Report From CND Conference

Oct 11, 2009 by Joel    No Comments    Posted under: Span That World

Hey there!

It’s your friendly neighbourhood campaigns rep here, Joel.

I’ve spent the weekend at CND conference in London, my first. It was bloody marverlous. I thought I would fill you all in (particularly as ‘No Nuclear Future’ is still one of our campaigns, as I’m sure you know).

So let’s work backwards.

Right now I’m sat on a train back from King’s cross listening to J5 and feeling the joyous lull of 3 post-AGM pints of real ale slosh around my stomach. I blame any gramatical errors upon that fact.

Today was the proper AGM part of the conference- a very interesting comparison to DF and Woodies AGMs. Considering that CND have literally thousands of members and some serious strategic policy debates to decide it actually went really quickly. I reckon we could learn some lessons about business from these kids.

The real debates centred around several themes beyond the understandable nuclear weapons / missile defence stuff, a couple of which really surprised me-

1. Focus on local groups. There was a lot of chat about how to support local groups and keep them autonomous, along with how CND could contribute to issues such climate change, ‘conventional’ militarisation, the recession and nuclear power without overstretching in terms of resources and time. A chat to be had in our own ranks methinks?

2. Nuclear Power in general. I was really heartened to see how much this came up, with people very eloquently talking about the links to nuclear weapons quite reguarly, along with the other fatal problem nuclear power has and how to campaign against it as a group with clear public links to disarmament rather than energy security. There was also a lot of talk about how Nuclear Power is a real rallying point for activists from climate change, health, corporate, localisation and nuclear groups and that we should be working together to stop the new generation of reactors getting going.

3. NATO. I was fairly ignorant about NATO before this weekend, let alone CND’s work to expose it as the imperialist, violent, redudant body that it is.

Afganistan and Iraq came up a lot too.

All in all this gave a refreshing picture of CND as an organisation which is no longer just concerned with the specifics of nuclear weapons- moreso with advancing towards a sustainable, green future free from all kinds of shit- whether nuclear; uranium mining, deplted uranium weapons, psycological war based on the possession of nukes, power, warheads, missile defence, wider miliatary structures and so on or wider issues of resource depletion, the erosion of democracy, climate change and alllll that jazz.

One guy that came up a lot was our man Obama, particularly in reference to his recent recieval of the nobel peace prize. Premature?! You know Ghandi got nominated like four times and never got it…

This page has lots of really well put together info on each of these factors-

http://www.cnduk.org/index.php/information/info-sheets/briefings.html

Anyway… that leads us nicely to the first day- the international conference.

This basically meant that CND invited a load of inspiring  speakers from all over the world to come talk about nuclear issues in their neck of the woods.

We had a Minister for Disarmament (imagine that!) from New Zealand, a Peace Activist from Russia, Caroline Lucas Green MEP, campaigners from France, Germany, Israel, Japan, America as well as the UK. Two guys who I found particularly interesting had come from Pakistan and India, places which are seemingly playing out a proxy arms-race between backers from China and the USA respectively.

It inevetably centred around the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty review conference in 2010 and ways on which to seize upon a the growing global movement for abolition of nuclear weapons.

E.G – We felt good about this and this, whilst finding this a bit strange due to the past records of the four guys proposing it.

Generally the mood was one of- WOW! Suddenly this issue we’ve been pushing for years and years is finally being triumphed by people with serious power. How the hell do we make sure they a) stick to their promises? b) go far enough c) make the abolition of nuclear weapons part of a wider trend towards a truly sustainable future in terms of security, climate, water etc.

So yes… now really is an exciting time to be campaigning for a nuclear free future and DFs are part of that. We need to use the skills and information we have learnt over the last year to truly make the most of this once in a generation chance for change. NPT, NATIONAL ELECTION, COPENHAGEN CLIMATE TREATY TALKS, DECISIONS ON NEW GENERATIONS OF NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS, TRIDENT RENEWAL PLANS- they are all soon! They are all linked! They all require a serious mobilisation of dissent, a serious chat about problems and alternatives. We need to get ready for direct action but also work out how to link these issues and communicate them in the best way possible. It’s a challenge, but it’s a huuuuge oppertunity. Are you in?!

Love, and apologies for waffle.

Joel x