The United Nations has confirmed that the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has been ratified by its 50th state party, Honduras, and will therefore enter into international legal force 90 days later, on 22 January. The Treaty bans nuclear weapons production, testing, possession and use, along with other activities that could enable and assist anyone to acquire or use these weapons of mass destruction ever again.
Veterans for Peace UK congratulates Dr Rebecca Johnson, a former Greenham peace activist and first president of the International Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons (ICAN, 2017 Nobel Peace Laureate) on this truly remarkable achievement, exactly 75 years on from the founding of the United Nations and the first uses of nuclear weapons against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In stark contrast, the USA, with 5,800 Nuclear Warheads, and the United Kingdom with 215, did not even participate in the negotiation of the Treaty. Neither intends ever to join the treaty. Both voted against the UN General Assembly resolution in 2016 that established the mandate for nations to negotiate the treaty. Both failed to fulfil legally binding disarmament obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The ratification of the Treaty marks the beginning of the end of the military hegemony of the nuclear powers, as nation after nation asserts its right to live in a world free of the threat of nuclear annihilation. The UK has now to reconsider its outdated nuclear position or risk increasing international isolation as a nuclear pariah.
Veterans for Peace, including men and women from several countries, will march again on 8th November at the Cenotaph under a banner with two words chosen by the generation that fought in the First World War – “NEVER AGAIN”. Our covenant with them, and countless others who followed, demands that our country now ratifies the TPNW.
Veterans for Peace asserts that “War is not the solution to the problems of the 21st h Century”.
David Collins, VfP UK
Veterans For Peace UK 
This ratification is a milestone in the development of a norm against nuclear weapons. Really good to see VFP’s acknowledgement of such a significant event that has been largely ignored in the media. Thank you, VFP.
In a world owned and operated by psychopaths and based on an economic system that percolates power and influence to the few, based on the competition to exhibit and express psychopathic behaviour it seems to me that “regime change” is a prerequisite to nuclear disarmament. But the attribution of odium to declared nuclear armed states such as Britain, India, Pakistan, North Korea and the US and even NONdeclared nuclear armed states such as Israel, warmongers such as Blair and purveyors of weaponry such British Aerospace and Raytheon is a good start. We need a globally committed people movement capable of coercing corporations and governments.
US $ “In God We Trust”, £ stg with monarch as F D- “Defender Of The Faith” These everyday reminders of Our Christian Heritage, Western Civilisation, blah, blah cannot be taken seriously ,can they ? Militarism is a huge growth industry, spending the hopes of the young and distorting history to provide profits for the arms-makers and -dealers. Among ex-service organisations the VfP is practically alone, so far a I know, to challenge the manipulation of “patriotism” which ends up as a defence of mass-murder. Nukes may be the ultimate [for the time being !] but “conventional” weaponry is increasingy ghastly. ICAN and CND have done a great job .