Tuesday 15 September 2009

Scrapping Trident: The Conservative Thing To Do

Today's Telegraph piece, on which comments are welcome over there:

Far from representing national pride or independence, our nuclear weapons programme has only ever represented the wholesale subjugation of Britain’s defence capability to a foreign power.

That power maintains no less friendly relations with numerous other countries, almost none of which have nuclear weapons. Like radiological, chemical and biological weapons, nuclear weapons are morally repugnant simply in themselves. They offer not the slightest defence against a range of loosely knit, if at all connected, terrorist organisations pursuing a range of loosely knit, if at all connected, aims in relation to a range of countries while actually governing no state. Where would any such organisation keep nuclear weapons in the first place?

Furthermore, the possession of nuclear weapons serves to convey to terrorists and their supporters that Britain wishes to “play with the big boys”, thereby contributing to making Britain a target for the terrorist activity against which such weapons are defensively useless. It is high time for Britain to grow up. Britain’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council could not be taken away without British consent, and so does not depend in any way on her possession of nuclear weapons; on the contrary, the world needs and deserves a non-nuclear permanent member of that Council.

Most European countries do not have nuclear weapons, and nor does Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Are these therefore in greater danger? On the contrary, the London bombings of 7 July 2005 were attacks on a country with nuclear weapons, while the attacks of 11 September 2001 were against the country with by far the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

The only “nuclear power” in the Middle East is Israel. Is Israel the most secure state in the Middle East? It is mind-boggling to hear people go on about Iran, whose President is in any case many years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and in any case only wants one (if he does) to use against the only Middle Eastern country that already has them. What does any of this have to do with us?

Numerous Tories with relevant experience – Anthony Head, Peter Thorneycroft, Nigel Birch, Aubrey Jones – were sceptical about, or downright hostile towards, British nuclear weapons in the Fifties and Sixties. In March 1964, while First Lord of the Admiralty and thus responsible for Polaris, George Jellicoe suggested that Britain might pool her nuclear deterrent with the rest of Nato. Enoch Powell denounced the whole thing as not just anything but independent in practice, but also immoral in principle. The rural populist John G Diefenbaker, who opposed official bilingualism in Canada’s English-speaking provinces, and who campaigned for his flag to remain the Canadian Red Ensign with the Union Flag in its corner, also kept JFK’s nukes off Canadian soil.

Gaitskell’s Campaign for Democratic Socialism explicitly supported the unilateral renunciation of Britain’s nuclear weapons, and the document Policy for Peace, on which Gaitskell eventually won his battle at the 1961 Labour Conference, stated: “Britain should cease the attempt to remain an independent nuclear power, since that neither strengthens the alliance, nor is it now a sensible use of our limited resources.”

Peter Mandelson has issued a call to be “wise spenders, not big spenders”, and “Effective State social democrats, not Big State social democrats”. “Social Democrat” means something completely different to someone with his Communist background, but the present point is this: there could not be bigger and more unwise spending, or a more ineffective example of the “Big State”, than nuclear weapons in general and Trident in particular.

Diverting enormous sums of money towards public services, towards the relief of poverty at home and abroad, and towards paying off our national debt, precisely by reasserting control over our own defence capability, would represent a most significant step towards One Nation politics, with an equal emphasis on the One and on the Nation. It is what Disraeli would have done.

5 comments:

  1. Break Dancing Jesus15 September 2009 at 16:08

    The closet high tory of the provinces indeed.

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  2. If you only new...

    Keep watching that space over the next week or so and you will.

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  3. Britain updating Trident is a bit like Newcastle United and Leeds United in the Premiership. Bankrupt.
    Keeping up with the Nuclear Jones' is juvenile. Yet strangely the Tories are the only party who can do it.
    If you have a reputation for getting up early, you can lie in bed all day. Therefore the Tories have the reputation on Defence and Labour perceived as a bit "iffy" therefore Labour cannot be SEEN to be anti Defence.
    Just like margaret Thatcher sold out the Rhodesian kith and kin and John Major was negotiating with the Irish Republican Army.

    Nuclear weapons are completely useless in Afghanistan. So for that matter are the helicopters. The British taxpayer have been sold pups for years by the MOD and their partners in crime in the Arms Industry.
    The notion that British soldiers dont have body armour or transport makes sense until you see the Taliban wearing turbans and riding mules.

    The basic idea of terrorism is to turn your enemys assets into liabilities........tube stations, airports, planes, Twin Towers etc

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  4. Eisenhower (an old pro, of course) had it right when he denounced the military-industrial complex. Ours is just as bad. At least, in fact.

    And you are right. Only the Tories can do this. Likewise, if the Tories had tried flogging off the schools and hospitals to assorted funny money operations, then all hell would have broken loose. It took Labour to get away with that.

    Still, at least scrapping Trident would be a good thing in itself, and the Tories could point to the figures whom I list here. Labour can't say anything like that about its fire sale of public services.

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  5. In your own words over there, "For writing this article, a regular irritiant over on my blog has today called me a High Tory as if there were no greater insult. Well, if this is the definition, then guilty as charged."

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