THE TENTH season of the Hexham Debates on justice, peace and democracy kicked off last weekend with a talk by Prof. Peter Stone, of Newcastle University.

During a talk entitled Protecting cultural heritage during armed conflict, he discussed whether we should even be thinking about protecting property when lives were at stake.

The next talk, given by Dr Timmon Wallis, who works for Quaker Peace & Social Witness and teaches peace studies at Leeds Beckett University, will take place on February 11.

The nine nuclear states continue to insist that nuclear weapons are ‘essential’ for their security. The 186 states that do not have them (and have promised never to obtain them) are now committed to negotiating a new international treaty that will ban nuclear weapons.

Dr Wallis will ask: The Nuclear Ban Treaty – will it make a difference?

On March 18, it will be the turn of Dr Hari Shukla, chairman of the North-East Centre for Transformative Education and Research.

Drawing on his experience as Newcastle’s director of the Racial Equality Council, Dr Shukla will describe some of his many successes in promoting understanding and respect between the 142 nationalities in the city.

However, he will also shine a light on the increase in racial harassment that has taken place since the EU referendum.

‘A multi-faith community is an asset and not a liability,’ he will say.

Ann Feltham, parliamentary co-ordinator for the Campaign Against Arms Trade, will give a talk on April 22 entitled The UK and Saudi Arabia: fuelling war and repression.

She will posit that Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most authoritarian and repressive regimes while being the UK’s biggest arms customer, is thereby the source of its most shameful relationship.

Ann Feltham became a supporter of the Campaign Against Arms Trade in 1978, four years after it was set up. She has since developed broad expertise in arms trade issues and has been working on the legal case being brought against the UK Government over arms sales to Saudi, due to be heard in the High Court in February.

On May 6, John Bourton and Daniel Denham, from Veterans For Peace UK, will give a talk provocatively entitled How to turn your child into a killer.

Veterans For Peace UK is a voluntary organisation of ex-services men and women who collectively have served in every war that Britain has fought since the Second World War.

They aim to educate young people about the true nature of military service and war, and hopefully teach them how to resist them through non-violent action.

Hexham Debates stalwart Prof. Paul Rogers, a professor at Bradford University’s Department of Peace Studies, returns on June 10 to talk about the Prospects for a more peaceful world.

How do we best go about using the opportunities before us – and is there even time – to nurture peace?

Hexham’s MP Guy Opperman will wrap this season of debates up on July 8 with a talk on prison reform.

The public does not want custody to be soft, he will say, but if prisons fail to change offenders’ behaviour, they become a short term fix and not a long term solution.

He will show what went wrong with prison regimes in the past, make suggestions for future policies and assess how things are changing.

Sponsored by Northumbrians for Peace and Hexham Quakers, the Hexham Debates take place on Saturday mornings between 11am and 12.30pm at the St Mary’s Centre on Hencotes.

Admission is free, but there is a retiring collection.