NATO: wrong – Trident: gone!
As many of you will know the SNP recently changed
long-standing policy and adopted a position of an independent Scotland being,
or remaining if you wish to follow the EU analogy, a member of NATO.
I’m against nuclear weapons. No matter how you dress them
up. I always have been and always will be. The sooner Trident, a weapons system
of mass destruction and murder, is removed from our country the better.
So
that’s where I come from.
You can disagree if you like, arguing that “we” need them to
deter some undefined threat from some undefined source, but I’m afraid as far
as I’m concerned their use cannot be justified. They didn’t stop the airliners
in 9/11 and there just isn’t any other credible threat elsewhere.
I’m old enough to remember the Cold War. Over a third of my
adult life has been spent under its shadow. I actually remember, unless it’s
some figment of my imagination, having drills in Primary School about what to
do if the air raid sirens (which were only decommissioned in 1993) went off. We
were told to crouch down under our desks in the same position you see in the
airline safety brochures when you fly anywhere: precious good that would have
done us with the Leuchars airbase a mere 7-8 miles across the Tay!
And make no mistake about it Dundee as Scotland’s 4th
city with its port facilities would have been on the list of targets for those
incoming missiles of mass destruction and wanton slaughter.
Glasgow too, where I now live, as a major population centre
and with at the time its extensive ship building industry would have been wiped
from the map with as much ease as you might swat a fly. Easier in fact – unlike
the fly, a city can’t get out of the way.
As a student I remember going to see a film in the students
union – almost certainly The Day After, released to a TV audience of 100
million in the USA in 1983. It’s well worth a watch if you are in any doubt as
to the outcome of a nuclear exchange. Scroll forward and watch from around the 50 minute mark if
you just want to see those effects, but the film itself, although long, is very
watchable.
So taking all that into account I don’t see the benefit of
an independent Scotland being in an organisation which would still permit the
FIRST use of nuclear weapons. Not retaliation: the FIRST use.
But isn't everyone else is in it you may ask? You’d be wrong to think so.
Many European countries such as Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and
Austria are not. They participate in the Partnership for Peace Programme but are not NATO members.
I’ve always believed that independence for Scotland will
give us a chance to be different. We already have health and education systems diverging widely
from the rest of the UK and there is no reason why we should go down the same
road as other nations.
A couple of statistics I came across whilst researching this
blog took my breath away.
The first is that the combined military spending of the NATO
countries makes up 70% of the world’s defence spending. The second is that the
percentage of GDP spent on defence by the UK is second only to the USA and at
2.6% is a full 0.5% (and that’s a lot of money) ahead of the country in 3rd
place.
Who are we trying to kid here? Why are we spending so much
of our money in this manner?
A quick read of some of the comments on any SNP/Independence
stories in the likes of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and even sadly the
Guardian will soon reveal the answer.
Down south they still haven’t grasped the fact that 2/3 of
the globe is no longer coloured pink and that there is no British Empire.
There is of course another way. The way an independent
Scotland, no matter its political make up, would undoubtedly follow. A small compact defence
force, comparable with the likes of Norway and Denmark, nations of similar
sizes, available to the UN for peacekeeping and humanitarian missions.
But to participate in NATO in its present form is simply
morally wrong.
So for all those reasons I think the SNP got it wrong at
their conference, perhaps making the decisions for what it thought were all the
right reasons, but still wrong. In all my years of campaigning not ONCE has
anyone on a doorstep asked me what our policy on NATO was.
For that matter the two MSPs who resigned from the party
afterwards got it wrong too. They were elected on a party list not an
individual platform. The policy of the party they represent has changed. Get
over it, admit you made a mistake, ask to come back and let’s move forward
together. There are mechanisms for changing party policy – it was done once and
it can be changed again. But not this side of independence.
Moving to Trident and the nuclear submarine “fleet” (another
post-Imperial hangover to call four submarines a fleet of course) with a
projected cost of £20 BILLION – at 2006/7 prices. Faslane, their base, is of
course another reason Glasgow would have been obliterated in a nuclear strike.
Post-independence these submarines would of course be
inherited by “rumpUK “or whatever they wish to call themselves. I have no
inherent problem with the remainder of the UK pursuing this make-believe
Imperial identity, but if it comes complete with a Scottish dartboard, bullseye
Faslane, well they can have that all to themselves. The Thames would seem a
nice new home for them – it would certainly concentrate a few minds down south
on the matter as the awful truth of the matter is that all three rumpUK
political parties are in favour of spending that £20 billion.
.jpg)
How many hospitals and schools could that money build? How
many much needed homes? How many jobs could an investment of that scale
produce? Put it however you like it’s a scandalous amount of money.
Going back to the jobs and you often read, usually with
Jackie Baillie’s name writ large in the article, much like the rest of her you
might think, that thousands and thousands of jobs are at risk if Trident is
either scrapped or moved south.
Not so – an article published in the press this week,
incidentally hot on the tail of another one suggesting Scotland’s defence
spending would be over £1 billion LESS than our share of the UKs total (largely
but not entirely due to not squandering cash on Trident), gave the lie to that
statistic. 520 jobs directly depend on the nuclear submarine fleet.
520 jobs is still 520 jobs. But £1 billion a year is a lot
of money to play about with to create new ones!
Scotland has a chance to take its place in the world – let’s
make it a place we would want our children and grandchildren to grow up in!
