CND annual conference

CND’s annual conference takes place in two parts this year. Real security, lessons from the pandemic, on Sunday 18 October 14.00 to 16.30, with Jeremy Corbyn MP, is open to everyone.

Cllr Rokhsana Fiaz, Mayor of Newham, and Tom Unterrainer of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, join international security specialist Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University Peace Studies Department and others for a discussion on real security in the post-pandemic world.

There are workshops on Visions of a green world, Security for the many, and Creative campaigning, plus Crane making and an online exhibition Time, Memory and Nuclear Weapons, curated by Hannah Kemp-Welch.

The conference is open to everyone, but please register in advance

Our members-only 2020 annual general meeting and policy conference, Campaigning in the post-virus world, is held a week earlier on Saturday October 10, details here.

Defence diversification: covid crisis points the way

Covid19 has seen some companies in the arms industry turn their hand to socially useful production, which is what defence diversification is all about. In the UK, Airbus, BAE Systems, GKN Aerospace, Rolls Royce and Siemens UK are among the companies participating in Ventilator Challenge UK, the government consortium making ventilators.

In this short video made for Labour CND, Sam Mason of the PCS union explains that the response to this health crisis shows we can end the continuing waste of billions of pounds on the UK’s unnecessary nuclear weapons system. We need to lobby for a firm commitment from the new Labour leadership to set up a Shadow Defence Diversification Agency.

Sam Mason, policy office for PSC, ‘a union proudly opposed to nuclear weapons’

Expensive MoD projects vs NHS spending

Extravagant military projets mean driving a tank through NHS spending

Co-Founder of Declassified UK Mark Curtis takes a look at how the Mininstry of Defence is planning to spend hundreds of billions on expensive military projects while our under-funded health service struggles to address the coronavirus.

Read Mark Curtis article in full
Take a quick look at what MoD money’s going on