It isn’t discussed as much as it was in the Cold War era, but the possibility of nuclear war remains a very real and daunting prospect, according to Elizabeth Waterston, a retired GP who lives in Jesmond.

Firmly against the production and use of nuclear weapons, Waterston has spent much of the last 40 years advocating for them to be banned. Her work as part of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) helped convince the United Nations (UN) to ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which came into force just last month – on 22 January 2021, nuclear weapons become illegal under international law.

“IPPNW has been working to get a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons since 1980,” Waterston explained to JesmondLocal. “We have a treaty to abolish biological weapons, we have a treaty to abolish chemical weapons, but we’ve never managed to get a treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. We’ve tried for years and years, but it was always blocked at the UN by the nuclear weapons states, which naturally had vested interests to keep them.”

There are currently nine countries that possess nuclear weapons: the UK, the US, France, Russia, China, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. The significant political divisions between some of these nations gives Waterston further cause for concern. 

But more locally, nuclear convoys pass along Newcastle’s A1 western bypass regularly, says Waterston. “They are taking weapons from the Trident submarines to Aldermaston to be serviced,” she said. “If one of them went off the road or crashed, we could have a nasty radioactive incident in Newcastle.”

In 2017, a majority of nations at the UN agreed to adopt the Treaty, but it then had to be ratified by 50 nations to become interational law. Now that this has been achieved, the pressure is on the nine nuclear armed states, including the UK, to sign it too.

Waterston continues to campaign. In Jesmond, the local Labour Group recently voted unanimously to support the Treaty and table a motion with the Newcastle Labour Party. The next stage would be to ask Newcastle City Council to join other city councils, including Manchester and Edinburgh, in supporting the Treaty.

“We need to put pressure on the British government to really think about getting rid of the weapons or working towards getting rid of the weapons,” said Waterston. 

However, Waterston acknowledges that for a nation such as Britain to get rid of its nuclear weapons, it cannot be a unilateral disarmament – the other nuclear states would have to agree to do the same.

“There may or may not be some truth in the fact that nuclear weapons have kept the peace between the major nations for 50 years or more, but it hasn’t stopped there being proxy wars between them, such as in Vietnam and Korea,” she pointed out. 

So why is Waterston so passionate about the banning of these weapons? “When we were working in Africa in the early 1980s, we saw how ridiculous it was that this beautiful world was being threatened by these terrible weapons,” she explained. “There were so many urgent things that were needed, in terms of water, food, transport and health. We just thought it was such a waste of money and resources to be spending all this on weapons which should never be used.”

The adoption of the Treaty is unlikely to be a Newcastle City Council priority until after the May local elections, but Waterston says she is hopeful it will be approved. Whatever happens, it’s clear that the campaigning by Waterston and her IPPNW colleagues for a nuclear weapon-free world won’t stop.