The Nick Citizen Column

THEY CALLED ME A BOMB LOVING WAR MONGER ….

06-07-2006

Back in the 1980s when all my fashionable left-wing friends were joining CND and supporting the Greenham Common peace camps I stood out like a sore thumb - I simply couldn't get with the programme.

I sympathised with the cause but it just didn't feel right.

I'd always admired the anti-nuclear movement for keeping our politicians honest on the question of whether we should have the bomb. CND asked all the right awkward questions about the inherent danger of being one of the few countries in the world with what we now call weapons of mass destruction.

They highlighted the insanity of mutually assured destruction between East and West - the acronym MAD was darkly aposite. They spelled out in no uncertain terms that nuclear war would basically mean the end of civilisation.

The anti-nuclear movement also rightly pointed out that the billions of pounds being poured into the atomic programme might be better spent on the poor, on health care, on job creation schemes - on, well almost anything else really.

It was a good debate - CND did a great service to democracy by asking these questions -- but in my heart I knew they were wrong.

Giving up our nuclear arsenal in the face of a brutal dictatorship - which the Soviet Union certainly was - was the right thing to do.

So I lost some good friends during the Cold War as I refused to don the peace symbols, join the marches and camp out at the military bases. So I was branded as a bomb loving war monger!

You might think then that I'd have been pleased with Gordon Brown's indication that the UK is about to renew Trident and maintain our defences in the face of the "new threats in a more complex world." You might think that but you'd be wrong.

The world has moved on since the 1980s. The Soviet Union no longer exists - and as it collapsed so did mty belief in our need for nuclear weapons. The Chancellor's announcement looked to me like a throwback to a different era - a different war.

Britain's claim to need new nuclear weapons of the type being suggested looks unsustainable to me - in fact it jeopardises rather then enhances our defence capabilities as other countries - notably Iran - try to catch up and join the nuclear club.

Now isn't the time to renew atomic weaponry - now is the time to decommission it and put it beyond use and reinvest those billions elsewhere in the economy - this time the old CND argument is right.

The idea that Britain has an independent nuclear deterrent is false in any case. We would never use these weapons without the express permission and in partnership with the United States. I can't find anybody who can put up a convincing scenario where we would use them independently of our allies in a strike against an opponent.

The defence argument simply no longer exists. Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, the Scandinavian countries to name just a few all manage to get by quite happily without the bomb so why not us?

And the argument that they deter terrorism has been proved wrong over and over again - they didn't stop the IRA, the London bombings or in the States, 9/11.

The only reason to keep the bomb now as far as I can see is to maintain the UK's political standing in the world - as a sort of radioactive virility symbol.

As a nation we've punched well above our weight in world affairs since 1945 largely because we are a member of the atomic club and we don't want it to end.

If Britain is to truly reinvent itself and move forward as a nation then Trident and all it stands for should be shelved - but there's no chance of that.

Labour and the Conservatives support renewal and the electorate is not excited by the issue as it was in the 1980s -- even though it will cost billions in extra tax.

Britain will get its renewed Trident - the justification for it - doubtless spelled out in a library full of dodgy dossiers - will follow. And at least my fashionable left-wing friends will start talking to me again.

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