Councillor Louie Hamblett has put forward a motion in his capacity as the peace champion for Shaw and Crompton Parish Council in conjunction with The Oldham Pledge to Peace Forum, for the Parish council to declare its support for the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), a historic international treaty which once ratified will result in the complete prohibition of developing, testing and using nuclear weapons.
Councillor Hamblett said: “Only nine countries have nuclear weapons. Many countries could make nuclear weapons but have as of yet decided not to do so.”
He continued, “As it is written in The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons booklet; ‘a hundred and ninety-one countries have joined the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which prohibits the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom have willingly accepted a legal obligation to negotiate disarmament in exchange for nearly all other countries accepting a legal obligation never to acquire nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons do not keep anyone safe; they threaten massive, indiscriminate harm to millions of people’.”
Councillor Joseph Beeston added: “Each country with nuclear weapons should give them up because of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of their use; from this perspective the question of whether other countries have nuclear weapons is irrelevant. We should all aspire to the common goal of complete denuclearisation.”
“We hope that council can support and become a signatory.”