Tributes paid after peace campaigner, John Ainslie, dies

from Sunday Herald, 23 October 2016

Warm tributes from across the political divide have been paid to John Ainslie, the veteran co-ordinator of the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (SCND), who died on Friday after a long battle with cancer.

The SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Greens, socialists, trade unionists, journalists and fellow campaigners were among the many who hailed him as a quiet and unassuming legend of the peace movement.

Ainslie, who joined SCND as a full-time worker in 1992, has been a hugely influential figure in nuclear policy. His numerous expert reports and his detailed grasp of nuclear technology won him respect and admiration from peers around the world, and he was often quoted in the Sunday Herald and elsewhere.

He was also an active campaigner. He buzzed the first Trident submarine to arrive in the Clyde in a canoe, drove around Glasgow in the early hours of the morning following nuclear bomb convoys and addressed countless meetings and protests.

“My thoughts are with John's family and Scottish CND,” tweeted Sturgeon. “John was such a committed campaigner against nuclear weapons.”