Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
Latest editorial
Britain continues to make a mockery of non-proliferation
Ministers and the nuclear regulators are failing to call out flawed legisation, says DAVID LOWRY
[International CND]
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
IN EVIDENCE I submitted last November to the House of Commons committee examining the Nuclear Safeguards Bill, I concluded as follows:
“The UK nuclear regulator is going to be given unprecedented responsibility for policing a diplomatically contentious new arrangement, which will increase suspicion among member states of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) — (for which Britain, as a co-drafter of the treaty text, is one of three depositary states) — which ministers pray-in-aid whenever they discuss the rationale for a UK nuclear safeguards system. However, ministers routinely cherry-pick those parts of the NPT that suit their purposes.
“But the NPT is an integrated diplomatic agreement, with its articles all relevant and related. Cherry-picking is both diplomatically unwise, as it normalises abrogation for other signatory nations, and undermines the very treaty for which the UK is supposed to act as a protective depositary state.
Similar stories
For 80 years, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings have pleaded “never again,” for anyone. But are we listening, asks Linda Pentz Gunter
VIJAY PRASHAD on why the US attack on Iran was illegal and why the attack could actually spur nuclear weapons proliferation
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER reports from Parliament Square, where a rally slammed the hypocrisy of allowing Israel to bomb Iran and kill hundreds to stop it developing nuclear weapons — the same weapons Israel secretly has and refuses to explain