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Nuclear weapons on Labour agenda
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THIS week, members of Britain’s opposition Labour Party could commit a future Labour government to scrapping Britain’s Trident nuclear arms program.
It’s the latest signal that new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is prepared to consider policies that were off the agenda for decades, from nationalizing industry to diverging on foreign policy from the United States.
“I want us to fulfill our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” Corbyn said yesterday, as Labour’s annual conference opened in the seaside resort of Brighton, with a debate on nuclear weapons scheduled for the first time in many years. “Hence non-renewal of Trident. This is a weapon of mass destruction.”
The conference debate is a victory for anti-nuclear activists like Kate Hudson, secretary-general of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, who says a vote to scrap nuclear arms would bring Labour policy “in line with the needs of the age and of the British people.”
But it’s a source of despair for Labour centrists, who think the party faces electoral oblivion under Corbyn.
John McTernan, a former aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair, claims that nuclear weapons are “deeply and broadly supported” by British voters.
The divide between pro and anti-nuclear forces has long been a fault-line in the Labour Party. It was Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s government that developed atomic weapons in the years following World War II, making Britain the world’s third nuclear-armed state after the US and the Soviet Union.
Every British government since then — Labour, Conservative or coalition — has maintained nuclear weapons. Since the 1990s, Britain’s nuclear deterrent has consisted of four Royal Navy submarines armed with Trident missiles.
Labour briefly adopted a policy of unilateral disarmament under leader Michael Foot, whose election-losing 1983 party manifesto was described by one Labour lawmaker as “the longest suicide note in history.”
Labour’s 1980s defeats led Blair and other young leaders to create “New Labour,” repositioning the party as patriotic, pro-business and strong on defense. They also centralized control over communications and decision-making, turning Labour conferences from heated policy-making meetings to slick political pep rallies.
New Labour won three consecutive elections from 1997, but the party lost power in 2010 and was trounced by Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives in a May election that focused largely on perceptions of economic competence.
Party members reacted by turning away from Blairism, derided by those on the left as “Tory-lite” policies. This month Labour elected Corbyn, a 66-year-old backbench lawmaker who promises to combine old-school socialism with a new style of politics. He is a sharp critic of Blair-era pro-business economics and international military engagements — notably the 2003 invasion of Iraq — and advocates more grassroots democracy in the party.
Corbyn has confirmed that if conference delegates vote to scrap Trident, it will become Labour policy.
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