Misguided weapon

Ellie Keen — Thu, 08 May 2008 22:47:53 +0000

Thank you Dr Nick Ritchie and Bradford department of peace studies. This new report on Trident is a model of analysis and dissection. Every justification ever produced for spending astronomical sums on yet another generation of British nuclear weapons goes under the magnifying glass and gets dealt with briskly and effectively. The report should find its way onto the desk of every person who is in any way responsible for this policy and also onto the desks of those so far silent about it.

It’s high time that the major development agencies too had something to say about this vast expenditure. Making poverty history means making Trident history too. The millennium goals would be a doddle if Trident money were redirected. Not just poverty abroad but here as well. For instance, dozens of post offices are to close because, we are told, we cannot afford the subsidies. Trident money could keep the entire post office network going for 125 years.

The “we need Trident because the future is uncertain” argument gets fair but robust treatment. By definition, the future, for good or ill, is always uncertain. Tidal waves, asteroids and mad dictators are all possible, but Trident is no answer to any of them. In terms of nuclear threats “our” Trident will increase not reduce dangers. The longer nuclear weapons are around the more likely accident, miscalculation and proliferation into the wrong hands: in fact, there are no “right” hands.

At one or two points I came up with a grunt of disagreement. “In sum nuclear weapons contribute little to British security.” Do they add anything to British security? It seems to me that Sweden, New Zealand, and South Africa (which gave its own up without fanfare) are all safer in terms of international threats than we are here.

There was also the assumption that Britain would go on trying to be the world’s junior policeman. “It is highly likely that the UK will continue to intervene in regional crises over the coming years with conventional military forces.” If we are to do so it must only be with the authority of the UN security council which is itself bound by the terms of the charter.

There is now another study for Ritchie to undertake on an equally important issue. Someone has got to examine the cultural prejudices which lie behind all this. For over 50 years the great British public have been told by all shades of politician that nuclear weapons were the road to security. They were the only way of bringing the second world war to an end. They kept the peace for 40 years. Unless they get into the hands of mad or suicidal people they are quite safe. These are the cultural myths that are just as important as the technical issues.

The UNESCO Courier got it right in 1993. “The problem is that belief systems have been built up to support the idea that they [nuclear weapons] are usable and indeed almost indispensable to international security.” Yet there is now a detailed draft treaty, lodged with but not discussed at the UN, aimed at the elimination of all nuclear weapons everywhere. It covers all the key issues of inspection, verification, criminality and whistleblowing. Maybe there is more interest in it today. Gordon Brown and Des Browne have both recently said that a world free of all nuclear weapons is their ultimate destination. They won’t get there while a massive roadblock labelled Trident sits stubbornly in the way.

Make Nukes History

Alex Doherty — Sat, 28 May 2005 13:13:18 +0000

The Labour Party was heavily involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) during the 1980s when we were organising huge demonstrations against the Cruise and Trident missile systems.

In fact, I used to laugh about the number of Labour MPs who wanted to hold the main banner at the front of those marches. They used to queue up to get their pictures taken with the banner at the assembly point.

Neil Kinnock, who later became leader of the Labour Party, is the one I remember best of all. He made the most impassioned speech about the immorality of nuclear weapons from the stage at Trafalgar Square.

At a grassroots level it was the same. Although, all the main parties were represented in CND, it was assumed that the Labour Party was going to form a government that would actually deliver nuclear disarmament.

The Labour leaders for their part thought we were going to be a winning campaign and they wanted to be in the forefront of it. Many of them had honourable reasons they believed nuclear disarmament was the best thing for the world. But just as they had once queued up to support us, later almost all uniformly abandoned us. Most turned their backs after the 1983 election.

It dawned on all of us that, although we did have overwhelming support from the public in our opposition to US missiles being based in Britain, we did not have overwhelming support for British unilateral nuclear disarmament.

But the Labour leadership was simply not prepared to campaign to change public opinion. Of course, you can campaign very effectively against British nuclear weapons by pointing out how useless they are as a method of defending the country.

There is no state with nuclear weapons that we could possibly fire them at without ensuring total devastation for ourselves. But neither the Labour Party, nor the trade unions, went in for that sort of public education.

In 1986 the MP Gerald Kaufman produced a document for the Labour Party that said that Britain should keep its nuclear weapons because they only existed simply for negotiation purposes. Kinnock was by then the leader of the Labour Party and he backed Kaufman. And, of course, there never were any negotiations.

In order to polarise the argument, they characterised CND as only wanting unilateral nuclear disarmament. We never believed that disarmament could only happen unilaterallywe were in favour of all types of disarmament. But we werent helped by many of the old Labour MPs and other campaigners who used the word unilateral like it was a tablet of stone.

The Labour Partys move away from nuclear disarmament didnt demoralise the leadership of CND, but it did affect our membership. We had about 100,000 members and we have dropped to about 30,000 today. Many people felt that we werent going to beat the government on this issue and moved on to something else. I always felt, that as a campaign, we were in for the long haul.

But just as Labour abandoned us, many of us abandoned Labour. Certainly, New Labour is not the party that I once joined its a privatising party, its a party of big business. It has slick PR people working for it, but an awful lot of the membership have left. Many people feel disenfranchised and frustrated at how unfair our electorial system is.

Now we are in a ridiculous position where our government is at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York, saying that it believes in the abolition of nuclear weapons, but at the same time talking about arming ourselves with a whole new generation of nuclear weapons.

Tony Blair thinks that nuclear weapons maintain the image of Britain as a great power. But what message does this send out to countries that want to become nuclear powers themselves?

The hypocrisy surrounding nuclear proliferation is as big as a bus. Take a look at Iran. It is doing nothing that it is not entitled to do under international law. It is doing nothing different to the way that Britain moved from nuclear power to producing nuclear weapons.

There are still supporters of a nuclear free world in the Labour Party Tony Benn, Alan Simpson, Jeremy Corbyn and many others. And perhaps, now that Labour no longer has an enormous majority, it will have to rethink some of its policies.

I hope that some of the Labour MPs will take up the campaign against renewing Trident and for an end to all nuclear weapons. But to create the pressure of such action we need a much more broad based campaign.

We should be united with the anti-poverty groups and the environmental groups when they say make poverty history. We should be with them saying make nuclear weapons history and make war history.

Bruce Kent is vice-president of CND. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference is currently taking place at the United Nations. For more information go to http//:www.cnduk.org

Bruce Kent | ukwatch.net

Misguided weapon

Make Nukes History