhaps these step by step approaches might seem a little too late and also might seem like engaging with these initiatives might be selling out from the cause but I think that if we were to look at some of the strategies developed within nuclear risk reduction you know we have we're trying to close pathways in nuclear use so the doctrinal the accidental and the escalatory pathways but if we have more engagement from the disarmament community with these strategies we can try to push the non-proliferation experts to be a bit more ambitious in pulling together these nuclear weapon states to engage in dialogue and transparency to reduce the risk of nuclear use and on that note I'd like to hand over to you thank you. Great thanks Ola so this kind of sentence says things that have to be done at multiple levels new start engaging top level nuclear weapons top level people within nuclear weapons states coming together to agree stuff but also the actions of individuals matter that campaigners can really get stuck into all of these issues and there are things that can be done yeah thank you Kate I'm going to hand over to you for some final thoughts about disarmament from your point of view. Okay well a big question obviously just to pick up on one of the points there about young people and so on I mean to be honest the problem is not with young people if you talk to young people or if you look at the polls overwhelmingly they're opposed to nuclear weapons they think you know what crazy person invented nuclear weapons it just seems such such a an extraordinarily destructive thing to do so they are they are not the problem the problem is the older generation the vested interests people are kind of stuck in cold war thinking you know I mean those are the minds that we have to change you know people in in those kinds of interests interest groups and sort of stuck thinking so it's not I don't think it's to do with the young people and then in terms of ways of bringing about disarmament yes it has to be a multi-layered process or there are many many ways in which movement can be made and I I appreciate Dr Samuel's point to be honest I think that as the most important thing is is people power you know we're looking at what appears to be an intractable problem to do with the status of nations as we know that that's a really big factor concepts of power you know misplaced concepts of power but people again sort of stuck in a rut thinking that they have to have nuclear weapons and and if you if you say you're going to get rid of them then you're perceived to be weak and all that you know things have moved on and people have to realise that they've moved on and there's no substitute in my opinion for people getting together organising together putting on public pressure you know at certain times it's demonstrations and events at bases at other times it's mass lobbying and talking to your MP and all that sort of thing but we have to have mass popular engagement I don't believe that going to politicians or vested interests and making a good logical case is going to cut the mustard because the vested interests are there we have to have a mass demand for change and we've seen how in the past that has happened whether it's in terms of the treaties being achieved in the past like the INF treaty or the partial test ban treaty or whatever we've seen how that happens and we've seen it in many many other campaigning contexts historically you know for equal civil equalities and so on you know that that has to happen and so we need to get active and really really bring about a change because it's in everybody's interests and particularly here in nuclear weapon states the onus is on us to do that because as people have said in a half the world is self-organised in nuclear weapons free zones you know many countries have signed up to the global boundaries we're not in a minority we are actually the global majority for nuclear abolition and we have to make that real here as well as elsewhere in the world thank you thank you Kate another kind of rousing call that that we have things that we can do we don't need just to wait for people in in decision-making positions to make those decisions so I'm going to hand over now to Jeremy to respond to the design and style of questions thanks very briefly to follow the points Kate made that I'm always struck by how different the discussion debate is about nuclear weapons between what is held here in Britain and the United States compared to that which one how holds in almost any other country in the world other countries in the world sort of thing what on earth are you talking about why would anybody want nuclear weapons and here it quite quickly goes into a thing saying it will nuclear weapons give us security whereas in fact the danger of nuclear weapons being proliferated and the nuclear war are obviously huge which is what we've just been talking about how do we take things forward well Kate also is right that going to influence politicians by logical argument is always a good idea but it is it's made much more powerful if you're seen to be supported by a large body of public opinion when that actually is what makes a difference because the pressures on politicians are absolutely huge subtly or not so subtly from industrial interests and defence interests they're much less obvious and much less strong from those that want to see a different way of running the world and so I believe absolutely in popular campaigning and taking big steps towards disarmament and so how would it look in Britain strategic defence review which concludes how expensive nuclear weapons are questions their value a feel good message to all world leaders of countries that have nuclear weapons how about you being part of on the side of history by saying you will sign a thing of no first use you will sign a thing of no further development you will sign a thing of absolute non-proliferation and you will carry out article six of the MPT and that we have to engage with all countries around the world and in particular with China because China gives a reach into engaging with North Korea as well but I think it also and this is what comes through with everyone's contribution today it has to be overwhelmingly put in the context of the big lesson we've heard about global poverty inequality and lack of health care from the corona crisis and the environmental disaster the world is heading to none of those issues are going to be helped by spending zillions of pounds on new weapons of mass destruction much better if we start to give security to those people that currently work in industries that manufacture these things that your jobs will be secure in the future by investment in other things that has to be a very important part of it otherwise you simply don't get a hearing on the issues of nuclear disarmament and peace around the world I'm actually very hopeful very hopeful that a generation coming up will look at look at the world in a better and different way and are becoming more and more alive to the need to deal with environmental insecurity by providing economic security for everyone in a sustainable world the things are possible but they do require a challenge to free market economics they do a challenge do need is necessary then the challenge the sort of military thinking that goes with it as well but I'm actually hopeful good that's nice to hear um so we have had such an interesting session thank you very much to all the speakers David Cullen Jonathan Perot Olamadu Samuel Kate Hudson and Jeremy Corbyn between you you've given us all an amazing sense of the reality of nuclear weapons here and globally the risks they they bring with them and also the state of disarmament and possibilities for next steps towards disarmament like many of you I'm left with a kind of ah this is real feeling but also a sense of optimism because we've heard from Kate and from Ola about some real tangible things that are going on in civil society there's a real richness in the youth movements that were mentioned and in other public protest movements and we also have access to really rich research that are informing and steering some of these policy decisions whether it's some nuclear information service that's kindly hosted this event or from the University of Sussex worked from Bill Johnson and Andy Serling that's underpinned some of the great questions we've been having um so thank you very much do look up the recording if you're interested and I hope to see you in some other circumstances sometime soon bye bye thanks Henry etch yn ffelly thank you