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For Immediate Release
July, 22 2025, 04:03pm EDT
Contact:
Press Office: 07968 420859, Switchboard: 020 7700 2393
Starmer Come Clean! The British Public Deserve the Truth Over Deployment of US Nuclear Weapons
Parliamentary vote essential for transparency and democracy
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament calls on the British government to make a formal statement on the return of US nuclear weapons to Britain and allow for a transparent debate and vote in Parliament on any such a deployment.
It follows reports in the media that high priority US transport aircraft designated for nuclear cargo, was detected landing at RAF Lakenheath last week. This appears to have been a “one-way drop-off” of B61-12 nuclear bombs. This means US nuclear weapons are on British soil for the first time since 2008.
Despite the government's secrecy, evidence has gradually emerged that the base has been primed for a new US nuclear weapons mission. This includes the doubling of nuclear-capable F-35A squadrons to RAF Lakenheath, upgrades to the base's special weapons storage bunkers to hold the B61-12, and the building of a 'Surety dormitory' - accommodation for the additional personnel needed for such a nuclear weapons mission.
Earlier this year, CND uncovered declassified Ministry of Defence documents which give US Visiting Forces across Britain an exemption from British nuclear safety regulations. This exemption means that local councils will never be told about the presence of nuclear weapons at these bases – and are therefore not obliged to produce their own emergency plans for a radiological accident.
Successive British governments have tried to obstruct debate on this deployment, hiding behind so-called ‘national security’. However, these bombs won’t keep us safe. Instead, they increase the risk of nuclear war. This is because the B61-12 have been designed by the US specifically for use on the battlefield alongside conventional weapons. It puts British people on the nuclear frontline of Donald Trump’s global wars – without any protection.
Polling from May 2025 found that 61% of people in Britain don't want US nuclear weapons in Britain. This is just another shameful example of the government ramming through its agenda without any consultation with the public they are supposed to represent the wishes of.
Those opposed to this dangerous development are invited to join the monthly vigil at the main gate of RAF Lakenheath, scheduled for this Saturday, from 12 noon to 2pm. More details here.
CND Chair Tom Unterrainer said:
“CND has been calling on the government to come clean about the return of US nuclear weapons to Britain since 2022 - with more evidence proving that RAF Lakenheath is being primed for such a mission gradually uncovered ever since.
It is completely inappropriate for the public to be finding out about such a major escalation in nuclear dangers via reports in British newspapers and the assessments of security experts. Starmer must make a public statement about this major change in Britain's security arrangements and allow for a transparent and democratic debate on this to be held in Parliament. Enough of the gaslighting and hiding behind national security - the public deserve the truth!”
CND campaigns non-violently to rid the world of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction and to create genuine security for future generations. CND opposes all nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction: their development, manufacture, testing, deployment and use or threatened use by any country.
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Sanders Meets Freed Trump Political Prisoner Khalil as Columbia Punishes Gaza Protesters
"We must not allow Trump to destroy the First Amendment," Sanders said as the Ivy League school expelled or suspended scores of students in what critics called a bid to win back blocked federal funding.
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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday met with Mahmoud Khalil—the former Columbia University Palestine defender recently imprisoned by the Trump administration—on the same day that the school expelled or suspended more than 70 students who protested Israel's genocidal obliteration of Gaza.
Sanders (I-Vt.) posted a photo of himself with his arm around a beaming Khalil, with the caption: "I met with Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at Columbia University, who was imprisoned for 104 days by the Trump administration for opposing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's illegal and horrific war in Gaza. Outrageous. We must not allow [U.S. President Donald] Trump to destroy the First Amendment and freedom to dissent."
Khalil, an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent married to a U.S. citizen, last year finished his graduate studies at Columbia. He was arrested at his New York home by plainclothes Department of Homeland Security officers on March 8 before being transferred to New Jersey and then Louisiana, where he missed the birth of his first child.
Accused of no criminal offense and widely considered a political prisoner, Khalil was arrested following Trump's issuance of an executive order authorizing the deportation of noncitizen students and others who take part in pro-Palestine demonstrations. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also invoked the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952—which allows for the deportation of noncitizens whose presence in the United States is deemed detrimental to foreign policy interests—to target peaceful Palestine protesters who have committed no crimes.
Khalil was released last month upon a federal judge's order. He is far from the only student jailed for opposing the Gaza genocide; others include Mohsen Mahdawi and Yunseo Chung—both permanent U.S. residents—as well as Rümeysa Öztürk, Badar Khan Suri, and others.
On Tuesday, Columbia announced disciplinary action against more than 70 students who took part in last year's protests for Gaza at the New York City school's Butler Library. Around 80 Columbia students were arrested amid the violent police crackdown on campus encampments and occupations.
"While the university does not release individual disciplinary results of any student, the sanctions from Butler Library include probation, suspensions (ranging from one year to three years), degree revocations, and expulsions," Columbia's Office of Public Affairs said in a statement.
The school's announcement came days after Columbia and Trump administration officials met in Washington, D.C. to negotiate an agreement to restore most of the nearly $400 million in federal contracts for the university that were canceled in March over an alleged failure to tackle antisemitism.
As part of the deal, Columbia agreed to adopt the dubious International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism, which critics say conflates legitimate criticism and condemnation of Israeli policies and practices with anti-Jewish bigotry, and forces people to accept the legitimacy of a settler-colonial apartheid state engaged in illegal occupation and a war that experts increasingly agree is genocidal.
The school also said it would partner with the Anti-Defamation League on antisemitism training. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the ADL for what it called a "pattern of enabling anti-Palestinian hate."
Columbia University interim president Claire Shipman has already been working with white nationalist Stephen Miller—Trump's White House deputy chief of staff and a primary architect of the president's first-term migrant family separation and Muslim travel ban policies—to restore lost contracts.
Columbia's acquiescence to the Trump administration comes as Israeli forces have killed or maimed more than 215,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, including at least 14,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble. Most of Gaza's more than 2 million people have been forcibly displaced, often multiple times, and hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving amid an increasingly fatal famine fueled by Israel's siege of the enclave, which is partly the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
Israel has also been accused of committing scholasticide in Gaza, where every university has been destroyed or damaged.
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The analysis "shows improvements in burnout, job satisfaction, mental health, and physical health—a pattern not observed in 12 control companies."
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Echoing previous research from countries including Iceland and the United Kingdom, the biggest trial ever conducted of a four-day workweek with no reduction in pay found that the shift positively impacts workers' well-being.
For the new study, published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, 4 Day Week Global invited independent researchers to collect and analyze data. Four experts from Boston College in the United States and Ireland's University College Dublin collected data from 2,896 employees across 141 organizations in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S.
The organizations underwent a "pre-trial work reorganization to improve efficiency and collaboration, followed by a six-month trial," the paper details. Analysis of the data collected "shows improvements in burnout, job satisfaction, mental health, and physical health—a pattern not observed in 12 control companies."
"Both company-level and individual-level reductions in hours are correlated with well-being gains, with larger individual-level (but not company-level) reductions associated with greater improvements in well-being," the paper says. "Three key factors mediate the relationship: improved self-reported work ability, reduced sleep problems, and decreased fatigue. The results indicate that income-preserving four-day workweeks are an effective organizational intervention for enhancing workers' well-being."
There are limitations to the study, which the authors acknowledged: The organizations were generally smaller companies in English-speaking countries and participated voluntarily, and the outcomes were self-reported by workers. Given all that, the experts encouraged future randomized, government-backed research.
Still, the apparent impact of the study seems to bolster researchers' conclusions. According to co-author Wen Fan, an associate professor of sociology at Boston College, over 90% of companies opted to keep the four-day workweek after the trial.
In coverage of the study published by Boston College, both Fan and her co-author and colleague in Boston, Juliet Schor, noted how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted conversations about working conditions, including the length of the workweek.
"This would've been a difficult sell pre-Covid—it would've struck a lot of people as pie-in-the-sky, and not feasible for companies," said Schor. "But the pandemic created such levels of stress and burnout, and led many employees to say, 'I want to live my life differently,' and this created more of a space for reimagining work—and, as part of that, the four-day week."
Noting that the "traditional" 40-hour, in-office model is still dominant in many places, Fan said: "Social change is always difficult, especially when it comes to challenging the deep-seated institutional logics dictating how, when, and where we work. Let's hope we don't waste the crisis of Covid in terms of the profound workplace innovations it has precipitated."
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In what has been described as a "barrage of attacks on workers," the U.S. Department of Labor under President Donald Trump is planning to overhaul dozens of rules that protect workers from exploitation and wage theft.
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According to an analysis released Tuesday by labor policy experts at the Century Foundation—senior fellows Julie Su and Rachel West and director of economy and jobs Andrew Stettner—most of the changes "reverse critical standards that ensure workers get a just day's pay and come home healthy and safe."
In one of the most sweeping changes, the department plans to reverse a 2013 rule that extended minimum wage and overtime protections to home healthcare workers.
These workers, who care for elderly and other medically frail individuals, already make less than $17 an hour on average.
Stettner told Common Dreams that the changes will "suppress wages" and allow agencies to "put the screws on workers to work 50- or 60-hour weeks."
The Trump administration is also rolling back a Biden-era rule that banned bosses from paying subminimum wages to disabled employees.
This discriminatory practice has been on the wane due to state-level bans in 15 states. But in the absence of a federal ban, nearly 40,000 employees—most of whom have intellectual disabilities—still received less than the federal minimum wage as of 2024.
The Century Foundation report says that by ending the rule, the Trump administration would be once again "relegating workers with disabilities to jobs that pay as little as pennies per hour."
The department is also taking a hatchet to workers' rights and safety. Another major change it proposed would do away with protections for seasonal migrant farmworkers under the H-2A visa program who raise complaints about wage and hour violations.
It was commonplace for farm owners to take advantage of these seasonal employees, whose legal status was tied to their work, and who therefore risked deportation if they lost their jobs.
Cases of exploitation, however, declined to an all-time low after the Biden administration introduced the rule, which banned employers from firing, disciplining, or otherwise retaliating against workers who attempted to participate in collective bargaining.
"These reforms protected the rights of farmworkers in the H-2A program to speak out individually and collectively against mistreatment and prevented employers from arbitrarily firing them from their jobs," the report says.
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