Nuclear weapons and why Labour’s still split
In the late Fifties and the Sixties, several leading Labour figures were alarmed about splits in the party over unilateral nuclear disarmament. the other day, I picked up one of the two volumes of Michael Foot’s great work on Aneurin Bevan and read how, in 1957, my cousin Sam Watson, leader of the Durham Mineworkers, was asked to chair a committee to try to restore unity. On this occasion he failed to work his usual magic, and 60 years on the Labour Party continues to have this debate. All a person can do as a Labour supporter is to join the party, keep his/ her membership up to date, go along to branch meetings and vote for mandated conference delegates who will represent them and vote accordingly at a Labour Conference. But doing that first requires Labour supporters to make up their own minds. the agony of the Labour Party is the same dilemma facing most rightthinking people about the subject. no one wants nuclear weapons — but can we do without them?
NIGEL F. BODDY, Darlington, Co Durham. the Russians are now speaking of another ‘Cold War’ with the West. During the last Cold War years, in the early Seventies, I was a territorial Army Captain (ReMe). Our role was defence of the UK. And the real threat was Russia. I was a qualified nuclear, chemical and biological officer. I did many exercises in Germany where we were subjected to simulated biological attacks. Fortunately, the threat of nuclear war was sufficient for both sides to see sense and not pursue any action. now, UK Armed Forces have been cut so much we couldn’t fight a war in europe. We must accept that our intervention in the affairs of foreign sovereign states can never be justified. We now seem determined to get rid of President Assad in Syria, and what effect will that have? Russian policy is simple. Support the leader and government, and get rid of the terrorists. the West insists on referring to terrorists as ‘opposition groups’, but it isn’t our business to decide who should rule. these countries must resolve their own problems — and the West should try to understand better what Russia is attempting.
TERRY MULLARD, Dymchurch, Kent.