Government and Military

This letter follows our demonstration outside the Parliament on 10th March and the debate in the chamber on 24th March on the issue of Trident.

Though there are many Scots who are members and supporters of Trident Ploughshares, we are an international campaign. About one third of the people who grounded the mock Trident submarine in the Canongate on 10th March had come from south of the border especially for the purpose. This reflects our conviction as a campaign that Scotland could have a key role to play in making the world safe from weapons of mass destruction. In that context it was gratifying that at long last a substantial debate on Trident took place in the Parliament. We have also been greatly encouraged that so many MSPs supported the submarine demonstration and spoke with such clarity against Britain’s WMD in the debate.

By contrast a depressing contribution to that debate came from those who accused the movers of the original motion of wasting parliamentary time. This appears to us to be a very parochial response. As the content of the debate itself illustrated, the matter of Trident touches directly on huge swathes of the devolved agenda - the economy, employment, sustainability, community safety and transport. There are also significant links with criminal and civil law and with education. Our civil police and our courts are corrupted by their defence of the indefensible. Our aspiration to promote active and responsible citizenship is contaminated. How can we with any credibility advocate humane values while we tolerate a genocidal weapon system? The Parliament cannot ignore these interconnections.

Currently the Westminster government is demonstrating an ever more open and flagrant contempt for the framework of international law. There is the obvious example of the goalpost shifting on a grand scale over the legality of the Iraq invasion. There is the arrogant dismissal of the judgment of our own courts in our refusal to undo the brutal exile we imposed on the Chagos islanders to allow for the occupation of Diego Garcia by a US military base. These examples only astound those who are unaware of how the UK has consistently undermined attempts to subject nuclear weapons to international humanitarian law. Any legislative assembly, whatever the niceties of constitutional distinctions, should take a stand on this.

It was also striking that, with a few exceptions, contributors to the debate were under the impression that Trident has not been used. Daniel Ellsberg has said:” Again and again, generally in secret from the American public, US nuclear weapons have been used, for quite different purposes: in the precise way a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.” The same is true of the UK’s arsenal and for evidence of that we need go no further back than Geoff Hoon’s threats in 2002.

Again, with few exceptions, the debate did not show much understanding of the current stance of the US and the UK in regard to the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. At the Preparatory Committee of the Treaty last May, the United States, actively abetted by France and Britain, with the other nuclear weapon states happy to go along, wanted to rewrite the NPT’s history by sidelining the 2000 Conference commitments, at which they had made an "unequivocal undertaking... to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals". A majority of other states, by contrast, wanted the 2005 Review Conference to build on both the groundbreaking agreements from 2000 and the decisions and resolutions from the 1995 Review and Extension Conference. As Chris Patten has pointed out, this double standard is a real threat to the Treaty.

Those among us who heard the debate or read the reports of it have been given the impression that for some of the participants it was all just a game, a matter of mere words, an opportunity for a slagging match. This attitude accords little respect to those many thousands who have already suffered and died as a result of nuclear weapons, whether at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, in the uranium mines of Jabaluka, or as guinea pigs in the Marshall islands. It ill becomes anyone, let alone elected representative, to treat as a joke an active threat to incinerate millions of innocent civilians and render their land uninhabitable for generations.

For our part we take the matter seriously. For as long as this illegal and immoral weapon system continues in existence we will act peacefully against it. In recent discussions about protests some have implied that “peaceful” is equivalent to “lawful”. For us peaceful means in a way that harms no one and which seeks at all times for dialogue and mutual understanding. As you are aware this has brought us into contact with the ”law” - or rather the particular, limited and flawed interpretation of the law as applied in our experience by most Scottish judges when responding to our actions. Their interpretation is no more valid than the segregation laws which led to the arrest of Rosa Parks in Montgomery Alabama in 1955 and the birth of the Civil Rights movement. We long for the day when a similar broadening of understanding will take place, when Scotland will be known world-wide for its complete intolerance of preparations for war crime.

As we write the critical Review Conference of the Non Proliferation Treaty is only weeks away. I am enclosing a call to Prime Minister Tony Blair to act to fulfil our obligations under the Treaty. I urge you to sign it and return it to me. We will then send the collected responses to Downing Street.

In peace

Trident Ploughshares

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