Press Briefing 15th October 1999
Appearing today as an expert witness in the Greenock trial of three women accused of damaging a Trident facility on Loch Long in June this year, a Professor of Peace Studies has said that most analysts accept that it is only luck that has saved us from a nuclear holocaust. A second expert stated that nuclear war was imminent.
Paul Rogers, of Bradford University, cited many occasions in which the world had been a hair's breadth away from nuclear disaster, from the Cuban missile crisis to the recent crisis in Kosovo when Russian missiles were again aimed at NATO targets.
The common view that nuclear weapons were weapons of last resort was a fallacy. Nuclear weapon states such as the UK were in the habit of indicating their potential use in times of tension, for example by sending a Trident submarine to Gibraltar during the most recent Gulf crisis. Even the so-called "sub-strategic" weapons would breach international law by their slaughter of civilians and by spreading radiation round the world.
Civil resistance was capable of achieving change. Australian troops would not have been sent last month as peace-keepers to East Timor had it not been for the demonstrations on the streets of Sydney.
In his view, if Britain unilaterally gave up the nuclear habit, this would be a huge boost for nuclear disarmament world-wide.
The second expert witness of the day, Professor Jack Boag, of the anti-nuclear scientists group Pugwash, explained that the threat of nuclear war was imminent. It was as imminent a threat as the sword which hung above the throne of the Greek tyrant Damocles, held only by a thread and ready to fall at any time.