Politics

I am a Labour Party member of 68 year’s standing, thrice a Parliamentary candidate around 1960, and honoured in 1986 by being chosen by Calder Valley Constituency Labour Party as its Defence, Disarmament and Détente co-ordinator in support of Neil Kinnock’s non-nuclear defence initiative. This did us no electoral harm, for nationally we won back 42 seats from the Tories in 1987, and locally we increased our vote then by 31.4 per cent over 1983. I write to agree with General Lord Danant that the Trident issue is far too serious for handling as just another election topic. For a Defence Secretary to descent to name-calling as Michael Fallon did, he should immediately be removed from the UK/US nuclear-weapon button which his predecessor Denis Healey expressed refusal ever to push. Nuclear war seems a remote possibility of little public concern now the unnecessary Cold War is long past. Yet so did European war for nearly a century before the catastrophic slide of 1914. We need to recognise that each of the several missiles in a Trident warhead is 50 times as lethal as the atom bomb which annihilated Hiroshima 70 years ago, and is genocidal since its fallout alone could annihilate all Europe. This incidentally makes its manufacture and maintenance illegal under the International Criminal Court Act of 2001, sections from 50 to 55 which bans “ancillary offences” including aiding or counselling the commission of genocide, a crime against humanity, or a war crime. Since threats to our security now stem from terrorism, and have been curtailed by our police and related services to their great credit, I say that Trident is an immoral, illegal and unusable weapon of genocidal suicide, targeted on a non-existent enemy. I hope therefore to ask our hustings-candidates: “Will you please demand a free vote on Trident renewal?” And I urge your readers to follow suit.