Independent Scotland would give whole UK a future free of Trident programme

Having been fined £200 on 13 March at Stirling Court for taking peaceful, non-violent direct action against a convoy carrying hydrogen bombs, it is some consolation to see that the rest of the world takes a more honest approach to nuclear extermination than that prevalent in UK courts.

This week, in New York, UN negotiations began on a global treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons. Ignoring their much-proclaimed belief in multilateral nuclear disarmament, the British government is absent.

Last October, 123 UN member states voted for a resolution on multilateral nuclear disarmament that called for negotiations to commence on a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”. After the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly endorsed this resolution in December, the stage was set for nuclear ban treaty negotiations that commenced on 27 March, with further sessions due in June and July.

The UK was one of only 35 states (mostly nuclear-armed and Nato allies) which voted against multilateral negotiations when the resolution was overwhelmingly adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 2016. That negative vote does not mean these states can’t participate in this year’s negotiations. Britain was invited to participate in preparatory organisational meetings at the UN in February, but chose not to attend.

In response to a recent parliamentary question from Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, Sir Alan Duncan, minister of state for foreign and commonwealth affairs, announced its boycott, saying that “The UK did not participate in the organisational meeting on negotiating a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons on 16 February and will not attend the substantive negotiations starting on 27 March.”

We in Scotland have a vital role to play in this vital matter. In his report “Trident nowhere to Go “, the late John Ainslie uses government sources to show that there is nowhere else in the UK Trident can operate from other than the existing Clyde bases. This has been vindicated by experts worldwide.

An independent Scotland with a written constitution banning nuclear weapons from its lands and waters means an end to Trident in the UK. We can then join the sane majority. We might, after all, have a future.

BRIAN QUAIL Hyndland Avenue, Glasgow