FOR one who has, since I've been old enough to think, held it to be
axiomatic that possession and implied use of nuclear weapons are bad,
and probably mad, I feel curiously detached from from the current
excitements about Labour's policy review.
Over the past decade, I have fought three elections on a variety of
defence policies, the details of which are now largely academic since
all three elections were lost. I can't honestly recall feeling more
righteous about Labour being defeated in 1983 or 1987, than I did in
1979.
I am not a great reader of policy statements or manifestos, far less a
believer in their contents. It's almost certainly a mistake to believe
that spelling out aspirations in the form of a detailed programme helps
any party to get elected. Mrs Thatcher has never made that error.
Equally, it's a mistake to get too worked up about what is and is not
being promised since the relationship between word and subsequent deed
is far from guaranteed, even if the electoral hurdle is cleared. That's
possibly more true, in recent political history, about promises to get
rid of weaponry and military bases than about any other single subject.
Ask the Greeks or the Spaniards.
But even more relevantly, consult what happened in the 1960s. Harold
Wilson didn't need tying down to a unilateralist commitment -- he
offered it with banners flying. He had proposed ''the permanent
rejection'' of British nuclear weapons and foreign nuclear bases. When
Polaris was purchased, he declared contemptuously that ''it will not be
independent, will not be British and will not deter''.
Then on his first visit to Washington as Prime Minister, he ratified
the Holy Loch agreement which Macmillan had entered into and, for the
rest of his time in office, presided over a defence policy which was
predicated upon possession of nuclear weapons.
Who knows whether Wilson ever believed his own anti-nuclear rhetoric?
But the certainty is that intense pressures were, and would increasingly
have been, brought to bear by the United States to make him abandon it.
Wilson was a great believer in the ''special relationship'' with the US
and was forever on the hot line to LBJ to reinforce the myth.
The point is that military policy, nuclear or non nuclear, is an
extension of foreign policy. Unless there is independence of actions in
international affairs, it is extremely unlikely that there will be
unilateral action on nuclear weapons -- whatever it says in a manifesto.
Yet we know that the actions, even of a progressive Labour Government,
will be constrained by alliances and other imperatives.
These will include the political climate of the day. It is unlikely
that the Labour Government after the next General Election will have a
large majority. If there is a knife-edge majority for instant removal of
nuclear weapons and a similar division in the country, it is difficult
to see the action being carried through with the sweeping gesture which
Labour's last manifesto envisaged.
If these are the realities, then why get hung up on the word
''unilateral''? What surely matters more is to secure a Government which
is genuinely committed to de-nuclearisation at as fast a pace as
objective circumstances permit. It's more important to say it, mean it
and then possibly be in a position to achieve it, than to put your faith
on a word in a policy review or manifesto.
There are aspects of the defence document which I would quibble with,
but the general thrust is sensible, honest and in tune with the public
mood. It seems far fetched to suppose that the majority which has
hitherto withheld support from unilateralism, and which now senses the
possibility of getting rid of nuclear weapons in all countries through
negotiation, will suddenly change its mind.
Of course, some critics regard it as treachery to take electoral
calculations into account in such high moral matters. I take the
contrary view that it would be treachery not to, for there are an awful
lot of people who yearn for a Labour Government as a matter of
necessity, rather than as an optional extra, and whom we have not served
very well over the past decade.
The Wilson years of Polaris and Vietnam created a generation of
cynicism about Labour politics. The Kinnock government will have to be
of a very different hue, if the same sense of disillusionment is to be
avoided. I have faith in that prospect, and being honest about what is
electable and attainable seems to me a good start in that direction.
There will have to be a foreign policy based on different criteria
from those of the sixties and seventies, without the slavish adherence
to Washington's line. That will extend logically into a determination to
work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons. These are ends worth
attaining and, through the possession of power, expanding upon.
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