PIC 1: Peter Tatchell addresses the crowd with Jeremy Corbyn looking on, far right
PIC 2: Hetty Bower
PIC 3: Bruce Kent
PIC 4: Tony Benn

Published: 8 August, 2013
by TOM FOOT

THE 107-year-old anti-war campaigner Hetty Bower had a strong and simple message at the annual Hiroshima Day commemoration: “May peace prevail throughout our world”.

Ms Bower was among a crowd of 250 people who came to Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, on Tuesday, 68 years after an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city.

Nobu Onu, a member of Japanese Against Nuclear UK, spoke about the horrors of the nuclear attack and lingering radiation there.

He said: “When we hear about the threat of nuclear bombs, we tend to think just about its heat and blast. Its heat was enormous – 500 metres away, it was 6,000 degrees centigrade. Everything human evaporated instantly. It was only the shadow on the stones that remained.”

Bruce Kent, co-founder of CND, urged anti-war and nuclear weapons campaigners to step-up the fight against the £100billion Trident missile renewal programme before the next general election.

He said: “We could win this. We have a target, the election is coming, and it’s time for sprinting – it is not time for the long distance. The issue of abandoning Trident is a vote winner.”

In a reading from the Bible, human rights activist Peter Tatchell said: “There were voices and thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake. There followed hail and fire mingled with blood. All the green grass was burnt up. A great mountain fire was cast into the sea. A third part of all the creatures in the sea died.”

He added: “I don’t often read from the Bible, but I thought was a very apposite reflection on consequences of a global nuclear confrontation. We cannot speak with moral credibility against other countries, if we maintain our weapons of mass destruction.”

Islington Labour MP and event compere Jeremy Corbyn joined Green leader Natalie Bennett, who lives in Somers Town, in speaking out against Trident.

Ms Bennett said: “Under what circumstances can you imagine a sane British prime minister firing a nuclear weapon? There are none. Let’s pull all our submarines out of the sea, and get rid of all nuclear weapons.”

A 90-year-old peace activist Walter Wolfgang said: “We have to get the Labour Party onside.

“The price is high, we cannot solve our economic problems if we go on with this expenditure. That makes it possible to push for nuclear disarmament. Go to it.”

Another veteran campaigner, Tony Benn, was at the event but chose not to make a speech.

There was singing of anti-war songs like Never Again the A-Bomb and the haunting Crow on the Cradle by Jim Radford.

Celia Mitchell read two poems by her late husband, the Highgate poet Adrian Mitchell. She said: “Make trouble, make beauty, make peace / And there’s one good thing about a cow pat, it dries / And there’s one good thing about capitalism, it dies.”

The annual event was followed by a picnic in the sunshine.