Scotland has a moral duty to act on Trident

The daily deluge of statistics about Covid numbs the brain but cannot obscure the seismic change in the public perception of what security actually means. Real security is reciprocal and interdependent. We cannot build our security on another country’s insecurity. As Martin Luther King said: “We must learn to live together as brothers, or to perish together as fools.” became the official policy of certain states we had the collective lunacy of the Cold War; trillions of dollars was wasted on weapons, while millions perished through hunger and disease. And we suffered endless proxy wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan, Central America to Africa.

Meanwhile, the good people who wanted us to have a future rallied round the call to “ban the bomb”. We said ban the bomb and – guess what – that is exactly what we have done. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force on 22 January, 2021. This is compulsory international law. The nuclear states may ignore this but they are thereby stigmatised as pariah states.

Today the Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than at any other time in the past. Scotland, which is home to the biggest arsenal of hydrogen bombs in Europe, is unique in that it is the only country which has nuclear weapons imposed on it against the wishes of the people and parliament. So we have a prime moral duty to respond.

For this reason there will be a protest at Faslane’s North Gate at 11am on 22 January, the anniversary of the TPNW, to demand that the criminal deployment of Trident, the UK’S illegal WMD, cease.

Our choice is stark. Either we have a future without nuclear weapons, or we have no future at all. BRIAN QUAIL

Glasgow