Jeremy Corbyn
Taking on Trident
JEREMY CORBYN explains why we must give a resounding No to the replacement of Britain's WMD.
THIS Saturday, the streets of London will reverberate to the sound of marching feet and cries for peace.
Since 2001, 18 national demonstrations have been organised by the Stop the War Coalition, as well as thousands of local public meetings and smaller regional demonstrations. All have conveyed essentially the same message - the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal and the lies and deception that put us on this path will never be forgotten.
Alongside this theme, this weekend's protest will be demanding No replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system.
Nuclear weapons have only once been used in combat, in 1945 in Japan, when the immediate death toll of over 100,000 people was followed by hundreds of thousands more painful and slow deaths from cancer caused by the fallout from what were two very small nuclear explosions.
The US used nuclear weapons in 1945 to symbolise its overwhelming power over the rest of the world rather than through any military need, since Japan was on the brink of surrender anyway.
Since then, nuclear weapons have grown apace and have wasted billions of dollars around the world, eating up precious resources and making the world an infinitely more dangerous place.
Every example of madness provokes a reaction. In the case of nuclear weapons, the reaction saw the growth of a worldwide peace movement from the 1950s onwards that recognised both how dangerous nuclear weapons are and the fact that they are not a defence against anything.
Despite the cold war, disarmament progress was made in the form of the test ban treaty and the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The NPT required all signatories who were not in possession of nuclear weapons never to develop them and those who were already in possession of these weapons of mass destruction to make plans for longer-term disarmament.
It is ironic that, two months before the preparatory committee meeting in Vienna for the five-yearly review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the British government should be proposing to break the agreement by developing yet another generation of nuclear weapons.
'The US used nuclear weapons in 1945 to symbolise its overwhelming power.'
The spurious argument that the British weapons system is out of date and needs replacing merely represents an attempt to con the British public into allowing £70 billion of their money to be spent on the construction, maintenance and deployment of a new generation of nuclear weapons.
These would be neither independent nor a deterrent. The British military command structure is so closely intertwined with NATO and the US that there is no independence of action. As for the claim that they act as a deterrent, one simply has to ask the question, "Against whom?"
Next month, MPs will be asked to vote on this after a so-called period of consultation in which ministers and government officials have shown themselves remarkably reluctant to debate the issue anywhere or to justify this level of expenditure.
At the same time, it has become apparent that the escalating costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are having an impact on domestic budgets in Britain.
The immediate placing of a £26 billion order to replace the Trident nuclear submarine system will be a slap in the face to all those who want to see an even better health service in this country and a universal and free education service up to and including university standards.
Those of my parliamentary colleagues who are planning to follow Tony Blair into the lobbies on this one should ask themselves whether any of their constituents, be they students, pensioners, workers or others, be any better off as a result of this and whether their lives and the world will be any safer.
Spending £26 billion on weapons will certainly not make the lives of anyone facing the Aids pandemic or the ravages of poor health and poverty across Africa any better.
Crucially, the undermining of the NPT system by the five declared nuclear states means that any authority that they might have had to persuade other countries not to develop nuclear weapons is removed at a stroke.
There is no moral justification whatsoever for any country to hold nuclear weapons. By and large, the NPT system has worked, with the exceptions of India and Pakistan, which are now, bizarrely, being rewarded with technical help and support, while developing delivery systems aiming these weapons at each other.
Israel, which has never been a signatory to the NPT, has nuclear weapons even though it does not publicly acknowledge the fact. We have the honesty and bravery of Mordechai Vanunu to thank for this information.
Its 200 warheads could surely be used anywhere in the region and it has faced no criticism at all from the international community for this. Indeed, huge amounts of US aid continue to flow into Israel, despite the very many breaches of international humanitarian law in its treatment of the Palestinian people.
Those of us who have spent a lifetime at meetings, marches and demonstrations sometimes feel a sense of ritual about them.
But we should never underestimate the power of popular voices.
After quite a long gestation period, that process eventually gets penetrates to the centre of politics.
President Bush, who made himself so popular by declaring war on the world in January 2002, is now being disowned by even his closest erstwhile supporters, such as Senator John McCain.
The political shift in the US is eerily reminiscent of the 1960s and '70s, when the Vietnam war had been acknowledged completely untenable by even the most hardline militarists.
It is not enough, however, just to oppose war. We also have to be able to produce an alternative.
That means challenging the presumption that war can be waged for resources and for political power.
Those countries which possess weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological or nuclear, need to be taught that they are not made safer because of the awesome destructive power that they wield, but that they are actually more vulnerable.
Worldwide protest movements have shown that there is a hunger for a path that shares resources and needs, as opposed to the kind of policies that have led to the current carnage in Iraq and the greedy grabbing of its oil.
• Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk
