The Executive Committee of the Young Communist League has issued the following statement marking the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Today marks the 75th Anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese City of Hiroshima, which would be followed three days later by the destruction of Nagasaki. These attacks by the United States, the only combat use of nuclear weapons in human history, destroyed entire cities and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the blink of an eye. In the aftermath hundreds of thousands would be affected by cancer and birth defects.
These events are a stark reminder to the youth of today of the evil and destructive potential of nuclear weapons. With each anniversary we become more distant from these horrific events, but we can never forget their fundamental lesson: we can never again allow the use of nuclear weapons on our planet.
Today humanity remains on the precipice. Nuclear annihilation whether by a deliberate act of war or by accident remains an ever present threat.
The United States and its allies including Britain continue to amass, at great cost, increasingly destructive and sophisticated weapons. They are gearing up for a new Cold War against Putin’s Russia and to target China’s peaceful development.
The huge scale of destruction seen just this week in Beirut, Lebanon, represents a drop in the ocean compared to the firepower available to NATO countries and their nuclear arsenal.
Our own ruling class in Britain are squandering hundreds of billions replacing the Trident nuclear weapons system – a system which can’t actually be used without US permission. This at a time when our NHS is starved of funds and 1 in 4 children in Britain grow up in poverty.
Working people have nothing to gain from nuclear weapons or a new Cold War. Only waste and the risk of annihilation.
Britain’s ruling class and Boris Johnson’s Tory Government are determined to keep the country slavishly chained to NATO and the whims of US imperialism. The Labour Party too remain openly committed to nuclear weapons and membership of NATO. Only the Communist Party and the YCL stand as an unequivocal and principled force for peace, nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from NATO.
Communists call for a foreign policy which is based on peace, cooperation and international development, not war and extortion.
Only unity between working people in Britain and around the world can win the fight for peace and nuclear disarmament.
We should have no hand in nuclear stockpiling and imperialist aggression. Too much is at stake.
For peace and nuclear disarmament!
No to NATO war and imperialism!
Join the struggle for lasting peace!
Executive Committee
Young Communist League
6 August 2020
London, Britain
