Time code

Speaker:

Words

Title

00:00:14

Male V/O

If only,

if only nuclear war was just another kind of war. …

But it isn’t.

if there is a nuclear war, our foes will not be China or America or even each other.

Our foe will be the earth herself.

Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days.

Rivers will turn to poison.

The air will become fire.

The wind will spread the flames.

When everything there is to burn has burnt and the fires die, smoke will rise and shut out the sun.

Nuclear winter will set in

Then

What shall we eat, what shall we drink?

What shall we breathe?

00:01:15

Shall mankind renounce war or shall we put and end to the human race?

Russell/Einstein Manifesto 1955

00:01:38

00:01:56

Female V/O

This is the story of the biggest weapons of mass destruction ever made.

It is about the people who use them.

More importantly, It is about people who fight them.

00:02:15

Beating the Bomb

00:02:21

00:02:37

Tony Benn

We shall become the next species that become extinct and I don't want that to happen I've got 10 grandchildren and I want them to live.

00:02:46

Walter Wolfgang

Humanity is engaged in a race against time because its moral advance hasn’t kept up with the advance in technology and it could destroy itself.

00:03:03

I

Nuclear War

00:03:09

In 1941, competing against a project in Nazi Germany, the US begins its atom bomb programme, the Manhattan Project.

00:03:19

00:03:25

In 1945 the US becomes the first country to detonate a nuclear bomb.

Humankind enters the atomic age.

The experiment moves into the real world with devastating impact.

July 16th, 1945

Los Alamos, New Mexico

'Trinity'

00:03:35

Hiroshima, Aug 6th, 1945

'Little Boy'

00:03:50

00:03:57

00:04:01

00:04:06

The temperature near the epicentre reaches over 4000*C. Everything is vaporized. All that's left are shadows burnt into the ground, carbon remnants of what had once been human.

00:04:21

A mile out from the epicentre, bodies ignite spontaneously. Further still, all exposed skin burns away. People looking at the fireball are instantly blinded. 90% of the city is flattened.

00:04:52

I looked at the road before me, denuded, burnt and bloody, numberless survivors stood in my path.

The were massed together;

Eyewitness account

Dr. Shuntaro Hira

saw the explosion from afar and went into the city to help

00:05:01

some crawling on their knees or on all fours, some stood with difficulty or lent on another's shoulder.

No one showed any sign that forced me to recognize him or her as a human being.

00:05:42

00:05:44

Three days later, Nagasaki is hit by an even more powerful, Plutonium bomb.

Aug 9th, 1945

Nagasaki

'Fat man'

00:05:52

40 000 deaths occur immediately, although the bomb detonates off target.

Further from the epicentre, human beings, burnt and parched, pray for rain and relief.

00:06:09

Black, radioactive rain falls. Its effects will plague the survivors for decades to come in the form of birth deformities and cancers.

00:06:11

00:06:17

Marion Birch

The combination of a massive fireball, a hurricane force wind and massive amounts of radiation

Marion Birch

Director of Medact

UK Charity for Global Health

released into the atmosphere. I mean if you really think about burning skin and irradiated organs. It’s a very

00:06:30

Marion Birch

horrible way to go and sometimes

00:06:32

it’s a very horrible way to survive. You get the long term effects of radiated organs,

00:06:37

i.e. cancers going on for 60 years or more, we're still getting new data

00:06:44

out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

00:06:46

Tony Benn

I did go to Hiroshima. The thing that I remember most of all is a little mark on the pavement and I said 'what's that?'. And they said 'oh, that was were a child was sitting, and it was completely vaporized. And next to the mark was a little lunch box that was

And if there ever was a war crime, it's that.

Tony Benn

President Stop the War Coalition

00:07:09

It is still widely believed that the bombing of Japan was necessary to bring the war to an end save American lives.

00:07:14

But now there is a growing consensus that Japan’s surrender was imminent and that the bombing was not necessary.

00:07:33

It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb.

Her defeat was certain before the first bomb was dropped.

Winston S Churchill

00:07:52

Walter Wolfgang

I read it in the papers or heard it in the wireless. Its real significance didn’t dawn on me. The Propaganda that it was needed to defeat Japan was believed very widely, I believed it at the time

00:08:06

Its real significance didn’t dawn on me

Walter Wolfgang

Vice President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

00:08:10

Tony Bann

The real purpose for dropping the bomb was to tell the Russians that America had a Weapon of Supreme Power

00:08:20

Walter

The whole thing was done to frighten the Soviet Union

00:08:24

Tony

the Cold War began Hiroshima, that’s when it began.

00:08:28

If it [the Trinity A-bomb] explodes, as I think it will, I’ll certainly have a hammer over those boys [the Soviets]

President Truman
Diary entry

00:08:39

Kate Hudson

The Soviet Union was emerging as a great victorious power – had it been responsible for the defeat of the Nazi forces in eastern Europe and

Kate Hudson

National Chair Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

00:08:49

the United States wanted to make it very clear that is was going to be the dominant power in the post war period.

Map

00:08:58

Joseph Rotblat

Leslie Groves, General Groves, he was the head of the whole Manhattan Project. From time to time he would come to Los Alamos. I remember once in early 1944, when Groves suddenly said to Chadwick: “You realise, of course, that all our work, we are making the Bomb, is against the Russians, we have to be ready against them, now to me, this came as a terrible shock It took me, I never really got over it.

Joseph Rotblat

SCIENTIST who quit MANHATTAN PROJECT in 1944

00:08:24

We have about 50 percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population.

We should cease to talk about vague and [...] unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization.

The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal with straight power concepts.

George Kennan,
Head of the US State Department's
Policy Planning Department,1948

00:10:09

The end of the war doesn’t bring peace, it brings another kind of war.

00:10:15

00:10:17

II

The Cold War

00:10:24

The apparently ideological battle between communism and capitalism intensifies, becoming increasingly militarised over the following decades, justified as a moral fight between good and evil.

00:10:41

Formation of NATO

NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance of the US and its Western Allies is founded in 1949.

The same year the Soviets explode their first nuclear device.

00:10:54

ANNOUNCER: Now Russia has the secret. It was of course inevitable. But President Truman’s announcement came as a bit of a shock to many of us.

00:11:00

00:11:04

Six years later the Soviet Union responds to NATO with their own military Alliance: The Warsaw Pact.

Formation of Warsaw Pact

00:11:16

Walter Wolfgang

As time went on, I became increasingly concerned about the direction of Labour’s foreign policy and the fact that we took sides in the Cold War.

Walter Wolfgang

Vice President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND)

00:11:27

Britain’s economy is hard hit after the war

In 1947, during a cold winter of grinding poverty with the economy in a desperate condition, the decision to start a British Atom bomb project is made

00:11:48

Tony Benn

Atlee reached a secret deal with the United States and didn't tell parliament. Although they say the bomb is there to defend democracy, the existence of the bomb denies democracy.

00:11:51

A bomb would be an assertion that Great Britain was still a member of the great power club.

00:11:56

In the Berkshire downs, Britain’s Atomic Research Establishment has been set up.

British Progress in Atomic Energy Research

00:12:09

Dr Ian Fairlie

Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy are inextricably linked.

Dr. Ian Fairlie, Ph.D.

Environmental Radiation

Consultant

00:12:12

To make a nuclear weapon you need fissile material. Where do we get this fissile material from?

We get it from insides of nuclear reactors.

00:12:21

Newsreel

Calder Hall is only the beginning of a great programme of nuclear power stations which will in time give us all the electricity we need without the use of coal or oil.

The Atom Joins The Grid

00:12:27

Dr. Ian Fairlie

Back in the 1957, when the queen opened the first nuclear reactors in Britain at Colder Hall, they were in fact Plutonium factories.

00:12:32

It is with pride, that I open Calder Hall, Britain's first atomic power station.

Dr Ian Fairlie

The main reason for their construction was to

Dr. Ian Fairlie, Ph.D.

Consultant in Environmental Radiation

00:12:47

make Plutonium to generate atomic bombs nuclear, which we exploded in the 1950ies.

Nuclear weapons and nuclear energy are inextricably linked. The genesis of the nuclear power industry really is deeply steeped in nuclear weapons.

00:12:57

(TV news clip)

Let’s hope British atomic scientists can continue to work for constructive rather than destructive purposes.

00:13:05

The 1950ies is a period of intense nuclearisation.

Britain becomes a nuclear state in 1952.

MAP

00:13:10

In 1958 alone, over one hundred nuclear weapons are tested, exposing indigenous populations and military personnel to high levels of radiation.

Radioactivity is invisible. it doesn't smell and it has no taste. The effect on living beings sometimes only shows decades later.

To date, over 2000 nuclear tests have been conducted releasing 19000 times the radiation of the Hiroshima bomb.

00:14:03

The testing of nuclear weapons was one of the major reasons for the starting of CND.

People were aware that this stuff was going up in the atmosphere and was falling down in different places.

Bruce Kent

CND Chair 1977-79, 1987-90

00:14:15

The meeting that marks the birth of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain is held on February 17th, 1958

00:14:33

I was at the first inaugural meeting at Central Hall, something like 4000 people. I mean I was a young man and I think I got caught up in that enthusiasm.

00:14:36

00:14:56

Tony Benn

I think in some ways our greatest cultural gift to the world, the CND symbol, which is on the badge, is all over the world.

Tony Benn

Vice President CND

00:15:01

Kate Hudson

You know it stands for N D and the semaphore signals, that has become embraced worldwide as a peace symbol

Kate Hudson

National Chair CND

00:15:06

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

00:15:14

00:15:16

00:15:18

00:15:19

00:15:21

00:15:25

00:15:27

00:15:30

00:15:35

Kate Hudson

It became very widely known that Aldermaston was where nuclear weapons were being developed so logically it was then going to be a focus for protest organisations.

00:15:48

March to Aldermaston

Dir: Lindsey Anderson

UK, 1959

00:16:03

Pat Arrowsmith

We organized the first march from London to Aldermaston in Easter 1958 and I was the organising secretary for the march.

Pat Arrowsmith

life-long peace campaigner

00:16:07

Walter Wolfgang

What we were saying is ‘ban nuclear weapons, end British nuclear weapons, join the Aldermaston March’

Walter Wolfgang

life-long peace campaigner

00:16:17

Protestors (old b&w footage)

You want to know why we came here? Well for the simple reason is we are lovers of good music, for one thing. And if this Hell-of-a-lot goes up, we’re not likely to hear good music any more.

Protestors (old b&w footage)

As part of the youth in England, who are going to live in the future, I thought it was my responsibility to take part in any sort of demonstration which would help to stop warfare and that's why I've come here.

Protestors (old b&w footage)

I couldn't look the children in the face, had I not come on this march

00:17:03

Protestors (present day)

We were together in the London youth choir in the first Aldermaston march …. (they sing) ban the bomb, forevermore, hahaha not bad

Nicola Seyd and Nadia Perkins

Peace Campaigners

00:17:14

Walter

The Aldermaston marches started a popular movement against defence and foreign policy.

00:17:21

By the end of the decade, the UK's military policy aligns itself further with the US, with the signing of the Mutual Defence Agreement.

In 1960 the UK abandons its hugely expensive if independent nuclear weapon’s system and replaces it with Polaris, an acquisition from the United States. Polaris is a submarine based nuclear weapon's system.

00:17:47

It is deployed in Faslane, Scotland

which in turn becomes a target for protesters.

00:18:00

During the cold war, the world witnesses a colossal arms build up. In 1962 the US has around 27,000 nuclear bombs; the Soviet Union around 3,000.

Nuclear War is only one mistake away

00:18:04

Tony Benn

The Russian put on the moon a space vehicle, it was a fantastic thing, like a world war 1 tank with caterpillar tracks so it moved across the surface of the moon. I had a letter from a Constituent, which I’ve still kept, it said “Dear Tony, I see the Russians have put a Space Vehicle on the Moon. Is there any chance of a better Bus Service in Bristol?!” Now you can laugh but it is a brilliant question, what do you do with it.

Tony Benn

Minister of Technology 1966-1970

00:18:31

Nuclear robot, a handy guy

00:19:10

By 1962 the Soviet Union is the target of short range missiles based in Turkey. In only 16 minutes, they can reach Moscow.

The Soviets respond in kind by placing nuclear missile in Cuba in a clandestine operation that triggers the Cuban Missile Crisis.

00:19:30

The US establishes a naval blockade to prevent Soviet Supply ships from reaching Cuba.

On October 27th 1962, a US naval destroyer discovers an unidentified submarine.

Unaware that it is a nuclear-armed submarine, they attempt to force it to surface with depth charges.

The three officers on board the submarine fear an attack, two vote to return fire with nuclear torpedoes. Military protocol requires the unanimous consent of all 3.

The man who pulls the world back from the brink of nuclear war remains virtually unknown.

Vassily Archipov refuses consent and insists on awaiting communication from Moscow.

Some say Vassily Archipov saved the world.

00:20:15

Perhaps it is the near certainty of mutual destruction that moves the conflict away from the theatre of war to the negotiating table. The USSR agrees to remove its missile bases from Cuba. The US in turn dismantles its bases in Turkey.

00:20:48

A period of nuclear de-escalation follows. The partial test ban treaty bans nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere. It is signed by all nuclear states.

1968 sees the next major milestone towards a world free of nuclear weapons - the signing of the NPT.

00:21:00

Walter Wolfgang

The Non Proliferation Treaty was extremely significant, because it is the first attempt to actually limit nuclear weapons.

Walter

00:21:04

In Article VI of the NPT the nuclear powers pledge to take ‘good faith’ efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons.

00:21:12

Although the dreaded nuclear exchange does not materialize, the Cold war spawns a series of proxy wars.

The US finds the Communist enemy first in Korea in 1950, and again in Vietnam in the late 60ies.

00:21:30

I refuse to believe

that a little fourth rate power like North Vietnam does not have a breaking point.

Henry Kissinger

00:21:40

We often don’t know the impact that we’ve had, there’s a great example of Nixon who had a

Vietnam

March to demand

An immediate break with

American war policy

00:21:54

Mark Thomas

nuke bomber ready to rock n’ roll for the Vietnam War

and Nixon was told by Kissinger ‘beware the hammer blow of the peace movement’. And actually, if you looked at a bunch of tied eyed scruffy old hippies, there's not much of a hammer blow there, but they had a hammer blow.

Mark Thomas

Comedian, Author and Activist

00:22:13

The early 70ies mark an economic and thus strategic turning point for the US. At this time, the US is the largest oil producer in the world, but in 1971 oil production peaks while demand is rising.

U.S. Foreign policy shifts focus to the Middle East, home to the largest oil reserves on the planet.

All the World’s a Stage

00:22:43

A stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.

US State Department on Saudi Arabia, 1945

00:22:53

Tony Benn

In 1976, and this is extremely interesting now, I was sent to see the Shah in Iran. And at that time the Americans were trying to persuade Iran to adopt Nuclear Power. The plan was that Iran would build 20 Nuclear Power Stations, using the Westinghouse Pressure Water Reactor, on condition that we adopted the American Reactor, which I didn’t want to do. And if so the Shah would then buy half of our Nuclear Industry. Now you put that 1976 to where we are today and you realise the utter hypocrisy, never believe a word you’re told by the Nuclear Industry, and of course Israel had the bomb.

00:23:30

In 1986, Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu reveals details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press.

00:23:42

A honey trap lures him to Rome, where he is kidnapped by Mossad agents and smuggled to Israel, where he is tried and convicted of treason.

00:23:52

Mordechai Vanunu will spend 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement.

00:24:03

Tony Benn

I only discovered a year or two ago that while I was a minister nuclear materials were secretly given to the Israeli government by one of my officials, who's job in my department was non-proliferation, Michael Michaels and it was only when it came out, I knew nothing about it, I checked it in my diary, no reference, but I didn't trust Michaels. When he retired, when Michaels retired, the Israeli government offered him a job and so there's a lot going on that I think ministers didn't know about.

Tony Benn

Secretary of State for Energy

1975-1979

00:24:25

To all those who call me a traitor, I say that I am proud and happy to have done what I did.

Mordechai Vanunu

21st April 2004

00:24:34

The Cold War again intensifies on the military front.

Reagan escalates the arms race into space. He launches Star Wars, a gigantic industrial project.

NATO announces the decision to station Cruise and Pershing Missiles in Europe.

Cruise missiles are new nuke delivery rockets. They are the result of advances in cognitive science. They find their targets via visual recognition programmes. Once launched, they can track moving targets on their own.

00:25:12

Helen John

This was a Weapon that was 21 feet long, had a Warhead about the size of a wastepaper basket. And they were designed to knock out the Soviet Unions Missile Silos. So it was a First Strike Weapon.

Helen John

Peace Activist

00:25:25

Their deployment in Europe opens up the possibility of what is referred to as a ‘limited nuclear war’. Protests sweep countries both sides of the Atlantic.

00:25:30

Thatcher!

Stop Dragging Those NATO Feet…

00:25:36

00:25:41

00:25:44

00:25:49

00:25:57

00:26:03

Biophiliacs against the bomb

00:26:17

00:26:22

00:26:28

00:26:39

In the UK, Cruise Missiles, are to be stationed in Molesworth and Greenham Common.

Refuse Cruise

00:26:51

Fear of a nuclear war escalates. The UK government launches a public information campaign advising on appropriate behaviour in the event of a nuclear attack.

If an attack is expected, the sirens will sound a rising and falling sound like this: ….

Protect and Survive

Public Information Film

Next: the fallout warning. When fallout is expected you will hear three bangs in short succession, they will be sounded by means of maroons, like this …

00:27:35

Ann Petit

When the government actually believes its own idiocies and starts issuing you with sensible advice about what to do when nuclear bombs fall, you think, well, what’s going on here, you know

Greenham – The Making of a Monument

Dir: Hamish Campell

UK, 2000

00:27:40

Ann Petit

We organized a march to Greenham Common, by women.

Ann Petit,

Greenham March Organizer

00:27:51

Helen John

I heard about the walk to Greenham and decided to join it.

It literally changed the course of my whole life.

Helen John

Greenham Woman

00:27:58

Anne

We guessed that we might get 50

Karmen Thomas

We talked on the way up, we said, what if we’re the only two there? What do we do? Do we go home and pretend it hasn’t happened or do we carry on, walk on our own?

Karmen Thomas

Greenham march organizer

Karmen Thomas

We had a pamphlet of a child that was born after the Hiroshima bombing. This is the real truth of nuclear weapons. We were gonna get there, give our petition in, say our little bit, and come home.

00:28:23

Helen John

That was it, I sat there and I thought, that’s what we should do, because we walked a 125 miles and got nothing and I had five children, I was married and so forth, but I could see that it was important to stay there.

00:28:36

00:29:31

Sian Jones

When the camp at Greenham started and it was explicitly non-violent and it was addressing something that was so explicitly violent with non-violence, then hat seemed to be the sort of thing, it seemed to suit me, it seemed to be the sort of thing that I wanted to do.

Sian Jones

Greenham Woman

Kate Hudson

Well I really remember the first time I came here, to Greenham.

00:30:08

Song

We are a joyous passionate people, we are singing, singing for our lives…

Carry Greenham Home

Dir: Beeban Kidron/Amanda Richardson

UK,1983

The peace camp remains there for almost 20 years. The last women left when Greenham is again turned into a public space. The cruise missiles are removed after Gorbatchev and Reagan sign the INF treaty

00:31:01

Rae Street

For years in my life, I heard people say: When people say ‘they’re only campaigners’. Only campaigners?! They are the best people in resistance.

Ray Street

Peace Campaigner

CND Annual Conference

London, October 2007

00:31:11

When the intermediate range Nuclear Policy Treaty was signed between Gorbatchev and Reagan, that was a success and I would say that that was a success of the people, of the Peace Movements.

00:31:31

Kate Hudson

Although the INF treaty abolished a particular class of nuclear weapons, it was only a small section of the world’s arsenals, there is still about 30 000 nuclear weapons existing in the world.

00:31:43

Afghanistan is the last proxy war fought in the shadow of the Cold War. The US recruits, arms and trains Al Qaeda and similar groups to fight the Soviet Army, sponsoring the forces that will eventually create the Taliban.

00:32:04

The Afghan War, the arms race and a generally mismanaged economy finally collapses the Soviet Union. The cold war is over.

00:32:14

The American Defence Department has confirmed the loss of 11 atomic bombs.

It is believed that up to 50 nuclear weapons worldwide were lost during the Cold War

Otfried Nassauer

Director, Berlin Information Center for Transatlantic Security

00:32:34

The legacy of the Cold War is a massive loss of life and an unprecedented diversion of natural, financial and intellectual resources to the military.

00:32:51

Still, in the minds of the people, hope prevails – hope that the end of the cold war marks the beginning of an era of peace.

00:32:37

Instead the end of the cold war marks the beginning of a new world order, dominated by one super power.

00:33:16

III

Freedom/

The free market

00:33:24

The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist.

…the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley is the United States Army, Air Force and Marine Corps.

Thomas Friedman

New York Times,

March 28th, 1999

00:33:48

Helen John

You know the fall of the wall, Berlin in 1989 and when we went into East Berlin, and I wrote, or my friend wrote for me a poster on the station which said N.A.T.O., and it just said Nuclear American Take Over.

Helen John

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

00:34:01

The Warsaw Pact is disbanded in 1991, NATO is not.

00:34:08

Trident will cost the earth

00:34:11

In Britain the decision to replace Polaris with Trident is made. Trident promises independently targeted warheads with greater accuracy.

Protest posters

why float Trident

00:34:22

In 1991 the remaining Superpower unleashes is unchallenged military might against a former ally – Iraq.

Making a killing

00:34:44

Saddam Hussein who has been armed and financially supported by the US and the UK throughout the 80ies invades Kuwait in a dispute over an oil field.

Once Again Women and Children are The silent slaughtered

US steps in with the claim to re-establish democracy in Kuwait. An estimated 200 000 retreating Iraqi soldiers meet their deaths in the desert sands. The number of the casualties on the US’ side totals 358.

00:35:08

00:35:37

Dr Ian Fairlie

In warfare there are many, many toxic agents, which are released and many of these have estrogenic effects, that’s what we’re talking about, in other words, effecting the embryo and the foetus when they’re inside the uterus.

When I see these pictures of malformed babies, it breaks my heart.

Dr Ian Fairlie (as before)

00:35:44

The Gulf War marks the first war time use of the deadly radioactive substance Depleted Uranium.

Deadly Uranium Weapons

00:36:06

00:36:11

Dr Ian Fairlie

Depleted Uranium is a direct product of manufacturing nuclear weapons. Depleted Uranium is used in monition in warfare by three countries. The United States, Britain and Israel, no other countries are using Depleted Uranium, from what I can gather, no other countries are planning to used Depleted Uranium.

00:36:23

00:36:31

00:36:41

Dr Ian Fairlie

What happens when a DU monition hits its target, part of it volatilizes and becomes an aerosol and this is sort of a gaseous vapour containing very tiny fragments of Uranium and people breathe that in, and that lodges in one’s lungs and travels to bone and can cause various cancers in the body. The main people, who get seriously, adversely affected is the indigenous population, the Iraqis, we’re talking about 100 of thousands of people being exposed.

00:36:43

‘…[Depleted Uranium] can induce DNA damage and carcinogenic lesions in the cells…’

The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, 2001

00:36:51

From the end of WWII to the turn of the Millennium, the US has been at war with and bombed, the following countries.

China (1945-46, 1950-53)

Korea (1950-53);

Guatemala (1954, 1967 – 69)

Indonesia (1958)

Cuba (1959 – 60)

The Belgian Congo (1964)

Peru (1965)

Laos (1964-73)

Vietnam (1961-73)

Cambodia (1969-70)

Grenada (1983)

Libya (1986)

El Salvador (1980ies)

Nicaragua (1980ies)

Panama (1989)

Iraq (1991-99)

Bosnia (1995)

Sudan (1998)

Yugoslavia (1999)

00:38:03

2001 is a tragic year for the American people. The biggest killer in the United States that year is heart disease, killing over 700,000 people. More than half a million die from cancer. 62,000 from pneumonia. There are nearly 30,000 firearm related deaths and over 30,000 suicides. 14,000 die from Aids related diseases. 3,500 people die from malnutrition. And 2,500 die in a terrorist attack on September 11th.

00:38:15

00:38:28

There is no war pronounced on cancer, AIDS or malnutrition, but billions of dollars are instantly available to fight the evil taking center stage after the exit of the Soviet Union.

'The War on Terror' is launched. The US spearheads a NATO war against The Taliban.

Next on the attack list is Iraq, located on the so termed 'Axis of Evil'. The alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction is given as the legal ground for the attack. The people on the street disagree.

00:38:45

Britain the Stop The War Coalition, The Muslim Association and CND call for what is to become the biggest demonstration in the country’s history.

Demo poster, peace sign over London

00:38:50

00:39:42

NO

00:39:50

Dr Salam Ismael

I’m a doctor, orthopaedic surgeon, I worked in the old comptect (?) areas in Iraq, We’re three days a week from the hospitals out of oxygen. This is the privatisation that you start when the oxygen litre that we use for our hospitals, jumped from 150 Iraqi dinar to 1800. I left 2500 families in the middle of the desert, no water, I'm seeing the children dying in front of me, I cannot do anything there, all I’m doing is not treating, just collecting bodies, heads, limps. For god’s sake, anyone knows what’s going on there?

Dr. Salam Ismael

Doctors for Iraq ,s

Anti War Demo

September 2004

00:40:52

To initiate a war of aggression …

is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

The Nuremberg Law

00:41:16

Tony Benn

During the crusades, the European Arms manufacturers sold bows and arrows to both sides.

00:41:22

Bruce Gagnon

When weapons are your number one industrial export product, what’s your global marketing strategy for that product line? What does it say about the Soul of our Nation that we have to have endless war in order to put food on the table and provide people with jobs?

Bruce Gagnon

Peace Campaigner

No Missile Defence Conference

London, September 2007

00:41:34

00:41:48

50 cents of every U.S.

federal tax dollar go to the military

00:41:52

00:42:17

Nancy Romer

The United States Government has spent over 1.4 trillion dollars of our hard-working people’s tax money. The goal of the War has been a Wealth Transfer Program from the working people of the United States to the Corporations.

Halliburton, Bechtel, Blackwater and others. And in naked defence of the Corporate Interests of the Oil Giants: Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and others.

Nancy Romer

US Labour against the War

World against War Conference

London, December 2007

00:42:41

As of 2006, US company, Halliburton,

generates $20 billion in revenues from the Iraq war.

Former CEO, Dick Cheney, stands to cash in on his holdings, when he leaves office, in 2009

00:42:50

Naomi Klein

Neoliberalism has always been a violent project. I was in Argentina when this war in Iraq began and I was at the anti marches in Bones Aires and what people were saying was: They’re doing to them what they’ve been doing to us in the 70ies, which was imposing this economic model through violence.

Naomi Klein

Author, Journalist and Activist

00:43:04

While taxpayers in the west fund Iraq's destruction, Iraq will foot the bill for the reconstruction.

A controversial oil law gives foreign corporations unprecedented access to Iraq's oil wealth.

00:43:18

00:43:24

The lie about the freedom of the market is perpetuated and believed.

For the short term gain of the few, massacre, destruction and looting at the site of one of the oldest civilisations on the planet is carried out.

Regarding weapons of mass destruction, government pollicy remains undeterred.

00:43:44

IV

More Nukes

More Nukes

More Nukes

00:43:47

Tony Benn

The choice that this generation has to make is the gravest choice ever made by the human race, you kill one or two people with a bow and arrow, kill a few more people with a machine gun or a bomb, but with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons you can destroy the human race.

00:44:00

Jeremy Corbyn

Our country, this country, has around 200 nuclear warheads, they could destroy the whole planet, if they’re used.

Jeremy Corbyn

MP for Islington North

00:44:08

In the 2006 White Paper 'On the future of The United Kingdom's Nuclear Deterrent' the government states,

we believe that a nuclear deterrent is likely to remain an important element of our national security

Slow pan over front page

p.19 we believe that a nuclear deterrent is likely to remain an important element of our national security

00:44:24

Jeremy Corbyn

The idea that nuclear weapons bring security is frankly unbelievably absurd, if we use that argument every country in the world should have nuclear weapons

Jeremy Corbyn

MP for Islington North

Sian Jones

It about how you see security and I think it’s actually about using the resources that are used for the military and using them for real security, you know, water, hospitals, schools, places to live, that sort of stuff.

Sian Jones

Direct Action Campaigner

The White Paper further states

The UKs nuclear weapons are not designed for use during conflict

Yet it also claims:

we will not rule out the first use of nuclear weapons.

p.17 The UKs nuclear weapons are not designed for use during conflict

p.18 we will not rule out the first use of nuclear weapons.

00:44:03

Rae Street

Geoff Hoon, the then defence minister was asked why the UK – I hope everyone in here knows that the our country has a policy of first use -our stupid ministers would press the button, you know, to release these Trident warheads. He said: ‘because of our obligations to NATO’. Obligations to NATO, not people, security. So he’d kill millions of innocent children because of our obligations to NATO

Obligations to NATO, not obligation to people, security, safety, so he'd kill millions of innocent children because of obligations to NATO.

Rae Street

Peace Campaigner

CND Annual Conference

London, October 2007

00:45:29

Jeremy Corbyn

The government has put forward a proposal to spend 70b billion pounds on new weapons and the delivery system and the administration of them over the next 2 ½ decades.

Labour's new tax bombshell

00:45:39

14th February 2007

00:45:40

A 100 000 strong demonstration called by the CND and The Stop the War Coalition demands a rethink of the country's nuclear weapons policy and the return of the troops.

Beyond the discussion of national security, billions worth of tax money are about to benefit military contractors. The production of new submarines means full order books above all for BAE Systems.

BAE Systems is the U.K.’s largest arms manufacturer

00:46:14

Kate Hudson

BAE systems said, that they want a through port, they call it a drumbeat of submarine production every 22 months. At the moment they are building the Astute Class submarines. They want the new Trident system to follow on straight away to ensure their industrial capacities and their profits. So the idea that Britain’s security policy and whether or not we have nuclear weapons is driven by the commercial requirements of a company which is known to have been engaged in corrupt practises and so on, it’s absolutely outrageous and that our government should go along with that and condone that is shocking in the extreme.

Kate Hudson

CND National Chair

00:46:46

Newspaper sequence starring BAE

00:46:53

Mark Thomas

They’re highly protected by the government in terms of finances. If you’re putting money into your military, then you’ll also be looking at that military using its technologies to export abroad. If you’re supporting BAE Systems by spending money on them, you’re also spending money on helping them export, and again that’s with the export credit guarantee department providing underwriting – with public money, with taxpayers money – so if you’re exporting abroad and you get a default, then the British tax payer covers that default and that money goes onto that country’s debt. They created something like 96, 97% of developing world debt owed bilaterally to Britain, and this is a huge cog that actually sponsors the growth of the military industrial complex and creates an enormous debt, using tax payers money.

Mark Thomas

Comedian, Author, Activist

00:47:38

The government's protective hand ensures that, in 2007 the U.K. becomes the world's biggest arms exporting nation.

00:47:59

14th March 2007

00:48:00

Parliament votes to give the go ahead on the design and concept phase of new nuclear submarines. A decision on building new nuclear warheads is still pending.

00:48:15

Sian Jones

Even yesterday in parliament the new defense minister denied that the money was spent in Aldermaston in order to help the government build a new generation of nuclear weapons. But we know from documents that were leaked to the CND that that's not true.

Aldermaston recruits scientists to work on new nuclear warheads

00:48:35

00:48:44

Adam Conway

The warheads are made in Aldermaston, in Berfield, which is about 50 miles from where we are standing today and they are stored and deployed at Coleport, Scotland and they are moved in unmarked military convoys.

Adam Conway

Nukewatch

CND Annual Conference

London, October 2007

(left square)

Adam Conway

It’s all heavily classified stuff, but it’s also happening on public roads. The ministry of defence revealed that a terrorist attack on a nuclear weapons convoy, and I have to quote this, because you wouldn’t believe me otherwise.

London UK

Fasland, Scotland (on top of pictures)

00:49:01

00:49:23

Adam Conway

A terrorist attack on a nuclear weapons convoy has the potential to lead to the damage and the destruction of the nuclear weapon within the U.K. and the consequences of such an incident are likely to be considerable loss of life and severe disruption both to the British Way of Life and to the U.K.’s ability to effectively function as a sovereign state.

00:49:33

Tony Benn

See we don't have nuclear weapons in Britain, if for example Brown wanted to press the button to use the Trident it would go up and come down again, because the Americans wouldn't target it.

Tony Benn

Vice President CND

Sian Jones

You’re not supposed to share military nuclear information, it’s against the Non Proliferation Treaty, you’re not supposed to regularly ship out bits of nuclear technology from Price Norton in Oxfordshire to the US for them to have a look and then to ship it back, you’re not supposed to do the stuff that they do.

00:49:58

00:50:03

In the U.S, five billion dollars are spent annually on a programme nicknamed Manhatten2. It develops a new generation of nuclear weapons.

Technological advances allow for so called tactical nuclear weapons like bunker busters, developed for use in the battlefield. And nukes with 400 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.

00:50:25

Bruce Gagnon

The United States is the world’s biggest nuclear hypocrite. As we lecture the rest of the world about the evils of weapons of mass destruction and we’re building new generations of them.

Bruce Gagnon

Peace Campaigner

No Missile Defence Conference

London, September 2007

Bruce Gagnon

The weapons industry pushed through the US nuclear India deal, that’s now gonna help India build more nuclear weapons in a very dangerous part of the world, because they’re wanna use them as a check mate against China.

00:50:47

Achin Vanaik

This deal would not only legitimize India’s nuclear status, but it would also mean that India joins the substantial number of countries that are legitimising American nuclear irresponsibility since the end of the Cold War.

Achin Vanaik

Indian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace

00:51:00

00:51:06

Zia Mian

And Pakistan is responding to this, by building up its own nuclear weapons programme.

Zia Mian

Research Scientist

Global Summit on Disarmament

London, February 2008

00:51:15

Zia Mian

US policy, which is also actually UK policy, to support this nuclear deal with India, feeds the arms race in South East Asia.

00:51:18

Stephen Cotrell

The logic of deterrents is actually the logic of proliferation, soon everyone will have their weapons and the only people benefiting from this are those who make the weapons

Rt Rev

Stephen Cotrell

Bishop of Reading

No Trident Conference

London, October 2006

00:51:38

Walter Wolfgang

Nuclear weapons are the terror weapons; they terrorize people by threatening them with nuclear weapons, that’s what it does.

00:51:45

Mark Thomas

We're bullies, that's what it says, you know, if you can drop a nuke that would just obliterate, you know, a whole city, kill millions of people, then, you know, that's a devastating indictment of, of, of a country.

00:52:08

Sian Jones

If you see a whole government possessing a whole army and enough weapons to destroy the world then actually there’s no irony in you having a knife to have the same power in your own little community.

Sian Jones

00:52:27

You know direct action is not about breaking the law just for the sake of breaking the law.

Direct action is actually a way of confronting power in such a way that it makes you feel empowered.

00:52:45

Protestor (present day)

It's climate change which is my big issue and this is taking all the money and effort away from what the real danger is. Our real danger is climate change, not terrorists or enemy, so it's an absolute waste of time and money this Trident.

00:53:03

Bruce Kent

There’s no way we’ll solve poverty or deal with environmental damage unless we include militarism and the cost of militarism as part of that.

00:53:12

00:53:16

Protestor (present day)

So much money that could be used for schools for houses, hospitals and it's a tragic, tragic waste of money

00:53:26

No ‘H’ Bombs

00:53:30

00:53:41

The Shall not have died in vain

00:53:44

00:53:46

00:53:50

00:53:51

00:53:54

00:53:57

00:54:02

Boring Middle-Aged Men Against The War

00:54:36

00:54:50

00:54:55

00:55:06

00:55:12

Nuclear Weapon States

00:55:27

A Standard world map

Does not reflect actual size relations

Between countries and continents

A map displaying accurate size relations

Looks like this;

00:55:36

00:55:43

Caroline Lucas

Argentina and Brazil have dropped the nuclear capability that they have been developing after negotiating a non-nuclear pact between themselves and I think it’s important to stress that disarmament isn’t a distant dream, it does happen, it can happen and it will happen again.

Caroline Lucas

MEP Green Party

Global Summit on Disarmament

London, February 2008

00:55:54

Achin Vanaik

The road to nuclearism is built with the politics of hate and fear but it is always paved with the stones of moral indifference and that's the kind of thing that we are trying to change here.

00:56:05

Mark Thomas

Change is always possible and the thing that people have to realize that it's not parliament that initiates change, parliament rubberstamps change

00:56:11

Walter Wolfgang

You can never give up on a solution of an unsolved problem, this is an unsolved problem, but it can, it's solvable, the root to solving it exists, it can be perused, it can be done.

00:56:25

V The Future

00:56:33

1 out of 8 people in this world

still have no access to

clean drinking water

About 3 million people die every year

From scarcity of clean water

World Health Organisation

$ 1.5 billion a year could achieve

basic sanitation for the entire world

within 20 years

This equals 1% of

Annual world military spending

Over the same period

United Nations Water

00:57:03

A system that sucks wealth up to the top of the pyramid is propped up with tax payers money going to big banks and the military.

The rich get richer and the poor stay poor.

Submarine going past

Worldwide arms expenditure is rising with

NATO countries accounting for 70% of the world's military spending.

The war in Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, is escalated. People continue to be slaughtered. The ever persistent evil just won't go away.

00:57:46

The Iron Curtain has vanished. The front lines might not be physical borders, but the arms race is alive and well;

It has moved into the final frontier: space.

00:58:03

The Global Positioning System GPS guides cars and missiles to their destination.

The emergence of a civilian competitor was met with fierce opposition in 2004.

The project was shelved after US threats to shoot it down.

00:58:22

Tony Benn

When Clinton was President the Pentagon issued a Statement about “Full Spectrum Dominance”; the United States aimed to dominate the world in Land, Sea, Space, Air and Information.

00:58:33

Bruce Gagnon

The Pentagon says that all Warfare on the Earth today is now controlled and directed by Space Technology, so whoever controls Space, then, wins all the Wars on the Earth below!

Bruce Gagnon

Peace Campaigner

No Missile Defence Conference

London, September 2007

00:58:58

What the aerospace industry refers to as the largest industrial project in the history of mankind is Regan's star wars project, now named National Missile Defence.

In the U.K. Fylingdales and Menwith Hill, two base facilities in Yorkshire are already integrated into the US National Missile Defence System.

RAF Menwith Hill

Harrogate, North Yorkshire

00:59:08

00:59:20

Helen John

When I first saw this base in 1993, at that stage, it was over a trillion dollar's worth of investment and most of that investment you will never see, because it's embodies in the satellites that are too far out of sight.

Helen John

Direct Action Campaigner

00:59:27

Mark Thomas

It's not only linked to the Missile Defence system, but it's also linked to US spying. The ability to take information whether it's telephone, whether it's mobile, whether it's email, out of the ether without anybody knowing about this and the fact that there's no accountability for this. MPs are not allowed to see the agreement that exists between the US military and Britain for the establishment of Menwith Hill spy base, they simply aren't allowed to see this.

00:59:50

Helen John

First time in 17 years, first time since the end of the cold war that we have had short range nuclear weapons directly pointed at any particular target in this country and they're smack bang on that base.

01:00:00

01:00:35

Bruce Gagnon

In order to fund this program of world domination through space technology, they have to destroy social progress in my country and I think around the world too.

01:00:44

Helen John

All that this base represents is theft, massive theft, theft so grand you can’t get your head around it.

01:00:52

Another world may not be possible, but unless we try, we are certain to fail.

00:01:19

Epilogue

00:01:24

The movement against war is sound.

I pray for its success.

But I cannot help gnawing fear that the movement will fail

if it does not touch the root of all evil

– human greed

Mahatma Gandhi

01:01:40

George Monbiot

At the heart of capitalism is a practise of lending money at interest. You lend a hundred pounds, you get 105 pounds back. Now unless that growth in the money supply or the velocity of the use of money is matched by a concomitant growth in the supply of goods and services than that five percent that you've just added to your intake of money becomes five percent inflation

George Monbiot

Journalist, Author and Activist

Campaign against Climate Change Demo

London, December 2007

01:02:06

Vivienne Westwood

Don't think I'm so clever, I'm more clever than I was, that's important

Vivienne Westwood

Fashion Designer and Campaigner

01:02:17

George Monbiot

As a series of equations produced by professor Rodney Smith at Imperial College show. A doubling in economic activity in effect means a doubling in resource use. Not a doubling in the resources used in the previous 20 years, no, a doubling in the resources used since humanity stood on two legs, in other words: In 20 years, between now and 2027 at current rates of growth we will use as many resources as humanity has ever used.

01:02:55

Vivienne Westwood

What we hear of as 'business as usual' it is really, the right metaphor for that is how fast can you run to the edge of the cliff

01:03:05

George Monbiot

You cannot have, ladies and gentlemen, green capitalism, it is a contradiction in terms. And you don't even have to take a political position to say that, you don't have to say that you're a communist or a socialist, you just have to understand that mathematically it cannot work.

01:03:32

Vivienne Westwood

We can have growth, we can have growth in quality of life, we can have that

01:03:37

George Monbiot

More than technical thinking, more than economic thinking, more than political thinking it requires a profound ethical and philosophical shift that can only take place within our own hearts.

01:03:50

Vivienne Westwood

Fight for something, even if it's, you know, the local retirement home for cats or whatever, you know you must fight for something, do get involved, cause then you'll real, you'll get involved in everything anyway.

01:04:05

01:04:08

Bruce Kent

To sit around like a kind of lemming and to nothing seems to me is to deny your humanity.

01:04:13

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter

Martin Luther King

01:04:20

Pat Arrowsmith

I don't know that youth are particular apathetic. I hope they make a better fist of it all than our generation has.

The planet has to be saved and it's gonna be saved by someone younger than I am now, I suppose.

Pat Arrowsmith

01:04:34

01:04:41

Bruce Kent

Old people were sent into workhouses, the man into this one, the woman into that one, when this country was the richest country in the world, that was the answer to old age and there was a campaign that got a pension.

Bruce

01:04:49

Mark Thomas

There's a kind of paradox that people should be aware of when they campaign, which is: it always takes more effort than you think, but you've always got more power than you think

Mark Thomas

01:05:02

Our biggest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our biggest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

Nelson Mandela

01:05:14

Tony Benn

When Mandela was in prison, he'd been there 27 years, he said to his jailors: I’m the only free man in this prison.

01:05:19

01:05:25

Sian Jones

Until we have a change in the way we conceive of ourselves, until we reject militarism and look at kinder and better ways of dealing with the world, then get rid of one weapon and then we have to work on the next one.

01:05:42

There is no path to peace

Peace is the path

Mahatma Gandhi

In loving memory of Flori

Produced and Directed by

Meera Patel and Wolfgang Matt

Camera

Martin Guggisberg

Bruce Jackson

Kirill Kozlov

Patrick von Boetticher

Wolfgang Matt

Production Assistants

Matt Lees

Jack Rattenbury

Transcripts

James F.R. Wright

Big Blockade photo story:

Ernst Fischer

Rostrum camera:

Kirill Kozlov, Ernst Fischer, Euan Preston

Additional Stills:

Lachlan Blackley, Sue Davis, Parixit Patel, Paul Newton, Department of Defence, Dawn Rothwell

Archive Photographs with kind permission from

Pat Arrowsmith

John Birdsall

Martin Bond

Melanie Friend

CADU

Hiroshima Peace Museum

John Harris

Paul Mattsson

Dereck Ridgers

Andrew Wiard

CND

Humanist Movement

Political Cartoons:

Leon Kuhn

Peter Kennard

Steve Bell

Bansky

Additional drawings:

Andrew Firth

Pascal Kirchmair

Dario Skrytek-Boyton

Graffiti: Joe Kelly

Edit

Wolfgang Matt

Meera Patel

&

Euan Preston

Voice-over artists:

Nichola Koratijtis

&

Linton Kwesi Johnson

Recorded by

Steve Dracup

Voice-over consultant

Rajesh Patel

Sound Mix & Design

Steve Dracup

Original Score

Martin Pradler

Sand Sculptor

Aaron

Title and map animations: Bonobo Films

CND symbol animation: Tarek Maalouf

Title graphics: Julia Schatz

Nuclear states maps: Anita Rickwood

Equal area projection map: Hobo Dyer

Colourist

Paul Fallon

Songs:

Statement

Music & Lyrics: Poison Girls/Subversa

Performed by Poison Girls

Published by XNTrix Music

We Won’t Let It Be

Music & Lyrics: Chris Pierce

Performed by Chris Pierce

Sinnerman

Recorded by Martin Pradler

Performed by Chris Pierce

See My Brother’s a Sailor Too

Music & Lyrics by Tobias Ben Jacob

Performed by the School of Trobar

Archive Films:

Pictures of the Atom Bomb: Contemporary Films

Hiroshima Nagasaki: Contemporary Films

Shadow of Hiroshima: Contemporary Films

Unstable Elements: Contemporary Films

March to Aldermaston: Contemporary Films

The Atomic Café: Archives Project Incorporated

Protect and Survive: Public information campaign

The Making of a Monument: Undercurrents

Carry Greenham Home: Contemporary Films

Declassified Nuclear Films + Missile Defence Promo: Department of Defence

Research/Production and technical assistance:

Ana Matos, Clarissa Keck, Clive Boyton, David Bamford, Dave McGuire, Davinder Kaur, Ed Schlesinger, Ernst Fischer, Gordon Goodman, James F.R. Wright, Jonny Freeman, Manon Grandjean, Paul Newton, Roderick Cobley, Richard Chamberlain, Ruth Frendo, Sophie Bolt, Stefan Dickers, Ulrich Matt, Will Grove-White

Additional Footage:

Aerial Shots: Skyworks Ltd.

2003 London Demo: Kinoklast

George Monbiot: Bonobo Films

Naomi Klein: Bonobo Films

Timelapse Skies: Bonobo Films

Thanks

Amanda Richardson, Cee Howson, Eric Harwood, Eric Liknaitzky, Erica Mejia, Hamish Campell, Julie Monin, Kitty Cooper, Linda Hugl, Lorna Catchpole, Marion Birch, Massimo Moretti, Michela Marchina, Nick Gold, Pat Arrowsmith, Ramesh Patel, Ramila Patel, Sarah Preston, Steve Blake, Tim Jenkinson

Additional thanks to

Bishopsgate Institute, Block The Builders, CADU, CND, Contemporary Films, Dochouse, Doculink, Faslane 365, Livingston Studios, Medact, Nukewatch, Punderson Gardens, Red Giant Software, Stop the War Coalition, Trident Ploughshares, Dirtybeach

Special Thanks

Kate Hudson

Walter Wolfgang

Helen John

&

Tony Benn

Sources

Angie Zeltner: Trident on Trial

Arundhati Roy: The Algebra of Infinite Justice

Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers, John Sloboda: Beyond Terror

Helen Caldicott: The New Nuclear Danger

Dr. Helen Caldicott & Craig Eisendrath: War in Heaven

Joseph Gershon: Empire and the Bomb

Kate Hudson: CND Now More Than Ever

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine

Noam Chomsky: Failed States

Noam Chomsky: Hegemony or Survival

Raj Patel: Stuffed & Starved

The New Internationalist issues 406, 412

A maddmovies production