Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths has condemned last weekend’s G7 summit as a “disgusting display of breath-taking hypocrisy, double-speak and dishonesty”.
He told his party’s Political Committee on Tuesday that the decision to hold the summit and a “sham peace ceremony” in Hiroshima, Japan, was an insult to the survivors and bereaved relatives of the city destroyed by a US atomic bomb in 1945.
Their huge protest against the summit on Sunday was largely ignored by the mass media in Britain, with the exception of the Morning Star.
“All but one of the seven leading capitalist states represented in Hiroshima either possess nuclear weapons (the US, Britain and France) or play host to them (Germany, Italy and Japan) and refuse to sign the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that aims for multilateral nuclear disarmament”, Mr Griffiths declared.
“Six of these states including Canada are members of NATO, an expansionist military alliance led by the US which has a ‘first use’ policy when it comes to the atomic mass murder of civilians”, he pointed out.
At the summit, US President Biden promised an extra $300m in military to special guest President Zelensky of Ukraine, on top of the $38bn pledged so far, while the UK has pledged £5bn including long-range cruise missiles and the EU around €6bn via its European Peace Facility.
In the face of these realities, the CP leader poured scorn on the post-summit communiques committing the G7 countries to peace and disarmament, commenting that “in Western-speak, peace means war and disarmament means rearmament”.
NATO member states are all increasing their military expenditure, most of them towards a target of 2.5 per cent of GDP which the US already exceeds.
“Workers and their families in Britain and across Europe struggling to meet rocketing food, energy and housing costs should challenge the priority their rulers give to militarism and war”, Robert Griffiths urged.
The CP political committee agreed to send a message of congratulations to the big Japanese Communist Party on its leading role in the anti-nuclear protest movement in their country.