Campaigners call on Coventry to end investments in arms trade

For the tenth year running, members of Pax Christi, Coventry Justice and Peace Group, Coventry Quakers and the Passionists met to call on Coventry, the City of Peace and Reconciliation, to take the lead in the West Midlands in ending investments of the West Midlands Pension Fund in companies involved in the Arms Trade.

Coventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Sandwell and Dudley, Solihull and Walsall, members of the West Midlands Pension Fund, all invest our money in fifteen of the major international Arms Manufacturers. This includes those who make nuclear weapons.

Gathered outside Coventry Cathedral this morning, with a banner and posters saying, 'End ALL investments in nuclear weapons', we distributed leaflets drawing the attention of those attending Coventry City Council's AGM and Mayor Making, to the fact that Council Tax payers in this region are paying millions of pounds to these arms companies. The top five are, AIRBUS 16.7 million; BAE SYSTEMS 10.6 million; UNITED TECHNOLOGIES 10.3 million; BOEING 9.3 million; SAFRAN 9.3 million. The WMPF and its investments are the responsibility of our elected councillors. Despite 10 years of suggesting to Councillors that these investments are incompatible with Coventry being the City of Peace and Reconciliation and a City of Sanctuary, our call has been ignored.

At meetings and in letters we have pointed out that as well as well as even the smallest of nuclear weapons being larger than those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons are now illegal.

On Friday, 22nd January 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into legal force and made nuclear weapons illegal under international law.

The TPNW is a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons and other related activities. This includes:

Banning use, stockpiling, testing, production, manufacture, stationing and installation;

Banning assisting with prohibited acts, such as the United States leasing Trident missiles to the UK;

Banning allowing nuclear weapons to travel through territorial waters or airspace;

Requiring assistance to the victims of nuclear weapons, included for the first time in a treaty.

We have also reminded Councillors that Coventry has been a member of "Mayors for Peace" for many years and that one of its objectives is to 'Realize a world without nuclear weapons.'

'With cities and the citizens who live in them being their targets, and catastrophic consequences on a global scale to be inflicted by their use, nuclear weapons are the greatest threat to the safety and security of citizens' lives. We will urge global leaders to effect peace-oriented policy change by calling on the UN and national governments, especially the nuclear-armed states and their allies, to take concrete action for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.'

The vision for all who are members is, 'to contribute to the attainment of lasting world peace by arousing concern among citizens of the world for the total abolition of nuclear weapons through close solidarity among member cities as well as by striving to solve vital problems for the human race such as starvation and poverty, the plight of refugees, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation.'

LINK

www.mayorsforpeace.org/english/vision/index.html

We ask Coventry to take this commitment seriously and earn its title of City of Peace and Reconciliation by taking the lead to,

End ALL investments in nuclear weapons.