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A massive $1 trillion is being spent to maintain and modernize the nuclear arsenals of nine countries over the next 10 years. A trillion dollars is a difficult sum of money to imagine. The figure is a 1 with 12 zeros after it. To draw attention to this phenomenal spending on nuclear weapons, a group or people from different nations are counting out 1 trillion dollars in New York. It has taken them 7 days and 7 nights (completing on 30 October) counting continuously at a rate of $100 million per minute using 1 million dollar notes.

 

Another way to appreciate the scale of $1 trillion is to contextualise it with respect to other government spending priorities.  The planned global spending on nuclear weapons is twice that of the global spending on the whole of the work of the United Nations including its development projects and peace-making operations.[1]  Or put another way the spending on nuclear weapons is four to five times the total amount that 25 low income countries can afford to spend on their education of children and young adults.[2]  Pope Francis aptly describes the spending on nuclear weapons as “theft from the poor”.  Investment in ensuring secure access to water and health care, and in a literate and well-educated public, would be a much surer way to build long-term security.

The planned investment in new nuclear weapons by nine nuclear armed states is deeply unhelpful in another way. In the international community, there is a crisis of confidence around the repeated promises of the US, Russia, China, France and the UK.  Since 1995, these states have been insisting that they will decrease the prominence of nuclear weapons in their national security strategies and reduce their nuclear arsenals.[3] But $1 trillion of planned spending tells a different story. The UK is building new Dreadnought nuclear weapons submarines at a cost of £41 billion with an in-service life to at least 2065. Yet the UK Government refuses to state what would be done with these purpose-built submarines if, or when, we are successful in negotiating disarmament.  The UK government is knowingly painting itself into a corner.  There has been no attempt to clearly articulate or cost out a ‘Plan B’.  This fundamentally undermines the government’s promise made over and over again to work to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.  The planned spending of billions on new nuclear warheads and submarines by nuclear weapons states risks collapsing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that has been an effective piece of arms control since 1968.

A significant part of the $1 trillion will be allocated to major industrial and defence contractors such as Serco plc in the UK. As well as emptying bins and running the Caledonian Sleeper Service from Edinburgh to London, Serco is part of a consortium that is designing new nuclear warheads (worth a total £1 billion in revenue per year) at Aldermaston, Berkshire. The international ‘Move the Money’ campaign highlights the need for us all to play a part in tackling the investment in nuclear weapons.  Our pensions and savings must not prop up companies that are investing in nuclear weapons projects. 

The Baptist Union, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church have joined a multi-faith initiative to research into the investment of UK banks and pension funds in nuclear weapons producing companies. The findings will be published shortly. Your help in writing to banks and pension funds that handle your money will be vital. We want to ensure that these financial institutions do not finance the nuclear weapons industry.  We will launch a campaign in the coming weeks so watch this space! We may not all be able to get to London or New York for the ‘Count the Money’ demonstrations but we do have the opportunity to make our money count.

 

[1] The total of all regular and voluntary contributions to all the varied aspects of the work of the UN, totals about $48 billion per year.
[2] UNESCO – https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/sites/gem-report/files/11%20-%20Education%20spending.pdf
[3] For example a statement from the meeting of the P5 in Beijing in 2019 https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/t1634793.shtml

 

Originally published on the JPIT website on 29th October to find out more about The Joint Public Issues Team (JPIT) see here http://www.jointpublicissues.org.uk/about-us/

Some news items grab your attention. For me it was a recent two-part exposé on the radio station LBC. They investigated a people smuggler in Dunkirk offering places on a dinghy crossing the Channel for around £7000. He claimed the passages were assisted by French authorities. In the second part, the reporter and her team confronted the smuggler in a pizza restaurant, then followed him through a shopping centre as he attempted to flee.

For me, the ‘exposé’ was remarkable for being unremarkable. Such situations are commonplace to those of us who have spent time researching or working on matters relating to asylum, migration, and the current movement of people. Last year when, to much media flurry, a few dinghies crossed the Channel around Christmas and there was an onslaught of government speeches about “security”, I could only think, “Why are you surprised?”

So many dinghy crossings have been attempted in the Mediterranean over recent years and by comparison, the distance involved crossing the Channel is negligible. Of course Channel crossings would be tried.

The missing part of the LBC story is what is truly shocking and should be told. In the last year a sports hall in Dunkirk became an indoor shelter for refugees in northern France. When I was last there leading our pilot Encounter: Calais project, we heard that many people had been allowed into the gym due to the cold weather. It remained open, until around 1000 people were sheltering there or near-by. This was done (against the trend of the Macron government) with the support of Damien Carême, the Mayor of Grandé-Synthe. However, Mr Carême’s election as an MEP appears to have left a vacuum in the area, and so in recent weeks there has been a situation similar to the demolition of ‘the jungle’ in Calais in 2016.

As after the ‘jungle’ demolition, there have been mass evictions by bus to reception centres across France. A simultaneous operation targeted settlements in Calais. Those of us who witnessed the 2016 aftermath believe the results will be the same: support infrastructure destroyed, families broken up; the most vulnerable going missing - but business as usual for the politicians.

These events happened around the World Day of Migrants and Refugees. My heart is sore, because in his letter for this World Day, Pope Francis reminded the Church that it is not just about migrants, but ourselves: ‘…that the presence of migrants invites us to rediscover the essentials of our Christian existence, and our humanity that we risk losing in prosperous societies’.

Borders and security will be increasingly politicised in the coming months, and more lives will be risked and doubtless lost in the English Channel. I feel we are neglecting our responsibility to those who suffer as a result of policies conducted in our name.

One of the videos I use when delivering our ‘Take a walk in their shoes’ workshop is a poem, read over footage of the old Calais ‘jungle’. There is a line that hits me every time:

“So people won’t you listen? Governments won’t you hear? There’s a humanitarian crisis, and it’s happening far too near.”

 

Both parts of the original LBC report into smuggling can be found at