Government and Military

1/8/98.

Dear Tony Blair, Final Appeal before August 11th Disarmament Actions at Faslane and Coulport. On 18th March we wrote a letter outlining our Trident Ploughshares 2000 Disarmament project and asking for a meeting to discuss our requests. We received a short letter which did not answer our substantive points and which refused a meeting. We wrote again on the 2nd May and have received no reply - only a confirmation of receipt of our letter. I do hope you will reply in detail to this letter as soon as possible.

We have read the Strategic Defence Review thoroughly. Whilst welcoming reducing the number of warheads deployed on Trident missiles, reducing the alert status to ’days’ from ’minutes’ and minor improvements in transparency, we note that only one of our 9 requests to you have been met. Namely, that no new Trident missiles will be purchased from the USA. We do not consider that these minimal steps indicate sufficient and genuine progress towards nuclear disarmament and therefore will not be halting our direct activities to disarm Trident ourselves.

You admit that whilst all Trident missiles are detargeted they would only take a few days at most to be re-targetted which obviously means that there are pre-arranged targets ready in the computer systems. We have asked continually and ask once more that there be a public legal review of the targets that the Trident warheads, of unverifiable but variable yields of up to 100 kt, would be used against. In our opinion no currently deployed nuclear weapon on Trident could possibly be used against any land-based target without substantially breaching international humanitarian law - they are just too inhumane and terrible and their effects, spreading as they do over time and space, are not capable of distinguishing between combatant and non-combatant. Would you consider the dropping of a 100 kt nuclear weapon upon the FaslaneTrident base (being so close to Glasgow) by Iraq/China/Russia (or some other ’enemy’) even if they thought they were fighting ’in an extreme circumstance of self-defence in which its very survival was at stake’, as being consistent with international humanitarian law?

Given the power and accuracy of conventional forces that could be used in conformity with international humanitarian law why do you need nuclear weapons as ’the ultimate guarantee of the United Kingdom’s security’? What can nuclear weapons, if they are used in conformity with international humanitarian law, do to protect us, that our conventional weaponry cannot, if also used in conformity with international humanitarian law? Are you deluding yourselves or trying to mislead the British public about the use of these terrible weapons?

The abolition of nuclear weapons are at the very heart of our struggle for a better world. It has been said that

’the taproot of violence in our society today is our intent to use nuclear weapons

Nuclear weapons are so pivotal in national and international affairs because they have such a capacity to undermine our integrity as human beings. They reach into the very heart of humanitarian law. If we allow or legitimise the use of nuclear weapons for any reason whatsoever, if our society, our leaders, can justify the mass destruction of women, children and other civilians then how can we coherently, consistently or rationally disallow any lesser evil? People begin to justify, perhaps unconsciously, but nevertheless corrosively, their selling of drugs, or trading in timber ripped from the lands of hunter gatherers, their selling of weapons to human rights abusers, or the torture of animals to provide quite unnecessary research jobs. The President of the World Court said in his statement accompanying the Advisory Opinion of 8th July 1996 ’Nuclear weapons, the ultimate evil, destabilise humanitarian law which is the law of the lesser evil. The existence of nuclear weapons is therefore a challenge to the very existence of humanitarian law, not to mention their long-term effects of damage to the human environment, in respect to which the right to life must be exercised.....Atomic warfare and humanitarian law therefore appear mutually exclusive, the existence of the one automatically implies the non-existence of the other.’ How, therefore, can you assert that Trident is an ethical contribution to British security?

The Strategic Defence Review states that ’The Government is nevertheless unequivocally committed to Britain’s obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.’ However, the ICJ Advisory Opinion interpreted this as an obligation to ’bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects’? How does this square with a defence policy where ’our minimum deterrent remains a necessary element of our security’ (paragraph 60); ’We need to ensure that it can remain an effective deterrent for up to 30 years’ (paragraph 62); and describing Trident as ’a capability of such vital importance to our security’ (paragraph 75)? If you wanted to indicate a commitment to rid the world of nuclear weapons then you should have made a declaration not to replace Trident instead of saying ’it would be premature to abandon a minimum capability to design and produce a successor to Trident should this prove necessary’. The NPT was negotiated 30 years ago, how much longer do we have to wait for Britain to carry out its obligations? The World Court stated quite clearly that this obligation ’goes beyond that of a mere obligation of conduct; the obligation involved here is an obligation to achieve a precise result - nuclear disarmament in all its aspects’.

Following the Indian/Pakistani nuclear tests, President Clinton rather revealingly stated: "I cannot believe that we are about to start the 21^st century by having the Indian subcontinent repeat the worst mistakes of the 20^th century, when we know that it is not necessary to peace, to security, to prosperity, to national greatness, or to personal fulfilment". Isn’t it time that both the US and its major ally, Britain, took their own words seriously and put in place a totally non-nuclear defence policy?

We would also like to take this opportunity to pass on to you the names and addresses of the 97 global citizens who have signed the Pledge to Prevent Nuclear Crime and the Nonviolence and Safety Pledge and who will be actively disarming or helping others to disarm the British Trident Nuclear system from August 11th. We will begin with two weeks of ’completely open’ disarmament attempts from August 11th to 25th. Thereafter we will not notify you in advance of each and every separate ploughshares disarmament action which will take place at many of the Trident related sites. After their disarmament actions each Pledger will however openly admit in a peaceful and accountable manner to all the damage that they do to the Trident system. We would like to reiterate that this damage is in our opinion legally justifiable, totally proportionate and done in our own self-defence and that of all other innocent non-combatants, as a matter of last resort.

Yours sincerely,

Morag Balfour, Sylvia Boyes, David Mackenzie, Ellen Moxley, Brian Quail,

Ian Thomson, Rachel Wenham, Helen Steven, and Angie Zelter.

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