Sheffield peace campaigners urge city council to take action on UN nuclear weapons ban treaty

Sheffield Creative Action for Peace (SCRAP) are taking action to mark the second anniversary of the UN’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons becoming international law.

They are asking the council to join cities in the UK and across the world in passing a motion supporting the ban and lobbying the government to start acting legally and stop investment in nuclear weapons.

Jill Angood from the group said: “SCRAP believes the citizens of Sheffield will be able to think of many more productive and socially beneficial activities for the government to invest in than for the UK to continue to produce more and more illegal nuclear weapons.

“The Treaty (known as the TPNW) stops nations from developing, testing, producing, manufacturing, transferring, possessing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory.

“It also includes for the first time responsibilities for states who sign the treaty to assist victims of nuclear weapons use and testing and to start to restore environments contaminated from nuclear weapons use and testing.

Death and destruction

“When SCRAP set up a petition to support the treaty last year they found that many Sheffielders agreed that nuclear weapons have no place in our world. Any use of them would cause such widespread death and destruction that organisations like the International Red Cross have already said that they would have no chance of dealing with the consequences.

“The environmental damage would be global and catastrophic, wherever such weapons landed.”

Jill Angood continued: “The last year has seen how terrifyingly close nuclear devastation becomes in a war situation and how little the existing arsenal of nuclear weapons brings the people of Sheffield any real security.

“SCRAP is asking our local elected representatives to sign the pledge supporting the TPNW produced by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (www.icanw.org). Three of Sheffield’s MPs have already signed this pledge as well as many other parliamentarians and communities representatives around the world.

“SCRAP is also calling on councillors to support the motion at February’s full council meeting that would give Sheffield City Council’s full support for the Treaty. So this week every councillor will receive a handmade bookmark reminding them to support this ban, plus a copy of the pledge to sign and return to SCRAP.

“SCRAP is convinced that we need our government to get involved with the negotiations for the Treaty, join all the countries that have signed up to it to date and to reduce the UK’s ever-spiralling budget for illegal nuclear weapons.

Environmental damage

“Such weapons carry far more costs than the merely financial. As well as huge environmental damage there are long-term health issues for many people arising from the testing of such weapons, the extraction of the resources required, the production of these weapons , and the transport and disposal of the radioactive materials involved.”

The campaign urges Sheffield residents to get in touch with their local councillors, urge them to support the treaty and “let Sheffield add another chapter to the city’s long history of radical action for peace”, said Jill Angood.

More information: Sheffield Creative Action for Peace on Facebook.

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