ANTI-NUCLEAR activists chained themselves outside Parliament today to demand the government signs a treaty to ban destructive weapons and disarm Trident.

During Prime Minister’s Questions, campaigners from across Britain echoed the women’s suffrage movement from 100 years ago, calling on Britain to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The activists from campaign group Trident Ploughshares chained themselves along 13 sections of wrought iron fence stretching from Big Ben to Parliament Square and hung banners reading “Denuclearise the World” and “Trident Terrorises.”

Activist Brian Larkin said the Trump-Kim summit should have been a “wake-up call.”

He added: “Trump and Kim have agreed to ‘denuclearise’ the Korean Peninsula, but Britain, the US and the other nuclear powers can’t expect Kim to give up his nuclear weapons while we keep ours.”

Britain had, along with other nuclear weapons states, promised negotiations to disarm their weapons nearly 50 years ago.

Campaigner Sylvia Boyes said: “We’ve come from all parts of the UK to call on the government to live up to its claims that it supports multilateral nuclear disarmament and sign the treaty.

“For 20 years we have been saying that nuclear weapons are illegal because of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that their use would mean.

“It’s just ridiculous that Britain won’t sign this treaty. It’s sheer hypocrisy.”

TPNW was agreed at the UN last year by 122 countries who took part in drafting it. It has been signed by 59 countries and ratified by 12 out of the 50 countries it needs in order to come into force.

The Tory government boycotted the talks and has encouraged other countries not to support the treaty.

Campaigner Janet Fenton, who had travelled down from Edinburgh, said: “The Scottish government, civil society groups, faith community leaders and most people in Scotland want nuclear disarmament.

“A majority of our MPs voted against Trident replacement in the debate last summer. The government refuses to listen to our elected representatives, so we’ve come to London to remind Theresa May that Scotland totally rejects the UK’s nuclear weapons.”

Current research states that a nuclear war using as few as 100 weapons would disrupt the global climate and agricultural production, putting billions of lives at risk.