The world’s nine nuclear-armed states continue to modernize their nuclear weapons as the countries deepened their reliance on such deterrence in 2023, a Swedish think tank said today.
Wilfred Wan, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) weapons of mass destruction program, said: “We have not seen nuclear weapons playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War.”
Earlier this month, Russia and its ally Belarus launched a second stage of drills intended to train their troops in tactical nuclear weapons, part of the Kremlin’s response to aggressive overtones from the members of the NATO military alliance.
In a separate report, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, said that the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of $91.4 billion on their arsenals in 2023.
The group said that figures show a $10.7 billion increase in global spending on nuclear weapons in 2023 compared to 2022, with the United States accounting for 80 percent of that increase.
The U.S. share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together.
ICAN policy and research coordinator Alicia Sanders-Zakre said: “There has been a notable upward trend in the amount of money devoted to developing these most inhumane and destructive weapons over the past five years.”
She said: “All this money is not improving global security, in fact, it’s threatening people wherever they live.”
SIPRI estimated that some 2,100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles and nearly all belong to the U.S. or Russia.
SIPRI’s director Dan Smith described the upward trend of warheads as “extremely concerning.”
The U.S. and Russia together have almost 90 percent of all nuclear weapons, SIPRI said.
In its SIPRI Yearbook 2024, the institute said that transparency regarding nuclear forces has declined in both countries in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and debates around nuclear-sharing arrangements have increased in importance.
Washington suspended its bilateral strategic stability dialogue with Russia, and last year Moscow announced that it was suspending its participation in the New Start nuclear treaty.
In Asia, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are all pursuing the capability to deploy multiple warheads on ballistic missiles, the institute said. The U.S., Russia, France, Britain, and China already have that capacity.
Morning Star is the socialist daily newspaper published in Great Britain. Morning Star es el diario socialista publicado en Gran Bretaña.
George Gordon Lord Byron was born in London on January 22, 1788. His father, an officer, died when the boy was three years old. His mother, of Scottish descent, then moved with him to Aberdeen. In 1794, he inherited the title Baron Byron on the death of his great uncle and was titled Lord Byron in 1798. He attended Harrow and went on to study at Cambridge in 1805. Here he published his first volume of poetry, Hours of Idleness (1807), and his first satirical parody, “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” (1809). After completing his studies, he traveled to Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Turkey, a journey which he describes in the first two cantos of his early great verse epic “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” (1812) and which brought him overnight success.
Up until then, Sir Walter Scott had been the most successful author of “exotic” verse narratives. Now Byron shifted the setting of this type of tale from the Scottish past to the contemporary foreign East and adopted a more subjective perspective than Scott. Scott had developed the historical novel through his experience of great historical upheaval, writing novels that were based on real historical conflicts and class interests—in contrast to costume dramas. Byron extended this to the “Orient.”
Following several scandalous affairs, Byron married a rich heiress in 1815. However, the marriage was unhappy, and Lady Byron obtained a separation, accusing Byron of cruelty, madness, and an incestuous relationship with his half-sister. The scandal ruined his social and financial standing. He left England in April 1816 never to return. However, Byron did not only leave for private reasons. Despite personal arrogance and prejudices, the increasing misery and radicalism of the laborers in the countryside had not escaped his notice and had aroused his anger at the ruling classes, including the church and the urban bourgeoisie.
Frontispiece of Lord Byron from an engraving after a drawing by G. H. Harlow, in ‘The Works of Lord Byron,’ 1901 (public domain)
In 1812, when the Frame-Work Bill was being debated in the House of Lords, which provided for the death penalty for the destruction of power looms, Byron made his famous maiden speech in defense of the Luddites. He argued to the Lords,
“These machines were to them an advantage, inasmuch as they superseded the necessity of employing a number of workmen, who were left in consequence to starve. By the adoption of one species of frame in particular, one man performed the work of many, and the superfluous laborers were thrown out of employment. Yet it is to be observed, that the work thus executed was inferior in quality, not marketable at home, and merely hurried over with a view to exportation.… In the foolishness of their hearts, they imagined that the maintenance and well doing of the industrious poor, were objects of greater consequence than the enrichment of a few individuals by any improvement in the implements of trade which threw the workmen out of employment, and rendered the laborer unworthy of his hire.”
He warned, “I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never, under the most despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian country.”
Byron, like Shelley and Keats, became the victim of an aggressive smear campaign by state and church, which exercised enormous power over public opinion. Yet it was only after he had left Britain that Byron became increasingly politicized in the fight against oppression in England as well as on the European mainland. In this respect, he was also influenced by Shelley, with whom he remained in close contact for the rest of their lives.
Sp!ros, photographer, 2022, A mural depicting Byron at Cacao Rocks, Psirri, Athens (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)
The impression made on Byron by Italian and Greek revolutionaries and, not least, his personal experiences of the wars of the suffering and fighting people, led to a new socially critical awareness, which was increasingly reflected in his poetry and motivated him to become personally involved in the Greek freedom struggle. He died in Greece at the age of thirty-six.
The reception of Byron’s work by the establishment tends to focus on personal aspects, often reducing his life and poetry to women, sex, “unnaturalness” and money, disregarding his political ideas. So how are his political convictions expressed in his work?
The Enlightenment poet Alexander Pope was much admired by Byron. Pope’s work reflects the rise of capitalism in Britain. He portrays the reality of 18th-century England as the best of all possible worlds. However, the revolutions of the late 18th century, the Industrial Revolution, and its impact on the lives of working people heralded a new time. This brought with it, in the eyes of the English bourgeoisie, the danger that their own people might model themselves on those of France.
So, Pope’s projection of a seemingly eternal, unchanging ground was torn from under their feet. Suddenly change was possible and was feared by the ruling class. It joined forces with the state church and together they began an unprecedented witch hunt against those pushing for change. This campaign, against all who were considered radical, unleashed among other things religious rhetoric, which is why the poet laureate Robert Southey accused Byron and Shelley of forming an “incest league” and a “Satanic school.” These intimidatory campaigns targeted the publishers to such an extent that they feared for their livelihood and freedom. So, Byron could no longer write like Pope. Society had changed fundamentally.
Byron’s first great success, the first two cantos of “Childe Harold,” initially reflected the prevailing European mood of world-weariness, a feeling of powerlessness in a hostile world, linked to motifs of loneliness and isolation. Other poems published in 1812 express a clearer political stance, for example, “An Ode to the Framers of the Frame Bill” (published March 2, 1812), in which Byron’s sympathy for the weavers is expressed, albeit he still believes that the parliamentary system can eliminate the grievances caused by individuals.
However, in the later cantos, this loneliness turns into a growing awareness of the alienation of the capitalist world. Melancholy and world-weariness can have their roots in historical and social ills. In addition, the aristocratic outlaw, Byron’s lonely, proud hero, takes a stand against oppression, particularly in countries struggling for national independence.
This changed with Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (1815). After that, Byron advocated radical political change more clearly. It was now that the establishment turned vociferously against him, and in 1816, Byron separated from his wife and young daughter and went into exile.
Some of the poetry written this year still contains moments of gloom and escapism, but it also increasingly calls for resistance against the reactionary regimes in Europe. In the third canto of “Childe Harold,” the speaker searches more intensely for ways out of alienation, out of an oppressive existence. An escape into poetry or nature is ultimately rejected. In his poem “Prometheus” (1816), Byron emphasizes the need to resist tyranny, and in the fourth canto, stanza 98, of “Childe Harold” he writes:
Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, Streams like the thunder-storm against the wind; Thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying, The loudest still the Tempest leaves behind; Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind, Chopped by the axe, looks rough and little worth, But the sap lasts,—and still the seed we find Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North; So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.
Byron’s close collaboration with Shelley in exile in Italy and his personal experience of the liberation movement in Italy and Greece led to a better understanding of society and the revolutionary struggle of the people. In these countries struggling for national independence, including also Poland, the Byronic hero was often seen as representing their quest for freedom and Byron became very well known and celebrated.
Between 1816 and his death in 1824, he composed a large number of great satirical dramatic poems, including “Manfred” (1817), the unfinished “Don Juan,” Cantos III and IV of “Childe Harold,” “Marino Faliero, Doge of Venice” (1821), “The Age of Bronze” (1823), and “The Deformed Transformed” (1824).
George R. Koronaios, photographer, Α 19th-century sculptural composition in Athens by Henri-Michel Chapu and Alexandre Falguière depicting Greece in the form of a female figure crowning Lord Byron (Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)
The final victory of the allied powers in 1815 led to a Holy Alliance under the rule of Catholic Austria, Orthodox Russia, and Protestant Prussia, whose declaration of principles was explicitly written in the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity and the divine Savior. Dissent, non-Christian religions, and natural religion were equally condemned. The reactionary forces persecuted anything that smelled of French freethought. In the context of English Romanticism, Coleridge’s turning away from his earlier radical positions logically also included turning away from pantheism.
In “Don Juan,” Byron postulates that poetry can replace Christianity with new ways of understanding the world, as John Keats did at the same time in “Ode to Psyche,” for example. Such a challenge was understood as blasphemy of colossal proportions. A parallel to this is Goethe’s “Walpurgisnacht” in his verse drama “Faust,” part I. Christianity is eliminated and art is given central importance. Postulating paganism as an alternative to the Christian religion was also deemed subversive. An inseparable part of this radical questioning of the existing Holy Alliance is the sensuality and this-worldliness inherent in ancient mythology. Sensuality is neither suppressed, spurned nor relegated to an afterlife.
Arising from his own experience of the national liberation movement in Italy, Byron’s point of view has clearly matured in “Marino Faliero” (1820). While the isolated, brooding hero was still at the center of “Manfred,” now a repressive power opposes the people. As the Doge Marino Faliero joins the people in their struggle, Byron plays out his own conflict here with regard to alliances. The fact that he considers alliances at all and moves away from an individual struggle is a significant change. From the outsider position of Manfred, Byron now moves in a direction in which the alliance is conceived as a struggle against his own class. The strength of the movement lies in the alliance:
Should one survive, He would be dangerous as the whole; it is not Their number, be it tens or thousands, but The spirit of this Aristocracy Which must be rooted out; and if there were A single shoot of the old tree in life, ’Twould fasten in the soil, and spring again To gloomy verdure and to bitter fruit. Bertram, we must be firm!
The character of Israel Bertuccio has the most developed political awareness. He involves Marino Faliero in the conspiracy, plans, and leads its course. The Rebel Bertuccio comes from the people and embodies their strengths. He fights selflessly for the freedom of Venice and its people. Byron has come to recognize that the leaders of such a liberation movement can, perhaps even must, come from the people. It is Faliero who joins the people and recognizes their leadership role, and not the other way around.
In his new cantos of “Don Juan” Byron’s stories gain social significance, the dialectical relationship between the individual hero and the historical process emerge, and growing trust in the actions of the masses is felt:
50 But never mind;—“God save the king!” and kings! For if he don’t, I doubt if men will longer— I think I hear a little bird, who sings The people by and by will be the stronger: …—and the mob At last fall sick of imitating Job.
51 At first it grumbles, then it swears, and then, Like David, flings smooth pebbles ’gainst a giant; At last it takes to weapons such as men Snatch when despair makes human hearts less pliant. Then comes “‘he tug of war;”—’twill come again, I rather doubt; and I would fain say “fie on ’t,” If I had not perceived that revolution Alone can save the earth from hell’s pollution.
For all that, Byron ultimately leaves private property—the basis of capital—untouched. He sees liberal state reform as the way to improve society and create more humane living conditions for the population. However, in one of his last poems, “The Age of Bronze” (1823), it is expressed that the greed for profit of the large landowners played a devastating role in politics and especially in the Napoleonic Wars:
Behold these inglorious Cincinnati swarm, Peasants of war, dictators of the court; Their ploughshare was the sword in the hands of hirelings, Their fields fertilised with the blood of other lands; Safe in their barns, these Sabine farmers sent Their brothers to battle—why, for rent! Year after year they voted for cent. after cent. Blood, sweat and tears devoured millions—why?—For the rent! They roared, they dined, they drank, they swore To die for England—then why live?—For the rent!
Peace has made a general malcontent Of these honoured patriots; the war was torn! Their love of country, millions, all misspent, How to reconcile? By reconciling rent! And will they not repay the borrowed treasures? No: down with everything, and up with the rent! Their happiness, their unhappiness, their health, their wealth, their joy or dissatisfaction, Being, purpose, goal, religion—rent—rent—rent!
In January 1824, Byron traveled to Greece, where he planned to take part in the struggle for liberation from the Ottoman Empire. He died of a “fever” in Missolonghi on April 19 before this could happen. Nevertheless, he became a national hero in Greece, which he still is to this day. His name—pronounced Veeron in Greek—is a popular name for boys; even an entire district of Athens (Vyronas, Βύρωνας, older: Vyron Βύρων) is named after him.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
Dr. Jenny Farrell is a lecturer and writer living in Galway, Ireland. Her main fields of interest are Irish and English poetry and the work of William Shakespeare. She is an associate editor of Culture Matters and also writes for Socialist Voice, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Ireland.
Anybody who has come across the work of independent scholar and critic Paul O’Brien knows that his interest lies in the radical tradition of literature and history. He came to my attention with his book Shelly and Revolutionary Ireland (2002). Now, O’Brien has published an impressive volume on Seán O’Casey.
He is perhaps the first Irish author to look comprehensively at the dramatist in political and historical terms, firmly setting the plays into this context from a left-wing perspective. An extensive bibliography reveals the formidable amount of specialist reading that informs this study.
It is accessibly written and sheds light on details of working-class Dublin and international history. An interest in one of Ireland’s great playwrights, a keenness in discovering more about his plays and times is all that is needed to enjoy the book. While the study is an important one for O’Casey scholars to be aware of, it is refreshingly equally directed at readers beyond academia.
O’Brien’s book is not a biography, nor is the book, as its author puts it: “an exclusive critical or literary analysis of his work, but an exploration of the interplay between the political and historical context of O’Casey’s life and its representation in his drama and prose and the way O’Casey negotiated the interplay between politics and aesthetics.”
O’Brien’s interest in Irish labor history is evident in his informative account of late 19th and early 20th century Dublin working-class life and events, following O’Casey’s development and the context from which arose his plays. Into this fall the writer’s involvement with the Irish language and nationalist movement.
O’Casey joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1905 and was later instrumental in the establishment of the Irish Citizen Army, which he left before the 1916 Rising. As O’Brien points out, O’Casey’s defining experience had been the Great Lockout of 1913, and much space is rightly devoted to his trade union activism and to Jim Larkin, the towering organizer of the 1913 Great Lockout.
Less space is spared for the fellow leader of the Lockout, the Marxist James Connolly, with whom O’Casey broke. O’Brien sheds some light on this disagreement, focusing on O’Casey’s position, who prioritized the class struggle above the struggle for national liberation, which required an alliance with the class enemy.
Here, it could have been useful to outline Connolly’s stance of an anti-imperialist alliance in a little more detail for balance. Where O’Casey shows part of the truth as he sees it, the reader would benefit from understanding the full picture from a left-wing point of view.
This breach was significant in terms of the position O’Casey took in relation to the Easter Rising and subsequently, informing his three early Dublin plays, which each examine momentous events concerned with the struggle for Irish independence.
It might have been helpful for readers not especially conversant with the specific details of the Rising, if O’Brien had made clearer that O’Casey did not accurately reflect the degree of working-class involvement in 1916.
A significant proportion of the forces of both the Irish Citizens Army (ICA) and the Volunteers were working-class people, who identified with and fought for the vision of the Easter Proclamation of a democratic Republic: “We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible.”
O’Brien’s extensive reading and knowledge of drama and the arts is reflected throughout the book and kindles reader interest in the development of working-class drama. This information is very welcome and enriching in a book about O’Casey, an aspect that is rarely included in O’Casey criticism, and essential to illuminating the context from which grew the first working-class dramatist of international standing, writing in English.
The chapter entitled “The New Drama” provides much detail and a sense of the times which produced this drama as well as the importance attached to cultural expression and playwriting by the revolutionary working class.
The author’s refreshingly wide awareness of European Theatre is evident in his presentation of O’Casey in the context of the left-wing European playwrights of the 1920s and ’30s—Brecht, and Toller, but also Denis Johnston in Britain and the wave of expressionism that characterized the era.
O’Brien is similarly well versed in the history of the Abbey and O’Casey’s struggle for his plays to be performed there, his relationship with Yeats, Augusta Gregory, as well as his final resignation and departure for England when The Silver Tassie was rejected.
While O’Brien devotes most space to discussions of the Dublin tragedies, he is cognizant of O’Casey’s later plays and brings them into the study, setting each in its time, introducing and discussing them in terms of the writer’s outlook.
O’Casey’s canon beyond the Dublin trilogy is little known in Ireland and the anglophone world; his fantastic mature plays have rarely if ever been performed here. This is in contrast to the socialist countries, where O’Casey was a standard part of the repertoire and known mainly for his later work.
In the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), O’Casey was one of the most frequently staged Western dramatists. O’Brien creates an interest in these later plays and presents their artistic as well as political merit.
Seán O’Casey, writing at almost 80, affirmed “I am still a Republican, a Communist, and, in a way, a member of the Gaelic League.” O’Brien relates that O’Casey had been approached by the Irish Workers’ League to support the future general secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland, Michael O’Riordan, in the May 1951 elections.
Although O’Casey replied saying his endorsement would damage O’Riordan’s chances, and that he would instead donate towards the fund, his affirmation of O’Riordan in the same letter was used in the election leaflet. Robert Lowery states: “His ardent enthusiasm and life-long adulation for the USSR, which he considered one of the world’s greatest human experiments in creating a society of a new type, deserves primacy in evaluating his socialist legacy.”
O’Brien states his purpose is to concentrate “on a political reading of O’Casey on his terms”, and he does this for large sections of the book. He departs from this approach when discussing the dramatist’s position as a lifelong supporter of the communist movement and the Soviet Union, where his own position takes precedence over O’Casey’s. When this context arises, O’Casey is associated exclusively with the term Stalinism and any differences with the Communist Party of Great Britain are highlighted and praised.
Seán O’Casey: Political Activist and Writer is an interesting, informative, and enjoyable read and a valuable addition to the canon of O’Casey commentary. It is far more than a book of academic criticism, although it is that, too.
Seán O’Casey: Political Activist and Writer
By Paul O’Brien
Cork University Press, 2023
388 pages, €39.00
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
Dr. Jenny Farrell is a lecturer and writer living in Galway, Ireland. Her main fields of interest are Irish and English poetry and the work of William Shakespeare. She is an associate editor of Culture Matters and also writes for Socialist Voice, the newspaper of the Communist Party of Ireland.
It has become widely understood that there will now be a renewed stationing of U.S. nuclear weapons on British soil.
There are multiple reasons for opposing this plan, not least on the grounds of democracy. But the most important reason is that at a time of increased conflict in Europe, stationing nuclear weapons in Britain and other European countries makes us more vulnerable to attack, not less.
How this U.S. decision came to light is itself instructive about the entire process. It was revealed by scientists and campaigners and has only recently been aired in the British press.
In effect, the U.S. Congress has been indirectly informed of the decision because of the federal government’s budget requests for “surety dormitories,” which are understood to mean accommodation for services personnel tasked with protecting nuclear weapons.
But for a government that has made such a hue and cry about the need to protect Britain’s sovereignty, no such information has been provided to the British Parliament.
The U.K. government has no plans to offer a debate on the issue, and it is highly likely that their stock response to all inquiries is that it is not their policy to comment on matters of national security.
But we do not need commentary. We need accountability.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak came to office, unelected, promising both greater transparency and accountability. There could hardly be a more serious matter on which both were needed.
Yet the implementation of U.S. policy in this sphere has been shrouded in British secrecy. It is a complete indictment of this government that the U.S. Congress knows more about the deployment of nuclear missiles here than the British Parliament.
The intention is to locate the new nuclear weapons at Lakenheath in Suffolk. Like many others, it is labeled as a [U.K.] Royal Air Force base but is in fact wholly controlled and run by U.S. military personnel and under its command. For all intents and purposes, it is a U.S. Air Force base.
This means the base is effectively a part of the U.S. military and nuclear network, not a British one.
If there are no objections raised, it will mean that Britain is once again a forward nuclear base for the U.S. in Europe. It also means that Britain becomes a crucial target in any U.S. conflict in which nuclear weapons are used, or even threatened. It cannot possibly add to our safety.
All of this is taking place at a time of the most sustained fighting in Europe since the end of the Second World War.
Lakenheath will be home to a new, laser-guided nuclear bomb, along with bases in five other European countries. This is a recipe for escalation of current and future conflicts, with potentially disastrous consequences.
When Vladimir Putin announced the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus, the justification he offered was the existing presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe. Clearly, the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in a number of European countries risks further escalation of weaponry and of tensions on both sides.
The traditional claims that nuclear weapons aid our security, that they are somehow a “nuclear umbrella,” have little merit. Nuclear weapons are wholly offensive weapons.
The claims that they are somehow a deterrent to wars in Europe and many other parts of the world are equally specious. If the deterrent argument were really valid, then logically we should advocate their adoption by all countries. It is clearly nonsense.
Instead, the nuclear powers and others struggle to limit the greater deployment of nukes, and Britain among others is a signatory to nuclear non-proliferation treaties.
If “rogue states” should not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons and all nuclear weapons powers should reduce them, which Britain has agreed to, how is it justifiable to increase U.S. nukes here?
This is from a country which has had Donald Trump as president and may have him once again.
The deployment clearly undermines our safety. It does not add to it. This underpinned the finding of a very recent YouGov poll at the end of August. Just 23% of voters support the deployment, and 59% oppose it.
This overwhelming popular opposition to U.S. nukes in Britain simply reinforces how undemocratic the decision-making process has been.
Either the government and its supporters have completely ignored public opinion on this vital matter, or the U.S. has simply dictated its decision to its European allies. Perhaps it is some combination of the two.
In any event, the British public should be informed of these plans and offered the obvious alternative.
That alternative is the progressive de-nuclearization of British military and foreign policy. The overwhelming majority of countries in the world do not have nuclear weapons. Yet the idea that they are more at risk than this country is plainly ridiculous. Their populations are safer without them.
I know there are many in the labor movement who simply see jobs and pay when weapons deployment or manufacturing are considered. But it was that type of short-term thinking that ultimately led to the first world war.
Deploying these weapons will not create jobs in this country. Instead, they make us all much more vulnerable.
In any case, activists with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and others have shown on many occasions that money wasted on weaponry is the least jobs-rich type of investment of all. The same money could be far better spent in other areas, where there are also social benefits, such as health, education, housing, or infrastructure and transport.
CND and others have already begun to campaign against this deployment. They deserve to be joined by many more, especially in the labor movement.
The decision to deploy U.S. nuclear weapons is a very dangerous one. It seems most likely that it was made in the U.S. It has certainly only been disclosed there.
New nuclear weapons at Lakenheath risk further escalation of threat and countermeasure, when we are already deeply involved in war in Europe.
The British government has not been straight with the British people. These types of decisions are of the utmost seriousness. Yet ministers want to hide behind a cloak of secrecy.
The reason for secrecy is that this decision benefits the U.S. while putting people in this country at greater risk. It is no surprise that it is extremely unpopular with the British people. We should aim to turn that opposition into real campaigning action, to stop the U.S. nukes.
We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!
Diane Abbott is an independent Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington in the U.K. Elected in 1987, she was the first Black woman in the British parliament.
HOUSANDS of people across Britain will mark International Workers’ Day tomorrow with marches, rallies and strike action by NHS nurses.
In a bank holiday weekend of celebrations, workers took to the streets in traditional May Day events.
And tonight, tens of thousands of nurses will launch their latest strike action over pay and against the government’s wrecking of the NHS.
Members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will walk out at 8pm, and is expected to prompt widespread disruption.
The strike was initially planned to continue on Tuesday, but the six-month mandate to strike given in the union’s previous ballot expires at midnight tomorrow night under Tory anti-strike laws.
RCN general secretary Pat Cullen said: “The government wants to bring NHS strike action to a close this coming week but with several big unions — and nursing as the largest part of the NHS workforce — still in dispute, it has to do better.
“Only negotiations can resolve this and I urge ministers to reopen formal discussions with the College over pay specifically.
“Nursing staff are looking for a fair settlement that shows the government values and understands their profession.
“We appear a long way from that currently but I remind ministers it is entirely in their gift.”
Nurses are expected to take part in May Day celebrations tomorrow in addition to staffing picket lines.
They were among more than 200 trade unionists who marched and rallied in Leeds trades union council’s 133rd May Day celebration on Saturday.
Leeds TUC president Jane Aitchison told the rally: “In 1890 Leeds and London held their first May Day marches and rallies.
“Here thousands gathered to demand an eight-hour day — because they were having to work harder and for longer hours to make ends meet.
“It should [sound familiar] because the Tories say if you want more money, you’ll just have to work harder.
“This is where they want to turn the clock back to: a time before trade unions, a time without rights, a time when people were super exploited for the profit of a few.”
She said that last year five million workers in the UK took on second jobs to make ends meet.
Following the march, Leeds Labour MP Richard Burgon said: “International Workers’ Day is a celebration of our struggles as a class, the 99 per cent who create the wealth of this country and keep our services running.
“I was proud to march through Leeds alongside nurses, doctors, rail workers, university teachers, postal workers and Civil Service workers.
“It is important we show solidarity with all workers fighting for fair pay. And all workers deserve to be treated with respect.
“On May Day we look forward to maintaining the fight in the year ahead.”
Workers involved in strike action were greeted loudly.
In Glasgow, an estimated 1,500 workers marched from George Square to rally in Queen’s Park Arena after bringing forward the traditional Sunday march to Saturday due to the Celtics v Rangers game.
The walk to the rally was led by the traditional pipe band and workers from PCS, a union currently waging 14 strikes in government agencies around the country as it battles government pay cuts.
At the Queen’s Park bandstand, the crowd gathered to hear speeches from workers in struggle across the movement, including Liz McGachey and Cheral Govind of the PCS, RMT president Alex Gordon and Pinar Aksu of the Maryhill Integration Network.
The bandstand holds a historic place in Glasgow workers’ history as the spot where, in 1960, singer, actor, activist, and socialist Paul Robeson addressed and sung to the crowds.
On the 125th anniversary of his birth local band, The Tenementals, closed the rally with songs Mr Robeson had performed on that same stage in his honour.
In Manchester today (SUN), speakers included Emma Runswick, deputy chair of doctors’ union the British Medical Association and striking workers from the University and College Union, teachers’ union NEU, Civil Service union PCS and rail union RMT.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF MAINE 