In the first
place, there is a serious question as to whether it’s actually true. It’s one of those things that can never be
known until it’s tested; so I can no more be certain that it isn’t true than he
can be certain that it is. I do seem to
recall, however, that there is some empirical evidence to the contrary, albeit
a long time ago. I’m sure that the
Labour Government elected in 1964 had a manifesto pledge to scrap Trident – it
was one of the things that excited me at the time about the possibility of a
Labour Government.
(They didn’t actually implement the
promise of course. But whether any
government would ever implement such a promise is a rather different question
from the one which Kinnock has raised.)
Secondly, even
supposing that it were true, what does it really tells us? At best it would tell us that if leaders of
all the three major parties reiterate consistently and in unison for fifty
years (with one brief, minor – albeit welcome – aberration under Michael Foot)
that possession of nuclear weapons is essential, and manage to convince the electorate that it's true, then it’s unlikely that the public will change its opinion overnight. That
wouldn’t be an unreasonable conclusion to draw, but it’s a long way short of
what he said. Which came first - public opinion or the insistence of politicians?
There’s a
fundamental logic flaw in the conclusion that he did draw, namely that no party
can ever propose scrapping nuclear weapons because of the climate of opinion
which politicians like himself have done so much to normalise. It amounts to little more than saying that
after telling people one thing for fifty years, you can’t simply tell them that
it wasn’t actually true, and must continue to peddle the same line
indefinitely, because you can only be elected by telling the same old lie.
And thirdly, he
didn’t even mention the question of whether the UK needs or should have nuclear
weapons at all. It’s as if that is
entirely a secondary question to the Labour Party’s need to win elections. Still, I suppose that saying we must build
new nuclear weapons so that Labour can win the election is at least a bit more
honest than the Labour Party’s official position, which is, if I understand it
correctly:
1. Nuclear weapons are bad
2. No country which doesn’t currently
possess them must be allowed to develop them
3. Those countries which do possess them must
negotiate to get rid of them
4. The UK needs to spend £100billion on
new nuclear weapons so that it has something which it can negotiate to get rid
of
Trident renewal
is thus either a £100 billion fling to get Labour elected, or else it’s a very
expensive bargaining chip. Or maybe
both. It’s a depressing lack of
leadership and vision, an inability to imagine that politicians might have any
responsibility to lead rather than follow.
And the issue is a classic example of what went wrong for Labour as a
would-be party of peace, progress and justice.
1 comment:
John
Can I suggest that Baron Kinnock reads Protect and Survive and then explain how a young Welsh man voluntered to spend 24 hrs underground in a bunker somewhere in South Wales during a nuclear attack on Cardiff Newport and Bristol fortified by a homemade pack of sandwiches and a thermos flask and during this cataclysmic event was required to leave the bunker make contact with survivors if any and report back protected by a pair of strong boots also supplied by him
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