In January, Dr Rebecca Johnson from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), along with two colleagues, presented their cases against nuclear weapons.
As Johnson notes, it can still be instructive and useful for our campaigning to see how bad the nuclear deterrence case is, even when put forward by this eminent team that included: Paul Schulte, a former senior MoD official, now influential transatlantic academic specialising in nuclear deterrence. The second speaker was Tom Pate, third year Cambridge Uni student and the Chair of Cambridge Union Conservative party. The third speaker was the eminent historian Professor Sir Huw Strachan.
Johnson and her colleagues, Ward and Florian provided the evidence to debunk the pro-nuclear deterrence arguments. She explains how “Ward Wilson started by counteracting Prof Schulte’s pro nuclear arguments on their own ‘realist’ turf, as he explores in his new book, followed by Florian doing an excellent job of showing practical evidence of deterrence not working and then I was the ‘off the cuff’ speaker going third to engage with the audience and try to lock in our case against nukes, emphasising harm to indigenous people and the importance of using the TPNW to make the world safer.”
We’re very happy to say that the anti-nuclear team ‘won’ the majority of votes which is particularly impressive as the pre-debate audience poll suggested greater support in favour of nuclear weapons. This is indicative that we can continue to garner support through sharing our message and suggest everyone watches and shares their informative presentations.