Anti-Trident protesters outside Faslane submarine base. Photo: Murdo Macleod.
Ed Miliband is right to include defence in the current Labour party policy review, and Angela Smith and John Woodcock are out of order to suggest that the policy is settled (Our deterrent is good value, 1 April). It's about time the country had a defence policy based on the highest risks that we face. According to the government's national security strategy review, these are terrorist attacks, cyber-attacks and environmental challenges, particularly flooding. A state-on-state nuclear attack does not figure as a significant risk at all, so questioning commitment to the Trident replacement programme is highly responsible and appropriate.
A future Labour government should also commit to resourcing a conversion programme for the nuclear industry. As Smith and Woodcock correctly point out, the high levels of knowledge and skills bound up in the nuclear industry are precious. They should and can be channelled into hi-tech and green industries adapted to produce new technologies and products that will assist in rebalancing the economy while developing and extending the UK skill base and employment opportunities. This will help to widen exports to global markets from the restricted range of armament sales to often unsavoury regimes.
Commitment to scrap Trident will demonstrate leadership in a volatile world as we witness frightening nuclear proliferation by North Korea. We should be working with other nuclear weapon states towards disarmament, not ratching up the odds towards disaster.
Angela Trikic
Labour CND
• In the Guardian, 1 April, on page 25 we read that "we will appear dangerously weak if we are prepared to give up [Trident] insurance". On page 26 we read that "the central committee of the Workers' Party made clear that it sees nuclear weapons as guaranteeing the nation's life". For the avoidance of all misunderstanding, page 25 is about the UK Labour party and therefore sound and reasonable, and page 26 is the opinion of dangerously irrational North Korean nuclear fanatics.
Dr Richard Lawson
Churchill, North Somerset
• It has long been a mystery whom the British nuclear deterrent is supposed to deter. We know from past experience that it does not deter Argentina or al-Qaida or Chinese cyber warriors. Britain is too far away and insignificant to be of any concern to North Korea, and Iran has other enemies closer to home to worry about. We do not seriously feel threatened by either Pakistan or India. Since nothing has been done about nuclear proliferation, it may be that some decades hence we shall fall out with a nuclear-armed Fiji or Guatemala, but such a danger is minuscule compared with that of climate change, which we have yet to tackle with the seriousness it needs.
Angela Smith and John Woodcock provide a solution to the mystery. The value of the deterrent tothe Labour party is to deter the Tories. That might be worth a few billion if it were guaranteed to work, but plainly it has not. The electorate did not choose a government on the basis of its devotion to nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons may have no value as a deterrent, but Smith and Woodcock have another argument for them, that they boost advanced UK manufacturing. However, the value of manufacturing consists either in producing items for which we have a use (which nuclear weapons do not) or which we can sell at a profit to others who do have a use for them (which we will not do). UK manufacturing would be far better off directed at products which we can use – high-speed trains, carbon-neutral power generation and telecommunications to name but a few.
Anthony Matthew
Leicester
• Congratulations on another excellent April Fool this year. Two Labour MPs urging support for Trident! You nearly fooled me for a moment – but the use of the phrase "bang for buck" in this context gives the game away – especially on the day that the latest round of spending cuts come in. But a rib-tickler all the same – great stuff, and you'll have to go some way to find something more preposterous next year.
Anthony Hayward
Dudley
• One thing that would almost guarantee my voting Labour in the next general election would be a commitment to abandon the dangerous nonsense of Trident. My dismay at reading the article by Angela Smith and John Woodcock turned to incredulity as I tried to understand their argument. Apparently we should welcome an expenditure of a "mere" £12bn to £17bn to safeguard around 10,000 jobs across the UK. That's over a million pounds per job.
Tony Cox
Oxford
• As someone who thinks that Trident is an expensive and immoral millstone for us and our military to bear, I was mightily cheered up by the Labour MPs Smith and Woodcock. If they feel it is necessary to plead for the continuing construction of Trident submarines at Barrow-in-Furness then perhaps the abandonment of Trident is nearer to hand than I think. Especially when they say that if Trident is replaced by another system it would be, horror of horrors, an act of unilateral nuclear disarmament. Is it because they don't want the Labour party to change its mind when the facts change and by using this hackneyed phrase they think it will frighten Labour off making a sensible decision?
Tony Blair famously said that he could see clearly the force of the common sense and practical argument against Trident, but nevertheless could not imagine standing up in the House of Commons and saying that he had decided to scrap it. This weakness is shared by most politicians, which should concern us, as the case for keeping Trident dwindles by the day.
Jim Pragnell
Otford