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Trident

There is no doubt that nuclear weapons are the greatest menace to life on this planet. Climate change is an immense concern, but as was shown in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film, ““An Inconvenient Truth””, at last week’s European Union conference, and by this week’s Bill, with effort it can be contained and even reversed. The effect of nuclear explosions, on the other hand, is permanent and irreversible. I have paid my respects at the peace memorial at Hiroshima, where descendents of the original victims still pay the price of one day’s folly. I have seen the Japanese city of Kokura, the intended target of the second atom bomb. When cloud prevented the bomb from being dropped there, the United States bomber crew, thinking it a pity to waste it, dropped it on Nagasaki instead, causing hundreds of thousands of immediate casualties and indefinite trauma from fall-out. The Chernobyl explosion made lamb meat uneatable in Cumbria. If the nuclear power station at Three Mile Island had gone up, the effect of the so-called China syndrome would have caused irremediable havoc, not only in the United States but throughout the world. When Neil Kinnock placed me in charge of the defence review after Labour’s election defeat in 1987, it became speedily clear to me that the menace to Britain and the world of nuclear weapons could not be solved simply by Britain getting rid of Trident. There were then four other proclaimed nuclear weapons powers, each of them a threat to the entire planet, together with Israel, which has never admitted to possessing nuclear weapons but is universally known to have them. The only hope of reducing and eventually ridding the world of this threat was not by self-congratulatory unilateral action but by international negotiation. That is why my policy document, ““A power for good””, said:"““It will…be the policy of the Labour government to use all effective means to reduce nuclear armaments and to move towards the objective of a nuclear-free world.""The Labour Party believes that fully verifiable international agreements, achieved by negotiation with and between nuclear-armed powers, are the best way of achieving those ends.””" That is why, when the Labour party’s national executive approved that document, Neil Kinnock declared, when he discussed this issue with world leaders, that"““they were totally uncomprehending that we should want to get rid of a nuclear missile system without getting the elimination of nuclear weapons on other sides, without getting anything for it in return.””"