Charities step up disarmament campaign ahead of Trident vote

Catholics have been urged to lobby their MPs ahead of Monday’s parliamentary vote on renewing the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system, writes Rose Gamble. Pax Christi, the international Catholic movement for peace, has been mobilising its members to speak out against the planned replacement of Trident before the vote on 18 July.

Hundreds of its members were due to join a mass Stop Trident lobby of MPs outside Parliament on Wednesday. Pax Christi has also asked its members to write to their MP and request a public meeting. The Network of Christian Peace Organisations (NCPO) is due to hold an ecumenical prayer service on Wednesday, in the Dick Sheppard Chapel at St Martin-in-the-Fields to encourage attendees to pray before the event.  

Pax Christi’s general secretary, Pat Gaffney, said she believed over three quarters of the members of the House of Commons will be lobbied by constituents as a result of their work and that of other charities. In recent weeks the NCPO has distributed between 6,000 and 7,000 copies of a briefing document on Trident.

“We know our members are deeply concerned and disturbed about the possible replacement of Trident,” said Ms Gaffney. Nuclear disarmament campaigner Bruce Kent said he did not believe Trident was an effective deterrent. “They [nuclear weapons] give no security against terrorists whatsoever,” he added.

He praised Pope Francis, who told the 2015 Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons that weapons of mass destruction are not the way to peace. However, he was “frankly disappointed” at the leadership of the Church in England and Wales which, at the time of going to press, had not issued a statement on the Trident vote.