Tag: United Kingdom

Hiroshima Atomic Victims Remembered – 2014

Hiroshima Atomic Victims Remembered: Ten years ago today on Wednesday 6th August 2014 I was in Tavistock Square for a ceremony close to the Hiroshima Cherry Tree on the 69th anniversary of the first use of an atomic bomb remembering the victims past and present of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Hiroshima Atomic Victims Remembered

I hope to be there again today, as I have been in most recent years. The roughly hour-long ceremony organised by London CND begins at noon and follows more or less the same pattern each year. Everyone is welcome to attend and if you missed it this year you can put a reminder in your diary for next. And if you are not in London, there are other events in other towns and cities across the world – and some also in other parts of London.

Hiroshima Atomic Victims Remembered

The dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki marked the beginning of a new age where the USA showed it had the power to unleash unprecedented levels of death and destruction. Some other nations were quick to develop their own atomic weapons, including our own and of course the USSR, and all developed bombs of much greater power than the two which devastated the Japanese cities.

Hiroshima Atomic Victims Remembered

Currently nine countries have nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel. When the USSR was split up, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine transferred the nuclear weapons on their territory to Russia, but apart from this only one country, South Africa has actually given them up.

Hiroshima Atomic Victims Remembered

Wikipedia quotes the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute as estimating in 2023 that the nuclear weapons states held a total of 12,119 total nuclear warheads. Far more than would be needed to destroy the planet, or at least human life on it.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was adopted by the UN in 2017 and came into force in 2021. By January 2024 of the 197 states recognised by the UN, 97 countries had signed the treaty although 27 had still to ratify their signatures. None of the states which hold nuclear weapons have signed.

In Tavistock Square there were songs, speeches, prayers and performances introduced by Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn and messages from Hiroshima and Nagasaki were read.

As well as remembering the many victims of the bombs we also were reminded of peace campaigner Hetty Bower, who became a pacifist during the First World War and attended many of these ceremonies and other peace events and had died earlier this year.

The event closed with two minutes of silence for the victims of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all victims of war, during which people came up to lay flowers and wreaths at the foot of the Hiroshima cherry tree.

You can read more about the event – and see more pictures on My London Diary at Hiroshima Atomic Victims Remembered.

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Inauguration Day

Trafalgar Square, 20/1/2017

Four years ago, on 20 Jan 2017, London was protesting against another inauguration, that of Donald Trump. Commenting on those protesting outside the US Embassy – still then in Grosvenor Square I wrote:

All were appalled at the thought of a president who is a climate change denier, has a long history of racist and Islamophobic outbursts, has boasted of sexually assaulting women and has downplayed the severity of sexual violence.

Crowds protest Trump’s Inauguration

The four years that followed have confirmed most of our worst fears and in some ways gone further than we imagined, for example with disastrous polices in the Middle East and in particular over Israel and Palestine.

There will not be significant protests in London today, and even if police were not enforcing Covid restrictions particularly rigorously against protests I don’t think there would have been. We may not have any particularly high hopes for Biden and Harris, but at least they are almost certain to be better than Trump.

At least the US seems certain to re-engage with climate change – although probably still intent on keeping the US as the world’s largest polluter and allowing US companies to plunder the world for resources. And though it’s good to have a slightly saner finger close to that nuclear button it seems unlikely that the US will stop supporting corrupt fiefdoms in the Middle East and elsewhere and desist from supporting coups against popular governments that attempt to regain control over their own resources in South America and elsewhere.

Though I do hope for some positive surprises in the first hundred days, and there have certainly been rumours of some. Perhaps we will see the cancellation of some of the more environmentally damaging projects given the go-ahead by Trump. Almost certainly there will be fewer racist rants and tweets and there could even be some real progress on civil rights.

But while we may have some hopes for the United States of America, the future for our United Kingdom remains depressing. Suffering under the burden of Brexit and Covid, with a government that continually proves itself both corrupt and inept and an opposition which is ineffectual and sycophantic – and currently outclassed, outgunned and outplayed by a young footballer.

And that ‘United’ is less and less than ever appropriate; Brexit divided the country, and most of us now realise it was a terrible mistake – even increasingly more of the 34% who voted for it. It has created a border between the mainland and Northern Ireland and exacerbated the gap between England and Scotland. Even Wales seems more distant, though it has protected our relationships with those tax havens that make us possibly the most corrupt country in the world.

There is one small glimmer of hope, apart from the vaccinations that may just eventually allow us to gain some accommodation if not exactly control over Covid. Last Sunday saw the inauguration of the Project for Peace and Justice, founded by Jeremy Corbyn, an international campaign which describes itself as “a hub for discussion and action, building solidarity and hope for a more decent world.”

F**k Trump
Crowds protest Trump’s Inauguration

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.