Peace activist Bruce Kent joined local MSP Dave Thompson in the Alexandra Hotel, Fort William on 13th May to hold a public meeting against renewal of the Trident Nuclear missiles.
Dave said “At a time of austerity we should not be wasting money on an immoral and expensive nuclear missile system which is also draining money away from our conventional forces. Independence will ensure the end for Trident as the rest of the UK has nowhere to put it when we ask them to take it away."
Full speech:
Thank you Anne and a welcome to Bruce Kent who I last shared a platform with in Leakey’s bookshop in Inverness a few years ago. In church this morning the sermon was about "What gets you out of bed? What fires you up? Is it Jesus?
Well, yes, but it is also injustice and mass murder which he would not, I am certain, approve off and Trident Nuclear missiles are all about mass murder. That is why, as a Christian, I am happy to attend this Scottish CND meeting on a Sunday evening.
In Scotland today I think there is just cause for optimism, because, when I envision Scotland’s future I see great potential and great opportunity for us as a nation to choose what is good and right. In just over two years, we will be given the chance to realise our hopes and dreams for Scotland’s future and, when we have voted in the referendum, we can choose who we want to be, what we want to do and where we want to go.
The 2014 Independence referendum is about more than just standing on our own two feet, and managing our own affairs. It is also about harnessing the potential of our nation and shaping the future, and there are few issues as pressing and urgent as Trident. The Trident weapons system is unjustifiable, immoral and grossly expensive. We should not be spending our money on weapons of mass destruction, especially in times of austerity.
One of the great prizes of Independence, for all nuclear disarmers in the four nations of the UK, will be the consequence for the UK’s Trident programme. In essence, it will be stopped in its tracks. For decades, anti-nuclear has been the heart and soul of the Scottish National Party and the 2011 manifesto made reference to the SNP’s continued opposition to UK plans for new nuclear power stations and nuclear weapons.
As recently as March, this policy was re-iterated at our Spring conference which unanimously passed a motion committing to the soonest possible timetable for removal of the nuclear weapons system following Independence. That is the bright future I am talking about.
Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland and leader of the party was himself adamant in January when he said, "It is inconceivable that an independent nation of 5.25 million people would tolerate the continued presence of weapons of mass destruction on its soil."
In contrast, the UK Government is spending billions of pounds of Scottish tax-payers money to pay for renewal of Trident, despite majority Scottish opinion being opposed to nuclear power and weapons. Anti-nuclear sentiment in Scotland has always been pretty strong, but I believe it is heating up.
It always surprises me when I compare the nature of the political debate on Trident in Scotland to that in Westminster. It seems to me that in Scotland, the only argument for Trident that has even a semblance of support is that it creates jobs, whereas in Westminster they believe that the world will come crashing down around their feet if they so much as discuss the possibility of nuclear disarmament.
In Scotland, we’re just not convinced by Westminster’s arguments for nuclear, and that has been the case since 1961 when the first Polaris submarines arrived in Britain and were sent to the Holy Loch. There was nationwide opposition and Independence will give Scots the chance to not only make their opposition known, but to do something about it.
Doing something about it’ essentially means waving goodbye to the two nuclear sites in Scotland - the Faslane naval base on the Clyde and Coulport on Loch Long. But, the impact that this will have on the United Kingdom’s Trident programme is catastrophic. CND UK published a paper in February entitled ‘Nowhere to Go’, and that is the truth of the matter.
Trident has nowhere to go when Scots say goodbye and this is one of the major reasons Westminster wants to hang on to Scotland. At the very least it will cost the UK Government billions of pounds to move Trident. In the current economic environment, the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition Government is cutting anything it can lay its hands on from pensions to child benefit and so it would be completely unacceptable for them to splash out on relocating Trident as it is, indeed, to renew it.
Admiral Lord West asked a rhetorical question in a radio interview in December last year. He said, "Would this [meaning Scottish independence] effectively lead us into unilateral disarmament because the costs of replicating the ship lift, the explosive handling jetty, the big storage facility at Coulport, would be billions and we would have to think of where that was put?"
The second insoluble question is where would they put it? In 1963, when writing up the short list of potential sites for Trident, all options in England, Wales, France and the USA were rejected. Whoever said history repeats itself was bang on because a re-examination of each of these potential sites will lead to nothing but rejection yet again.
Furthermore, with growing awareness of environmental issues, there are few who are willing to sacrifice a greenfield site for relocating Trident.
Is the General Secretary of CND, Kate Hudson said "Trident is at a dead end, strategically and economically. Now we can add ‘geographically’ to the list too, as Ministry of Defence sources have confirmed CND’s analysis, that there simply isn’t anywhere else for Trident to go."
While the UK Government and the Ministry of Defence hums and haws about what to do with their Trident programme, in Scotland we’re looking forward to a bright future. The MOD can’t seem to make up its mind whether it will try to force an independent Scotland to hold on to Trident, maybe in exchange for less debt, or whether it will just give up.
But in 2014 we’ll have the independence to choose how to respond to the MOD’s promises or threats, depending on which way they swing. After 2014, the United Kingdom will be dependent on Scottish cooperation if it wants to hold onto Faslane and Coulport and Scotland has, time after time, said that it will not cooperate when it comes to Trident.
London might offer to pay any price, but we’re not looking for money, we’re looking for freedom from nuclear weapons, and we don’t want to be a dumping ground any longer.
So, independence means that the UK will have to scrap the Trident nuclear weapons system, and will not be able to replace it. It is not quite global nuclear disarmament, but it’s a start.
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