The four horsemen still loom

Back in the mid-1980s, CND was at its zenith and over a million peopled marched in London against nuclear weapons. In those heady days we truly believed we would see the end of trident and cruise missiles. But something went wrong.

Twenty-five years later we are still sitting on a nuclear arsenal and it is clear the vast majority have come to terms with the fact that we hold weapons of mass destruction on bases here in the UK. This is despite the moral issues or the economic costs.

Trident itself is now getting old and many have called for its replacement. The recent strategic review critically explored the costs of replacement and concluded:

 Trident replacement, particularly given its dependence for the provision of missiles and missile launch technology on US-based contractors, will cost more jobs than it will generate
 The cost of replacement, in the context of the existing crisis of the defence budget, will mean that a number of defence programmes scheduled for British industry over the coming decade will either be cancelled or significantly reduced
 The most vulnerable programmes, both from the impact of Trident costs and the overall budget reduction, are in the areas of surface ships, jet fighters, helicopters and armoured vehicles as well as the servicing of airbases and dockyards. The cancellation of such programmes will endanger in excess of 10,000 jobs and is likely to result in the closure of major workplaces
 The difficulty of reconciling the cost of Trident replacement with existing capital spending commitments is, as in past years in similar circumstances, likely to result in the Defence budget being overspent and hence impacting adversely on other government expenditure for public and social services
 The vulnerability to employment loss as a result of Trident’s non-replacement will be most acute in Barrow-in-Furness and to a lesser extent in AWE Aldermaston and Burghfield.

This led to intense debate about whether we can afford to replace Trident, particularly when our deficit problems are so intense and all departments are facing extremely painful austerity measures.

The plan to replace Trident was set out in the White Paper “The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent” in December 2006. Expenditure on this was projected to be £200 million in 2008/09, £300 million in 2009/10 and £400 million in 2010/11. A report by the National Audit Office showed that in 2009/10 £39 million was allocated to concept work on the submarine platform and £64 million for the reactor. Around 150 designers and engineers are currently working at Barrow on the new submarine. Additional staff are employed by Rolls Royce and in the US. A Common Missile Compartment is being developed in America for the proposed British submarine and the US Ohio-replacement. Initial costs were borne entirely by the UK. Further costs over the next few years will be shared.

Although detailed annual costs are not available, the picture is one of an increasing workload and therefore of rising costs each year from 2010 until the peak in the second half of the decade. The projected annual expenditure on nuclear weapons of £2.1 billion is likely to rise to £2.5 billion shortly and then to around £3 billion by 2014. When the House of Commons debated the issue of Trident replacement in 2007, it did so on the assumption that the capital cost of the new equipment would be no more than £20 billion and that it would not come out of the defence budget. This £20 billion did not include the running costs of either the present or successor system or the disposal costs of nuclear waste and contamination. Their inclusion took the bill to at least the £80 billion cited by Lord Bramall. It is now becoming clear that the £20 billion capital cost was itself an underestimate. Public Accounts Committee recommendations included in the MoD’s 2010 Consolidated Resource Accounts draw attention to the submarine’s dependence ‘on a number of monopoly suppliers’ and the need to take action to prevent an escalation of costs. They also highlight the dependence on ‘an American supplied missile compartment’ and that the UK programme is running ahead of the United States’ programme presenting the danger of costly design problems for other aspects of the submarine.

Overall the ultimate capital cost of Trident replacement is therefore likely to be moving towards £30 billion (of which in excess of £2 billion will not be spent in Britain) – as against a lifetime saving of up to £100bn if the whole Trident programme were to be phased out.

Never mind the moral factors here – how can any government legitimise this kind of spending when they are facing a deficit of approximately £160bn? Scrapping Trident alone would save 2/3rds of the deficit at a stroke.

It just doesn’t make sense as seems to suggest that despite the fact we are a small nation, those in power want to make sure we can ‘play with the big boys’. Well, let’s be clear here – if any of those big boys wanted to take control of our country they could at a stroke. The threat will not come from nuclear weapons and it probably would not be chemicals either - both of those would cause mass contamination and could even be carried on the winds to infect their countries as well as ours.

No, the most obvious threat will come through cyberspace – Nuclear or non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) bombs, viruses, worms, and hacking. If the governments IT system collapsed totally today its entire infrastructure would be at a standstill. It would affect all communication – our road, rail, sea and air transport systems. Our military option would be highly limited as so much depends on computers. Even our industrial strength is largely dependant on the use of IT.

Any external threat to this country could then just walk in, take control and enjoy the full wealth of the nation without a single loss of life and with the economic infrastructure fundamentally intact once the computer systems are brought back online.

As Libya, Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries erupt; we must resurrect the movement for peace. The anti-Iraq war demonstrations show that the British people have not lost their commitment to opposing wars and fighting to eliminate the nuclear threat. But unless governments are brought to heal they will continue to build large-scale WMDs.

A generation ago we thought we had done the job – we hadn’t, the weapons stayed and we gave in. Now another generation face the risk of mass genocide on a level barely conceivable. We cannot afford to let them down.

Musings of a new granddad

Recently I became a grandfather and since the birth I’ve had the opportunity to reflect on the kind of society young Zach will inherit as he grows up. A chance to also consider whether all those changes I dreamed of and campaigned for as a young man have happened.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s we were going to change the world. Our heroes were radicals with exotic names – Tariq Ali, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Mao Tse-Tung. We fought on the streets, on campuses and in the back rooms of dingy pubs, all in the belief that any day the old order would fail and we would herald a new age. An era with equality for all, an absence of poverty and above all, freedom from the threat of nuclear war.

Forty years on, it seems to me very little has changed. Our revolutionary leaders either conformed to the “system”, or have been discredited. Tariq Ali became one of the leading lights of mainstream Labour party politics, Daniel Cohn-Bendit joined the Greens and sits in Strasbourg as a member of the European Parliament and Mao has been thoroughly discredited and found to be far more authoritarian than all our worst nightmares.

In the 60s and even in the 70s, we marched against a variety of wars, including the Six-Day war and Vietnam. Today we oppose conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan. Forty years ago, we marched from Aldermaston to London in opposition to nuclear weapons. Nowadays, we stand silently as the government announces there will be a replacement for Trident.

As a young man and eager member of the Communist party, determined to change the world I stood horrified as the Berlin wall was raised, and watched the oppression in Czechoslovakia. There is no Communist party today – well there is, depending on whether you want to look at the Communist Party of Great Britain, the New Communist Party or the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). The revolutionary road has been largely superseded by the democratic path but, just like in the 1960s there is little or no money in the coffers, so most of the hard left find it hard to stand candidates.

The Labour Party back in the 1960s was led by a one-time lefty, who swung to the right once he took over the leadership. Those on the left in those days had held much hope in the leadership of Harold Wilson, only to find him slipping away from the fundamental values outlined in Clause lV of the Constitution of the Party. In 2011, there is no Clause lV – well that’s not strictly true, but there is no longer any requirement for the party to seek control for the means of production and distribution. Blair and his New Labour project effectively put paid to that idea. The latest incarnation of leadership in the Labour Party is a product of the New Labour project and despite being nicknamed “Red Ed”, his pronouncements against strike action to oppose the cuts are reminiscent of the words of Wilson, Callaghan and Kinnock.

In the 1960s, we rediscovered the notion of poverty and began to realize there is an ‘underclass’ in modern society – a sector who earn less than 60% of the national average income. Fourteen years ago, New Labour declared war on poverty – they failed – we still have an underclass and little, if anything has changed. The top elite still own the vast majority of the wealth in this country. A carer will still live on a substandard income whilst a banker can earn an annual income in excess of £8m

So am I cynical? Yes – and I think I have a right to be. My generation let our young people down. We sold out our values for the comfort of a modern three- or four-bedroomed semi in the ‘burbs. We satisfied our idealism with pay increases and a more comfortable life. When Maggie set about dismantling the unions we didn’t cry out in horror and when Blair finished the job we sniffed and said: “So what can I do about it?”

In short, my generation doesn’t have much to be proud of. A lot of failed ideals and trashed values. So my prayer for my young son is simple. Learn from us – don’t sell out, don’t give in and don’t trust those who tell you that sooner or later the system is about to change. It isn’t. The system will never change – you have to change it.

Israel and the Labour Party

As a left-winger in the Labour party I find that whenever the issue of Israel and Palestine are raised I am often at odds with comrades and friends. Each time the subject is raised I find the discussion always veers towards how awful Israel is, or how aggressive the Defense Forces are, or how Zionism equates with racism.

However, there is an alternate, and I would argue more socialistic view.

Let me explain. There can be little or no justification for the current oppression of legitimate Palestinian rights by the Israeli government. Equally, incursions by individual terrorists and members of Hamas into Israeli territory and the use of bombs and rockets against the civilian population is just as unacceptable. As Gandhi stated so eloquently, ‘An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind’.

One of the arguments raised by the Israeli right is that they are duty bound under Torachic law to defend themselves under the principle of an eye for an eye (ayin tachat ayin). But this totally misses the central tenet of the concept. The Torah argued that if you offend another and damage their eye, so must you harm your own. Thus under this analysis the Netanyahu government should be treating the Jewish settlers in an identical fashion to the way they treat the Palestinian people. This is clearly not happening.

In the 1980s a Marxist political group (Mapam) proposed a peace settlement where Jew and Arab could live together in harmony, sharing the wealth of the country in socialist co-operation. Experiments such as Kibbutz Tuval in the north of Israel thrived and prospered and Palestinians and Jews forget racial/ religious barriers and worked together for mutual benefit.

One of the key factors behind this success was the underlying philosophy of the kibbutz movement, with its strong association with Habonim Dror and the socialist-Zionist movement. However, a further key to its success lay in the fact that the essence of socialist-Zionism and the peace movement in general rests on the belief that the Palestinian people have a legitimate right to their own separate identity.

These values need today to be reinforced again and it is incumbent on every socialist internationally to campaign for every oppressed people, wherever and whoever they may be. The Jewish people have a right to a homeland; of that there can be no debate. Similarly, there is now a critical need for the UN to help establish and support a fully independent Palestinian state. The only guarantee for the future, security and character of both peoples is if internationally we campaign for reconciliation through a peaceful settlement.

Part of the dilemma for the Israeli right lay in the outposts in the Palestinian territories. These illegal outposts and settlements are major obstacles to ending the occupation and promoting an agreement, as well as an element that contradicts the Israeli national interest. The Labour party, through the Socialist International and the United Nations should fight for the evacuation of the outposts and settlements, while providing the settlers with adequate compensation and seeing to their rehabilitation.

In particular, the Labour party should adopt the following principles:

• The Palestinian people have the right to self-determination, including the right to establish its own state alongside the State of Israel.
• Israeli settlers in locations which, after the determination of the permanent borders, fall within the Palestinian State will be able to return to Israel and will receive appropriate compensation. It will not be possible to achieve a permanent agreement without evacuating settlements. During the negotiations the two sides will determine those settlements in which Israeli settlers may remain; settlers will be required to recognize and respect Palestinian sovereignty.
• Jerusalem will not be divided. It will be recognized that members of both nations live in the city, and that both have national and religious rights. The area of the city will be redefined and agreed and coordinated municipal frameworks will be established within its borders in order to enable each community to manage its own internal affairs. Two capitals will exist within the municipal area: the capital of Israel in the Jewish areas, and the capital of Palestine in the Arab areas. The status of the holy sites will be determined through negotiations based on maintaining the religious rights and freedom of worship of all religions.
• The permanent settlement will include a comprehensive solution of the problem of the refugees (from 1948) and the dislocated residents (from 1967). The Palestinian State will be entitled to absorb refugees within its borders according to its own considerations. A compensation arrangement for refugees will be agreed upon with international support. After such agreement is reached, the parties will categorically waive any further claims for the return of refugees, restitution of property rights or the right of settlement in the area of the other state.
• Borders will be open to the passage of goods and workers as agreed upon by the two parties and in line with basic socialist principles. Israel will actively support the Palestinian economy and will help recruit international support and investments to promote economic development of the Palestinian State
  

Tacitus