Press Releases & Updates 2002

Year after year, the Ministry of Defence has been shovelling out reassurances that Devonport nuclear dockyard is perfectly secure and that public safety is the highest priority. In every debate over the siting and refit of nuclear submarines in a city of 270,000 people, it has insisted that the people of Plymouth and the south-west peninsula benefit hugely.

We now know that the first claim is fanciful to say the least. Billions of pounds of public money prop up Devonport dockyard and yet it cannot even stop two young idealistic peace protesters from boarding and doing a "reccie" of its flagship nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard. As a colleague at the Western Morning News quipped: "Were the keys in the ignition as well?"

Most coverage of the incident has focused on the spectacular security lapse. It’s as well indeed that these two people, from the campaign group Trident Ploughshares, were of benign intent. I live within a mile of the dockyard, so it’s fair to say that had the intruders been terrorists I would now be pondering this issue from some other, more unworldly place.

But the security issue should not be allowed to detract from the burning issues surrounding the dockyard itself. If incompetence then becomes an excuse for directing yet more vast resources into the dockyard, we have missed the point. We slip into a trap that suits those who profit most from the dockyard - most particularly its American owners Haliburton - and those MPs who act as its apologists.

For as long as the nuclear dockyard exists in Plymouth it will be a threat not only to the local population but also to those in the wider environs. Its very presence makes it a terrorist target, and places this part of the world at the epicentre of the debate over nuclear weapons, British foreign policy, and Britain’s role in the world.

It’s a debate that locates us who live here right at the heart of wider concerns and conflicts.

This, after all, along with Faslane, is the home of Britain’s "nuclear deterrent", the most formidable weapon in the Navy’s arsenal. And that, inescapably, taps into political questions that touch not only on our lives but the lives of people in faraway places we are unlikely to see.

It’s a clich??, I know, but war is business, and the business of war has turned this small island into the second biggest arms exporter in the world, second only to the USA. In any attack on Iraq, you can be sure that Britain’s nuclear fleet will be at the forefront or on standby. In any attack on any other country, the same applies. That is not even a political observation. If they were not to perform that role, then why do they exist?

We are, then, accommodating - and many, including local Labour MPs David Jamieson and Linda Gilroy, welcoming as a blessing - a weapons facility that, if used, could make what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem minuscule. Its existence at a time when Britain and the USA seem locked in their determination to re-map the world according to a liberal-imperial vision, and have signalled their willingness for a first-strike nuclear attack, brings that awesome prospect ever closer.

I see this neither as a moral nor a legal issue, as has been postulated by so many protesters. How can we speak of something so individualistic as morality when we are considering the possibility of international carnage enacted by political will? How can we talk of legalities when the United Nations might legally rubber-stamp a war of conquest of Iraq at the bullying behest of George Bush? It is fundamentally political.

It is unlikely but not beyond the bounds of possibility that a nuclear weapon from a Trident submarine refitted at Devonport will be fired on Iraq or some other country. None of us has a crystal ball to the future, but it’s clear that in the international political climate that this government has helped to foment, the chances of a "deterrent" weapon becoming an offensive option in times of war is very real. The best analysis supports the theory that a war with Iraq - as devastating as that will be - will be but a staging post to further military endeavours.

Look ahead. Whether you agree with the thinking or not, does anyone seriously suppose that this will be the limit of imperial ambitions? On this score at least, the Bush administration has been open about its more expansive agenda. Our own Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has boasted of his belief that Britain should be a standard-bearer for that vision. They have seduced us, post-September 11, into believing that terrorism is the greatest threat to the world. It’s a threat indeed because no government, no matter how shrewd, diplomatic or resolved to pursuing principles of international justice, can legislate for or second guess a lightning strike from maniacs who marry a medieval religious vision with 21st century technology.

But by the same token they have created the conditions that give succour to, or inflame, that fanaticism. In George Bush’s case they have done so out of naked corporate self-interest at the expense of the rest of the world.

At a time when we fret and cannot escape dark visions about what may be about to come, the chickens are roosting at home. The local becomes global. The detail of what is happening on our doorsteps, or a village, a town or city’s journey away, those everyday issues to which we have become habituated, or absorb as mundane news as if into our bloodstream, can no longer be overlooked.

You’re safe, you’re secure, and you come first has been the mantra of Devonport Management Ltd, the Navy and the MoD. It’s good for jobs and business, even when the figures have been shown to be questionable to say the least; when the contrary argument suggests it is a drain on the economy and the dockyard might better be turned over to civilian purposes, and when the cost of the nuclear refit contract mushroomed threefold to around £650 million.

Many people will now be asking whether they can believe anything else that the MoD has to say. Many others might start to make the connections with so many other questions, and wonder what the hell there is to defend about this sinister nuclear complex on our doorsteps.

Printer friendly version

Home | Top