Trident: one good cut the government could make

A couple of days ago, Left Foot Forward published an entry from Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Chair, Dr Kate Hudson. Bearing in mind the significance of the content and the importance of the demonstration tomorrow, we are publishing it here in full

Dr Kate Hudson

In tough times, tough decisions must be made. Such is the mantra peddled by George Osborne and co – reinforced in last week’s budget which unveiled further public spending cuts.

But while it is happy to push these cuts onto crucial public services, the government refuses to make what most people consider a ‘good cut’.

We spend around £3bn annually on running Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system. Just in one year.

But not only are the Conservatives happy to pay this amount, they’re pushing for a replacement of the ageing Vanguard Class submarines (which carry our nukes) to the tune of more than £100bn.

That’s £20-25bn over the next few years just to build them (to which you can add the £3bn per year running cost of our current system), £3bn per annum running costs over the next 30-40 years, and then an estimated £25bn in decommissioning.

That’s before we get into the Ministry of Defence’s ubiquitous overruns on major projects: typically delivering them around 40 per cent over-budget.

On Easter Monday – April Fools’ Day no less – CND will be continuing a tradition which first brought the issue of Britain’s nuclear arsenal to prominence from 1958 onwards: protesting at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Aldermaston. We’re calling on the government to see sense, with the message: ‘Scrap Trident: Time to Stop Fooling with Nuclear Weapons’.

And the issue is not just the untenable economics of Trident replacement – it’s also strategically redundant. The government itself has said that nuclear weapons are not relevant to the kind of security threats we face. In its National Security Strategy in 2010, the threat of state-on-state nuclear attack was downgraded to a tier-two risk.

And many in the military agree. Senior figures in the armed forces have said Trident is “completely useless” and concern is growing in the military and Whitehall over its ruinous impact on the MoD’s ability to fund conventional defence forces.

The need to build mass action

Of course any sensible thinking person is going to be opposed to the cuts proposed by ‘Snatcher’ Osborne and his Lib Dem cronies, although I confess it is good to see at least Simon Hughes is looking a bit guilty. However, the big question is what are we going to do about it?

Unison and PCS have already said they intend to fight for their members whenever jobs are under threat and the Labour party should offer wholehearted support to any campaign organised by the unions, including industrial action if it occurs.

Let us not forget, we ‘sold out’ when it came to the miners strike in the 1980s and left thousands of working men and their families politically isolated, although there were a number of notable and courageous exceptions (Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner etc). As a result, the Tories annihilated entire communities, forced thousands onto the dole queues, destroyed the mining industry and left hundreds of other workers without work because the company they worked for was forced to close because the local pits were no longer producing coal. We must not make the same mistake again.

This fight against the cuts is going to be tough. Cameron is not going to give in easily and those who think Tuesday was harsh need to prepare for something 5 times worse come the autumn. Some are already estimating he will try and lop off another £13bn off the welfare benefit bill and if he does, it will be pensioners who will be the first to suffer. Already there are indicators the Winter Fuel Allowance is under threat, but there will be worse behind it.

Already the long-term unemployed living in rented accommodation have been attacked and in the months to come many will find themselves in debt, or homeless. Similarly, if you are poor and pregnant you will no longer be looked after as you were under a Labour government.

We need to make a firm stand. Yesterday Alistair Darling broadcast his response to the budget – it was accurate, it was reasoned, it was fair - but it lacked passion. It could have been delivered by a chartered accountant, not a socialist.

If we are going to convince people to join this struggle we will need to have passion. It is not enough to leave the fight to the unions and for parliamentarians to take the higher ground. We need to be prepared to get our hands dirty. This involves organising a mass movement with local, regional and national activities taking place. We have to show ordinary men and women we have not forgotten them – that Labour does care, that we will stand and fight for their rights whenever they are under threat.

Remember the CND campaigns of the 1980s? Remember the Anti-Nazi League? Did they rely on deep-seated reasoned argument? Yes and no. Yes there was an intellectual base to their approach, but it relied on people standing under a common single banner – united and willing to fight for what was right. We have to build that new mass movement once again.

If we don’t, what is the point in calling ourselves socialists and organising under the banner of the Labour party?

Diane Abbott, the left and the leadership campaign

The news today that John McDonnell has chosen to stand down as a candidate in the Labour Party leadership contest raises a series of issues on the state of left-wing politics in this country. Even if he had chosen to continue, it seems unlikely he would have secured the necessary 33 nominations that would have allowed him to move forward to the next stage.

This is despite the fact he managed to secure the support of a number of trade unions, including RMT, BFAWU and Unison United Left. However, within the Socialist Campaign Group (the group most likely to carry John through to the next round) there was obvious division when Diane Abbott announced her own candidacy.

It would be easy to blame Diane for John’s demise, but in her defence, it was reasonable of her to want a woman and someone from an ethnic minority in the leadership hustings. Indeed, it is the very essence of our party rule book that we should positively encourage this to take place.

In a reply to a question I posed to Diane about her splitting the vote, she replied: “There always was a tendency to say that if women stood it split the vote. I think that there is the politics that I’m on the left, and have as good a voting record on left wing issues as John McDonnell, but there’s another issue which is about gender. It’s not so much that I stood against John, but that John stood against me.”

Now I think it is a matter of semantic as to whether John stood against her, or she stood against him – but the fact remains the left were not strong enough to sustain the candidacy of two strong nominees.

Why? Well it would be easy to lay the blame on Tony Blair and his Third Way approach that resulted in the stripping of Clause lV. It would be convenient to blame it on the undemocratic nature of party conference. And of course, it would be simple to blame the demise of the left on a savage campaign by the political right since the time of Neil Kinnock resulting in the departure of good socialists like Dave Nellist, Arthur Scargill, Ricky Tomlinson and George Galloway.

As important as all of these issues were, they are only a part of the problem. Undoubtedly, the shift in political culture after 1997 did little to help the left, but we cannot legitimately sit here and blame someone else for something we allowed to happen. After the demise of Clause IV, the party haemmorraghed members at a rate that no party could endure, least of all the Labour Party.

At the same, the left failed to fully engage with new technologies, which resulted in the left losing a vital avenue to outline its views. In days gone by members of the public would walk along any High Street and see vendors selling “Socialist Organiser”, “Socialist Worker”, “The Socialist” or, of course, “Morning Star”. But the hard left split and divided – the Communist Party, once one of the bastions of the labour movement fractured into so many pieces that few, if any, can truly understand the difference between them. Similarly, groups like Socialist Worker Party linked with Respect to create an united front .. then once they started to become a cohesive force, decided to split. As for the Respect Party itself, well Galloway’s appearance on Big Brother did little to promote their credibility as was shown in the last election.

Similarly, rather than stay and fight within the Labour Party, Arthur Scargill chose to leave and form his own party – the Socialist Labour Party. Unfortunately, although he was true to his word and helped develop a sound socialist manifesto, the party failed to achieve any significant results and is now largely in decline.
Finally, the left have failed to unify under any common themes – CND, although still active has failed to smobilize radical forces in the same way as it achieved in the 1980s; the Anti–Nazi League has gone and its successors United Against Fascism and Hope not Hate have done a sterling job in minimize the virulence of the BNP, but again haven’t managed to draw the left into a mass movement. Even the Iraq issue and the Stop the War campaign with the stalwart of modern socialism, Tony Benn at its helm have not managed to unify activists from a broad range of groups, as we saw in the Thatcher years.

Indeed, the sad but real fact is that although Tony Benn has campaigned endlessly for socialist causes, he is not the man he once was – the reality is Tony is getting older and understandably slower. He needs to be allowed to retire with dignity and respect and for a new generation of socialist campaigners to take over carrying the banner.

I mean no disrespect to Tony – he has done more than anyone and I stand in awe of him and his political analysis. If the labour movement is to truly respect Tony, we should carry on his fight … and fight with the same passion he has shown!
If the left are to have any chance of success in the future we will have to organize at two levels. Firstly, this should be through the normal democratic process with activists engaged at all levels of power – holding office in local branches, CLPs, trade unions, local authorities, county councils, national assemblies and the House of Commons.

However, there is another dimension of activity demanding our urgent attention and this is the extra-parliamentary route. The new coalition is intent on destroying our public services, pushing thousands into poverty, misery and unemployment. The left must oppose this! We should be mobilizing under the banners of the People’s Charter and the Right to Work Movement, whilst at the same time, encouraging the trade union movement to activating and organizing their membership to oppose these cuts wherever they occur.

The coming years will be hard – of this there can be little doubt, but we can win. If we refuse, we risk a Cinderella complex where we will always want to go to the ball, but never taking the risk and thus missing the chance of kissing the prince (who, of course, being a democratic socialist immediately renounced his title and redistributing his wealth to the poor).

This leadership election is the first stage in that process. We must put our differences aside and wholeheartedly support and endorse Diane Abbott and look to her to lead our party back to its socialist roots.