09/08/2026
A crowd gathered on Saturday August 6 in the Market Square Cambridge to listen to the City Mayor Councillor Maria Cleminson commemorate Hiroshima day, which is taken to mean the dates of August 6 and 9 1945 when the US airforce dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. The bombing caused the death of up to as many as 340000 people either immediately or over the following years from radiation poisoning. Those 340000 people were almost all non combatants, that is to say the disabled, the elderly, women, children and young people. The USAF called these bombs ‘Little Boy’ and ‘Fat Man’.
So at a time here in the U.K. when this government is increasing its spending to overtake Russia to become the third highest spender in the world on nuclear weapons, it remains clear that to use a nuclear bomb is in itself a war crime. Why? Nuclear weapons kill indiscriminately, they cannot target only the military but destroy whole cities and all those who live in them. We should also not forget that nuclear explosions poison the environment and wildlife for many many years.
The risk of nuclear war is increasing with the big powers seeing war as a way of imposing their will on others, as is evident with wars on Ukraine and Iran. Having US or U.K. nuclear weapons at Lakenheath just 27 miles away from Cambridge in the US base, or planned from 2027 in RAF Marham, Norfolk, just 40 miles away, does not make us safer but makes us more of a target.
Why do we say that? There are 195 countries in the world. And only 9 countries out of 195 have nuclear weapons. The USA and Russia with over 5000 each, then China, UK, France, India and Pakistan with between 100-300 nuclear warheads, and lastly Israel and North Korea with between 50-100. Each of these nuclear weapons is 10 times as powerful as those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
If only 9 countries out of 195 in the world have nuclear weapons why does the U.K. have to be one of them? Let us join the great majority and remove them from our shores. We would be safer without them, less of a target and out of the nuclear arms race. Also very importantly we would be able to spend the 11-12 billion pounds of public money allocated every year to nuclear weapons on welfare not warfare, on health services, education, housing, transport, and so on.
Support CND’s campaign for nuclear disarmament which since 1958 has been campaigning for the removal of all nuclear weapons from the U.K. and around the world.
