On Wednesday 14th February, Ash Wednesday, Christians of different denominations, and representatives of CND walked behind the Liverpool Pax Christi banner in the cold, rain and strong wind from St Luke’s bombed out church to the Law Courts in Derby Square. The walkers held aloft placards highlighting the indiscriminate mass murder of innocents and the long term devastation of the planet that nuclear weapons would cause. Other placards drew attention to the obscene cost of renewing Britain’s Trident nuclear weapon system and also to Pope Francis’s recent statements that even possessing nuclear weapons is gravely immoral. On Church Street the horrifying testimony of a survivor of the 1945 atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, a 13 year old at the time, was read out. At the Law Courts a copy of Article 6 of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which the UK is a signatory and which calls for complete nuclear disarmament, was handed in to the Chief Justice with a plea for the UK to honour the treaty. Just how urgent this is was demonstrated in recent weeks when grossly provocative rhetoric and actions by both the leaders of the USA and North Korea quickly led to a nuclear crisis, and how peaceful dialogue between South and North Korea and a simple invitation to the Winter Olympics quickly defused the threat of nuclear war. Peter Moonan – Liverpool Pax Christi

Images from the event, taken by John Usher, are below.