WHEN one reads headlines like “Labour in open revolt over new policy to scrap Trident” and “A healthy debate for Dugdale’s debut” (The Herald November 3), one is tempted to reflect upon the position of Jeremy Corbyn, as UK party leader, when seen in relation to a number of post-Second World War Labour leaders.
After that war , it was not a given that Britain would produce and control nuclear weapons, particularly when seen in the light of the nationalisation and social welfare plans of the Labour government at that time under Clement Attlee. Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary, however, insisted that national prestige was at stake and he was determined that there would be nuclear weapons “with a Union Jack” on top of them. Later, notwithstanding the fact that before and during the 1964 General Election Harold Wilson criticised Britain’s nuclear capability as being neither independent nor British and being incapable of deterring anyone, under his administration submarines with nuclear weapon capability were constructed and put into service. It was alleged at the time that Mr Wilson, as Prime Minister, had committed Britain to increases in defence budgets as onerous, if not more onerous , as those entered into earlier by Bevin.
We now turn to Neil Kinnock when he led the Labour Party in the 1980s. Mr Kinnock was committed, and had been for many years, to unilateral nuclear disarmament. He was not prepared to be deflected from the advocacy of that cause. If Labour had succeeded to power as a result of the 1987 General Election, then the Trident nuclear submarine fleet would have been cancelled and the British and American nuclear bases would have been closed down. That policy was not greeted with acclamation by the electorate in 1987 and was one of the reasons for Labour’s defeat at the hands of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher.
The relationship of the Labour party over the last 70 years with nuclear weaponry has therefore been of a somewhat chequered nature. Today the lack of coherence is pronounced. We have Jeremy Corbyn, the UK national leader, at odds with the party he leads, and the Scottish leader, Kezia Dugdale, singing from a hymn sheet different from that now being used by a large majority of the party she is leading. Past experience shows that the predicament, in which the Labour party finds itself, is and will continue to be extremely damaging to its prospects for UK election purposes for two reasons; first, the policy of nuclear disarmament, in the existing international climate, has not proved to be popular with the electorate within what is described as middle England, where a large proportion of the voting public reside, and the floating voter, and secondly, political parties which are divided tend not only to create a deleterious image for themselves, but also, and more importantly, to be unelectable.
Ian W Thomson,
38 Kirkintilloch Road, Lenzie.
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