IT IS 79 years since atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those war crimes, perpetrated by the US, will never be forgotten; we honour the memory of all the lives tragically cut short, and we pay tribute to the Hibaksha — the survivors  — and their work for a nuclear weapons-free world. In their name, we recommit today to achieving the global abolition of nuclear weapons.

And never has this work been more important. We cannot allow the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be repeated, yet we seem to be heading inexorably in that direction. There are two major conflicts ongoing which raise the risk of nuclear war or nuclear use.

First, in Ukraine, where the possibility of a conflict between Russia and Nato increases almost daily; more nuclear weapons are being stationed in Europe, with US nuclear weapons scheduled to return to Britain in the near future, and Russian nuclear weapons are now stationed in Belarus as a result.