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A NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

It was very pleasing to read that the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. I was reminded of that march I had undertaken with a few thousand others from Aldermaston, the storehouse of nuclear weapons in England, to Hyde Park in London. The final achievement was to be able to shake hands with Bertrand Russell after standing in a long queue .  He  expounded the intellectual position in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and made the long march and its travails bearable. I still remember the march in the early sixties when as a student fired up with the ideals of pacifism and protesting the storage and use of nuclear weapons we went on the streets. In the towns we passed through people lined up on the streets and encouraged us as we marched. There were policemen on horseback riding by our side and some were pointing at their boots to say that we deserved a booting.

We sang of men and women marching together; we sang of the dread of Strontium 18 poisoning future generations; we sang of atolls in the pacific used to test some of these dreadful bombs; we sang that we shall overcome. Now reading about the Nobel Peace Prize being given  to a campaign for nuclear disarmament a great satisfaction drowns me for it seems that we are indeed slowly overcoming. 

Nuclear Weapons have catastrophic consequences and would cause unacceptable human suffering. There are about 15000 nuclear weapons and they run the risk of literally ending the world by a freak accident or by irresponsible politicians. At the rate at which these weapons of mass destruction are growing the probability of their misuse mounts and a helpless world hopes that a better sense would prevail among those who have access to the controls of these bombs.

The 2017 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is a most befitting tribute to the pacifists all over the world who have striven hard and are still working tirelessly to put an end to the devilish invention that the atomic bombs have become.