Winchester City Council’s Mayoralty is part of Mayors for Peace, which each year commemorates the anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima by an atomic bomb on 6 August 1945 – this year is the 81st anniversary. Winchester joined in 2019, when Eleanor Bell was Mayor. Every year since then a gathering has been held at Abbey House. The Mayor of Hiroshima distributes a “declaration of peace” to each Mayor, on the morning of 6 August Winchester Rotary was represented by President Nick Bell, Deborah Macartney and Gill Russell.
The Abbey House occasion was led by Paul Williams of SGI-UK, and Winchester’s current Mayor, Councillor Jamie Scott welcomed everyone. Cllr Kelsie Learney then read the Hiroshima read the declaration and a short archive film was shown.. Presentations then followed from representatives of the several organisations invited. We were honoured to be included again, and Nick described some of our projects, on the theme of peace and conflict resolution.
There were presentations from the University of Winchester, PeaceJam UK (represented by Caroline Millman and Luke Addison), SWVG and Creative Voices for Peace. Members of the Winchester Ukrainian Cultural Association brought greetings with Lala Smaglova bringing the event to a close with a traditional Ukrainian folksong.
More photos can be seen here.
Hampshire Chronicle article here.
