Scotland's for Peace - Peace Centre

Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan) (SNP): Way back in the 1980s when the right hon. Jim Hacker was the Prime Minister, he developed a “grand design”, which was to get rid of Trident and to invest the money in conventional forces and make the United Kingdom a safer and happier place. He was dissuaded from that course of action by Sir Humphrey, who in doing so was eventually forced to say that the ultimate reason for having Trident was that it was a Rolls-Royce nuclear system and that Britain deserved the best. Even thus far in this debate, I have detected that there is still that underlying argument about Britain deserving the best, because I think that ultimately this argument is about not deterrence, but Britain’s place in the world. It is about virility and vanity, aspiring still to that superpower status, and saying, “We need a submarine platform, ultra-ballistic missile system, and Trident is still the best, so that’s the one that Britain should have.”

The Foreign Secretary tells us that that system amounts to only 1 per cent. of the nuclear weapons in the world and that we are negotiating that away to virtually nothing. In fact there are, according to the Foreign Secretary, so few warheads left in the Trident system that I sometimes wonder why on earth we have it in the first place. Perhaps we should follow Saddam Hussein’s example and merely pretend that we have a nuclear deterrent. Perhaps we could have a virtual nuclear deterrent in order to have deterrence. The destructive force of the real Trident system—the destructive force that is still available—is awe-inspiring and deadly, and, as several Members have said, when we think about it possibly being used, that force is calamitous.

In the 1980s, many eloquent speeches were made by Members on this matter. I was particularly struck by the current Chancellor’s contribution of 19 June 1984. In a debate similar to this one, he said:

“The dominant theme of this debate has been the concern expressed by hon. Members about the escalating cost of the Trident programme, a project which is unacceptably expensive, economically wasteful and militarily unsound. It is a project which, while escalating the risks of nuclear war, puts at risk the integrity of our conventional defences.”—[ Official Report, 19 June 1984; Vol. 62, c. 188.]

Anybody in politics is entitled to change their mind—I have even done it once or twice myself—but I find it extraordinary that people could be against Trident when we faced the real and present danger of the might of the Soviet Union, yet for Trident when we face the potential might of North Korea. That is an extraordinary change of position to adopt. The situation was brilliantly summed up by the right hon. Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), the former Chairman of the Defence Committee. He revealed to us that he had been speaking “tosh”, as he put it, back then. I am bound to think that he did not just speak tosh in the past—he is quite capable of speaking it now and well into the future. There has been an incredible volte-face.

I want to speak about civil society in Scotland. Members will recall that Scotland is, after all, to be the scene of the deployment of this new weapons system for the next 50 years, so what the people of Scotland think about it might be of some interest and concern to the House. It is not just that 80 per cent. of people oppose it; throughout Scottish civic society, people are pointing out, led by the Scottish Trades Union Congress, that it is unacceptable. Some Labour MSPs make the mistake of saying that there will be a jobs boost. They claim that 11,000 jobs will be created, but unfortunately, parliamentary answers in this House reveal that the figure is 1,300. The cost works out at £5 million a job. As the Scottish TUC has pointed out, the alternative cost is the many thousands of jobs anywhere in the public sector that could be generated by such a figure.

However, there are not just economic arguments but moral arguments, too. Scotland’s Cardinal, Keith O’Brien, has written to me enclosing a statement not just from the Catholic Church in Scotland, but from all the Christian Churches in Scotland: the Church of Scotland, the Quakers, the United Free Church, the United Reform Church, and the Scottish Episcopal Church. Talking about the Churches coming together to make such a statement, our Cardinal said:

“I think you would be right in saying in your own statement to Parliament that this is a unique even in the history of the Christian Churches in Scotland”.

The Churches’ statement is a fine one. I will read just two points from what the Churches said:

“In April 2006 the Catholic Bishops of Scotland called for Trident not to be replaced but...decommissioned.”

“To replace Trident would represent a further announcement to the world that safety and security can only be achieved by threatening mass destruction; this is to encourage others to believe the same, and thus to hasten proliferation.”

When people in this House say that there is no possibility that Iran or North Korea—or even the French—would respond to our renunciation of nuclear weapons by doing the same, they miss the point entirely. They miss the encouragement that will be given to proliferation if we go ahead and invest in a system for the next 50 years...

In a world of 200 nations, 10 of which are nuclear powers and 190 of which are not, I would like an independent Scotland to be one of the 190, not one of the 10. The desultory argument that has been made is that unless we have nuclear weapons, we will be threatened. If the former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), for whom I have great respect, had been the Defence Minister of the state of Iran, he could have put forward exactly the same argument: “We will be threatened unless we acquire a nuclear deterrent.” It was said earlier by the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman that we should understand why the state of Israel requires nuclear weapons, but that is against every international agreement. Every country in the world could say, “We are under threat, we require nuclear weapons.” The path on which that argument would set us is not to 10 countries having nuclear weapons, but—given their declining cost—to 100 or 150 having nuclear weapons. Do we really think that in those circumstances, any form of international agreement would stop a nuclear exchange?

It is really important that we try to exert whatever moral force we can towards the de-escalation of the nuclear threat. My point about the Prime Minister is that he said that there was a serious risk of Scottish independence. We believe that it is a fantastic opportunity, but if it is a serious risk, why do people want to put their nuclear weapons in a country that could shortly be independent? Is that really a risk that this House would like to take? I can tell the House that this is something up with which the people of Scotland will not put. Surely in those circumstances the safe course of action for the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea, now that he no longer sits for a Scottish constituency, would be to advocate that the replacement of the weapons system be sited on the River Thames, as opposed to the River Clyde.

Unless people can accept the risk in their own community and unless they can recognise that arguments for proliferation could apply to every country in the world, they will take us down the road not of mutually assured destruction, but of certain destruction, from the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

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