UNA-UK joins UNA Edinburgh to pay tribute to long-standing and much respected member of the Association
Dr Alec F Gaines, who died on March 5, aged 83, was an internationalist, with a lifetime commitment to working for a safer and fairer world, and for better understandings between peoples, through education, activism, and lobbying, most recently on the issues of disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation.
Alec was an academic by profession, and worked for most of his career in university departments in Turkey and Thailand. To him, his remit was not only teaching and research, but also to establish these institutions and facilitate their successful development into internationally recognised centres.
A tireless campaigner for a safer and peaceful world, and particularly for nuclear disarmament, Alec was actively involved in the first Aldermaston marches in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was also inspired by sharing a platform at a public meeting at Birmingham University with Philip Noel Baker, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1959 for his work in helping to establish the United Nations and donated the prize money to the United Nations Association. These two themes came together after Alec returned to the UK and came to Edinburgh, where he became a driving force in the United Nations Association in Edinburgh, as secretary and in later years as Convener of the Branch's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Working Group.
In this capacity, and on behalf of UNA Edinburgh, Alec organised a series of conferences, mostly hosted at the Scottish Parliament with the willing (and greatly appreciated) support and participation of MSPs. The format of Alec’s Conferences was distinctive, reflecting his guiding principles: they must be a forum for learning, for active participation of civil society, involving a wide range of international and expert speakers, to educate and inform both experts and civil society participants through their interaction and listening to each other. While civil society organisations like UNA cannot speak for governments, they can do their best to influence government thinking and actions. To this end, conference Proceedings or Resolutions were circulated widely, especially to MPs, Ministers, MSPs, diplomats; Alec also wrote persistent and persuasive letters to a wide range of them.
One of Alec’s particular gifts was to anticipate significant upcoming international and UN events, or situations, so that the conference outcomes could inform or feed into subsequent major international conferences or discussions.
For instance, in early 2008 Alec invited members of UNA Tehran to visit Edinburgh for a mini-conference with UNA Edinburgh, mostly on nuclear and disarmament issues. Returning home via London the UNA Iran delegation met with the President of UNA UK, Lord David Hannay, formerly UK Ambassador to the UN. He said afterwards, ‘It was good to be able to sit down with our visitors from UNA-Iran and to discuss the whole range of issues between Iran and the UN in a spirit of openness and cooperation’.
The following year (late 2009) Alec was part of a small UNAE delegation visiting Tehran, Shiraz and Isfahan. In Tehran he gave a presentation on nuclear non-proliferation to representatives of NGOs. His fluent and humorous identification of key issues in the 'nuclear energy - nuclear weapons' debate was stunningly effective, prompting many relevant questions and producing, from him, incisive answers. It was only later we learnt that the translator for his session was the President's man! We like to think that Alec played a small part in the current improved relations between Iran and other countries.
To the end of his life Alec remained in touch with Iran, and regularly circulated informative and relative extracts from ‘Iran Review’.
These exchanges also led to the participation of students from Iran in the major Model UN General Assembly events held annually at George Watsons College in Edinburgh.
In recent years Alec organised, on behalf of UNA Edinburgh Branch, a number of major conferences at the Scottish Parliament, all of international significance.
A Workshop on ‘Trident and the NPT’, (January 2007) chaired by Sam Daws (UNA UK), with a keynote speech by Sir David Hannay, anticipated the Review of Trident.
The April 2009 conference on ‘Civil Society and the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT)’, held in conjunction with the World Federation of United Nations Associations (WFUNA), was timed to anticipate the 2010 NPT Review. The final conference communiqué was adopted unanimously by the UNA-UK Annual Conference, and taken forward (by another member of UNA Edinburgh) to WFUNA's triennial Plenary Conference later that year in Seoul. The substantive (and substantial) Motion proposed jointly by UNA UK, Ireland and USA was adopted into WFUNA's work plan for the 2010 NPT Review at the UN in New York.
Alec organised another very successful and well attended Conference at the Scottish Parliament in November 2010 on ‘NATO’s New Strategic Concept and Global Zero’. Speakers included the Chair of UNA-UK, Lord Hannay; the former Defence Secretary, Lord Des Browne; the Russian and Turkish Ambassadors to the UK, and the US Principal Officer to Scotland. The report was, as usual, circulated to a wide variety of relevant parties, including the UN, NATO and the UK Government.
One of the outcomes of the 2010 NPT Review was the intention to hold a follow-up UN Conference later in 2012 in Helsinki for States Parties to advance towards a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East (a proposal consistently advocated by Iran since 1974). Again anticipating a major conference, Alec worked incredibly hard to organise a precursor conference in May 2012, again at the Scottish Parliament, on "A Middle East Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction". We believe this was one of - perhaps the only - civil society international conference in the world to address this issue. The conference was chaired by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, with participants including ambassadors, MPs, MSPs and NGOs, and civil society contributors from Israel, Palestine (Gaza) and Iran (the latter by internet link, in the absence of visas). Once again a full report was produced and circulated, but to our great regret the UN Conference met with more organisational (and political) problems than Alec encountered, and to date it has not yet happened.
Alec was the main driving force behind UNA Edinburgh’s November 2013 conference, organised jointly with CND, on “Building Trust Between Nations”. Around 100 delegates attended and the speakers included Humza Yousaf MSP, Minister for External Affairs; Ambassador Alexander Kramarenko, the Russian Embassy; and Ambassador Witold Sobkow, the Embassy of the Republic of Poland. UNAE plans to invite them back again next year.
Alec campaigned persistently in support of the International Arms Trade Treaty, and numerous other treaties and proposals to end the production, proliferation and existence of nuclear weapons in particular, and weapons of mass destruction in whatever form. He was a prolific and tireless lobbyist for disarmament and peace, writing regularly to a wide network of MPs, MSPs, diplomats, Government Departments, NGOs, and activists in other UNAs throughout the world.
In his last email, circulated just four days before his death, Alec drew our attention to the report of an international conference held in Mexico on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons;
he never gave up his lifelong dedication to working for peace and disarmament.
In recognition of a life of hard work in support of the UN and UNA, Alec was awarded UNA-UK’s Award for Distinguished Service in June 2012.
Alec could have been be justly proud of all he achieved through the enormous amount of work and dedication he put in to conferences and lobbying, but he was actually very self-effacing. Always very reluctant to accept the credit or thanks for the fruits of all his hard work, he preferred to deflect any praise to others. This was the other side of a man who would speak passionately on the importance of disarmament, encouraging - demanding - that the urgency of his message be heard. Although we could see that Alec was getting frail, it is still a shock to know that he has gone. If he were here, he would be telling us not to waste our time eulogising him!
Alec’s example remains as an inspiration and challenge to us, to pick up the baton he has now laid down, and to continue to run with it.
UNA-UK would like to thank UNA Edinburgh and UNA Scotland for preparing this tribute to Dr Alec Gaines
