WELL done to the peace campaigners (Oxford Mail, August 4) who marked the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan 66 years ago. The Donnington Bridge event reminds us all that weapons of mass destruction must never be used again. Well over 100,000 people were burnt to a cinder in 1945 and tens of thousands more perished from slow radiation sickness. We now know that Japan was ready to negotiate for peace even before these terrible weapons were dropped. Britain can no longer afford to keep these useless, immoral and terrible weapons.

Renewing the Polaris system will cost £100 billion that should instead be spent on schools, hospitals and preventing famines.

We can’t afford them, they do not defend us from suicide bombers and, if ever used again, they could end human life on our planet once and for all. Nuclear warheads continue to trundle up and down the A34 between the factory in Berkshire and the base in Scotland.

JOHN TANNER (Labour Cllr, Board Member for a Cleaner, Greener Oxford