From time to time it is good to remind ourselves of the reasons we campaign against nuclear weapons so I reprint below an article from Scottish CND

In 1945 two nuclear weapons destroyed, in seconds, the Japanese towns of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then the capacity for nuclear destruction has increased dramatically.

· Between them, Britain, the US, France, Russia and China now possess 36,000 nuclear weapons - enough to destroy the world many times over.

· Other states, such as Israel, India and Pakistan, now possess nuclear weapons.

· The US is planning a Ballistic Missile Defence system ('Son of Star Wars') against missile attack. The British Government supports the plan but Russia and China are opposed and fear a new arms race.

· The British Trident system was originally designed to destroy Russia. Each sub carries inter-continental missiles armed with nuclear warheads with a total destructive capacity greater than 1000 Hiroshima bombs.

CND exists to oppose these threats to peace. Our reasons are

· Moral: nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction whose use would kill millions of innocent citizens.

· Legal: nukes violate international law; the International Court of Justice has ruled that nuclear weapons are illegal in any conceivable circumstances.

· Economic: nuclear weapons are an enormous drain on the world's economic resources; the British Trident system alone costs about £1.5 billion per year. Now in the the middle of the worst economic crisis in decades the Government is planning to send £76 billion on replacing Britain's Trudent nuclear weapons system.

· Military: many senior military figures from around the world have condemned nuclear weapons as having no military value; it is no longer clear what military purpose a system like Trident could serve.

· Environmental: nuclear testing has already irrevocably damaged the environment in various parts of the world, and the manufacture and maintenance of nuclear weapons carries the risk of further pollution.

· Religious: the possession and potential use of weapons of mass destruction are incompatible with the religious beliefs of most of the world's faiths.