Two weeks ago the Peaton Peace Pirates, a Trident Ploughshares affinity group, sent letters sent to representatives in Edinburgh of the ‘P5’ nuclear armed states, requesting a meeting to share their alarm about the heightened threat of nuclear conflict. The letter also invited them to a screening of the War Game, the 1965 film about a nuclear attack and its aftermath.
The only reply to the letter was an invitation for two of us to attend a meeting with the Russian Consul-General. On Thursday 21st February our delegates Janet Fenton and Brian Quail had a good session with the Russian Consul General Andrey A. Pritsepov and his attache, Third Secretary Maxim Gurov.
Janet said: “The meeting was civil and extremely courteous, Brian opening by greeting him in Russian and giving him white roses to represent Scotland’s democratic deficit. We had quite a chat over an hour or maybe a wee bit more, thanked him for seeing us, some discussion around the other P5 not doing so, Scotland as opposed to the UK, he was very warm and said his job included seeing ‘influential people’ as well as UK gov, and understood the position of Scotland. We explained about our intentions arranging the visits and shared our hopes for the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which we gave copies of to each of them, Doomsday clock, responsibility of the P5, Russian NFU policy and he acknowledged the responsibility of the P5 to keep the world safe, was very critical of Trump and spoke of Putin’s responsibility for protecting millions of people from US aggression and huge military expenditure. Russia’s No First Use nuclear weapon policy extends to IBMs despite NATO policy, Russian losses and collective memories of WW2, and he had prepared a paper outlining the Russian position on the INF and other aspects of US/Treaty position. We spoke about possibility of observer status for Russia at the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) after its entry into force and spoke about how ordinary people all want peace, shared the message we had at the NAE NUKES rally from Ekaterina Mikhaylenko from the Urals University about the views of ordinary Russian and,we told him about students I had seen this week and Extinction Rebellion. Importantly he agreed that any nuclear detonation would initiate planetary suicide, and also that he would be happy to come to a War Game screening and discussion if any of the other P5 would and was happy to speak at events as long as he was not being set up as the ‘bad’ Russian. He agreed that peace could come about through people being willing to talk to each other. He undertook to pass everything back to his government and hoped I could speak to the Russian permanent mission at the UN when I am there for the NPT Preparatory Conference.“
On Monday 18th February the Peaton Peace Pirates attempted to call on the US, French and Chinese 
Consulates in Edinburgh and the Scotland Office as the representative office of the British State, in order ask them to engage urgently in diplomatic moves to defuse the current critically dangerous situation.
Jean Oliver described the event:
“Supported by members of Scottish CND, Edinburgh CND and Edinburgh Yes, and wearing fleeces marked ‘TPNW monitoring and compliance squad’, we went equipped with notices of non-compliance to issue to the Consulates (“This state is in non-compliance with UN nuclear weapon treaties” and “Warning: toxic diplomacy”).
At each location the police prevented us from speaking to anyone inside, by insisting that all the buildings remain closed during our visit, so we had no alternative but to paste our non-compliance notices to the doors, walls and pavements of the buildings, along with other messages done in chalk, whilst reading out sections of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017) through a megaphone. The notices were quickly removed by the Police, with repeated threats that we would be arrested if we pasted up any more, so we did but we weren’t…. We ended each visit with a rousing rendition of the song ‘Freedom Come All Ye’.
At the French Consulate we were intrigued to be told that we weren’t allowed to mark the building as that would be in contravention of Article 22 of the Geneva Convention! We replied that we were very keen on the Geneva Convention but wondered why the police were upholding this Article and neglecting others? – later research showed that the police person had actually meant the Vienna Convention.”
The group will now write again to the four non-respondent representatives, inviting them to a screening of the War Game.