Starmer’s ‘triple lock’ on Trident

Within days of the general election being announced, Keir Starmer committed Labour to a ‘triple lock’ on Trident, an attempt to demonstrate nuclear weapons are safe in Labour’s hands. He also reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to match Sunak’s 2.5% increase in military spending which NATO is demanding.

Labour will build four new Dreadnought class submarines to deliver Britain’s nuclear warheads, he said, with at least one submarine at sea 24/7. Starmer also reaffirmed Labour’s decision to match the Tory government pledge to raise military spending  by 2.5% of gross domestic product as soon as possible.

This is a dangerous waste, which mirrors the approach of the Tory government. It signals more war, more military spending, and more nuclear weapons, as CND General Secretary Kate Hudson has pointed out. CND has estimated the cost of upgrading and maintaining Trident at £205 billion. The Conservative commitment to raise military spending to 2.5% by 2030, part of the Spring budget, will amount to an additional £87 billion a year.

CND Chair Tom Unterrainer commented that Starmer had  offered no justification of how nuclear weapons might protect Britain’s security. ‘For a man who claims to care about international law,’ said Unterrainer, ‘there is no mention of how expanding and modernising Britain’s nuclear arsenal goes against these norms. We need a bold vision for what real security means: one that puts climate, food security, and people at its heart, not more militarism and conflict.’

Read CND’s press release here

Labour CND response to Daily Telegraph article

David Lammy and John Healey have used an article in the Daily Telegraph (Paywall) to argue that nuclear weapons are Labour’s “heritage” and describe the commitment to Trident and NATO as “unshakeable”. This is a clear attempt to rewrite history and gloss over the huge opposition to Trident amongst Labour Party members and in the trade unions, and the substantial periods where full and comprehensive nuclear disarmament has been adopted as the official policy. 

There has also been an emphatic tradition of advocating nuclear disarmament from all wings of the Labour Party.  In recent years large numbers of constituency Labour Parties have made submissions to party conferences and the National Policy Forum in favour of scrapping Trident, and the Labour Party Conference in 2021 passed a resolution opposing AUKUS. 

Often the disagreement within the party is said to be concerning the means to an end of a nuclear-free world – an aspiration regrettably missing from the Telegraph article.  The next Labour Government should commit to a meaningful programme of nuclear disarmament and to signing the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, known as the Nuclear Ban Treaty, which is supported by more than 120 countries as well as 68% of Labour Party members. 

We continue to believe that the billions of pounds being wasted on a new generation of nuclear weapons would be better spent addressing real security and priorities like climate justice, health, education and building a fairer and more equal society. Labour CND will continue to campaign against nuclear weapons and for peace

Party members decisively reject Trident replacement

The results of a recent LabourList survey confirm that the overwhelming majority of party members want to scrap Trident. In a poll of 7,197 readers, 80.9% of whom were party members, only 12.3% supported Trident renewal.

Paticipants in LabourList’s survey were asked which of a list of policies in Labour’s 2019 general election manifesto the party should continue to support. The results are below. Only two policies failed to achieve majority backing. With 49.6% fast and free broadband fell just short of a majority, but renewing Trident was decisively rejected .

Policies with majority support were:
* Cut the substantial majority of carbon emissions by 2030 (82%)
* Create one million green jobs (74%)
* Close tax loopholes enjoyed by private schools (73%)
* Increase income tax for those earning over £80,000 (71%)
* Nationalise mail, rail, energy and water (67%)
* Repeal anti-trade union legislation (64%)
* Scrap tuition fees (61%)
* Extend full voting rights to all UK residents (61%)
* Set up a publicly owned generic drug company (60.5%)
* Compensate the WASPI women (57%)
* Maximum pay ratios of 20:1 in the public sector (56%)
* Aim for 32-hour working week within a decade (51%)

The LabourList result confirms a YouGov poll for The Times on the eve of Labour’s 2019 annual conference, which showed 70% of the 1,185 Labour Party members sampled wanted to scrap Britain’s nuclear weapons system.

Read LabourList‘s survey results here

Trident vs NHS

The Tory government’s risk assessment warned that health pandemics were a major threat to Britain’s security, nuclear attack wasn’t. So why are we spending £205 billion on Trident when the NHS is chronically underfunded askes Labour CND Secretary, Ruth Brown in a recent letter to the Financial Times.

Labour CND conference

 

Topics include

  • International trends and US strategy
  • TUC policy
  • Labour’s Defence Diversification Agency
  • Middle East update
  • US-EU divided on Iran
  • Nuclear winter
  • Human security

Speakers include

  • Julie Ward MEP
  • Ted Seay, arms control specialist
  • Kate Hudson, CND General Secretary
  • Sami Ramadani, Iraqi Democrats
  • Barbara White, Musicians Union

Admission Free * All welcome

Followed by Labour CND AGM

Labour CND is a specialist section of CND. If you’re a member of CND and of the Labour Party, you’re eligible and welcome to participate in our annual meeting. 

Need more info? Contact labourcnd@gmail.com

Labour’s Policy Forum: Speak up on Trident

Checked out the Labour Party website lately? If so, you’ll have noticed that one of the changes takes you to a Policy Forum page where you can have your say about any of Labour’s policy commissions. You can make a submission on a topic of your choice, click on the ‘get involved’ tab at the top of the page  or comment and vote on other people’s submissions.

Continue reading “Labour’s Policy Forum: Speak up on Trident”

Take a Contemporary Motion to your CLP

Labour CND has prepared two Contemporary Motions, which we hope Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) will submit for debate at the Labour Party conference. Please do take these motions to your CLP meetings – if the motions are chosen by delegates as one of the four for debate at the conference and passed, they should become Party policy! Please note there is a 250 word limit on  motions submitted for conference.

The deadline for submission of Contemporary Motions is 14 September. It is therefore essential that your CLP meets to discuss this issue before that date. We need as many submissions as possible to ensure that we cannot be ignored by the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC).

For a Labour victory

Labour CND activists are working flat out for the election of a Labour government on 8 June.  We are certain that securing a government led by Jeremy Corbyn is the most urgent task for all those of us campaigning for peace and nuclear disarmament and against unjust wars. Under Corbyn, Labour will no longer be the party of the Iraq War.

Labour’s manifesto commitments include:

  • putting conflict resolution and human rights at the heart of foreign policy
  • backing effective action to alleviate the refugee crisis
  • working through the UN
  • supporting reform to make UN institutions more effective and responsive
  • ending support for unilateral aggressive wars of intervention
  • a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, and
  • the creation of a Minister for Peace and Disarmament.

The manifesto recognises the UK’s ‘responsibility to fulfil our obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty’. And it pledges Labour to ‘lead multilateral efforts with international partners and the UN to create a nuclear-free world’.

Labour’s vision stands in sharp contrast to the outgoing Tory government’s boycott of UN negotiations for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons in March. Talks reconvene on 15 June, a week after the election.

The manifesto affirms that a Labour government will undertake ‘a complete strategic defence and security review when it comes into office, to assess the emerging threats facing Britain, including hybrid and cyber warfare’. The recent cyber attack on the NHS has demonstrated that Labour is right to focus on the real security threats facing Britain.

It comes as no surprise that the manifesto supports the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system, wrongly referring to it as a ‘deterrent’.

Corbyn has acknowledged an in-coming Labour government’s commitment to Trident. He has also emphasised his commitment to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and support for a global nuclear ban, consistent with his personal opposition to all nuclear weapons and reflected in his vote against replacing Trident on a free vote in the last parliament.

Labour CND remains opposed to all nuclear weapons, including Britain’s. We strongly support Labour’s commitment to a nuclear free world. Equally, we will continue to take every opportunity and use every avenue to campaign against Trident replacement which we believe is an important component part in achieving such a world.