The case against nuclear weapons moved up the political agenda today as the Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties held a joint press conference in Westminster to demand Britain get rid of its nukes (1) - and Plaid Cymru's spokesperson said he hopes Caroline Lucas, the Green Party leader, wins the Brighton Pavilion seat and becomes another MP speaking out against Trident and other nuclear weapons.
Abolition of Trident "only the first step"
The Green Party was quick to commend the SNP (2) and Plaid Cymru for promising to keep fighting to abolish the Trident missile system - originally built to devastate cities like Moscow and slaughter millions of civilians in the event of a nuclear war.
A Green Party spokesperson said: "The principle of multilateral disarmament, of working towards a nuclear-free world, as recently evinced by Presidents Obama and Medvedev (3), rejects the dogmatic old-world, cold war view and looks instead to the future. It is what the Green Party has always stood for. But we would go further than other people who claim they want rid of nuclear weapons - we would be prepared to lead the way by scrapping ours first, to stress the point that their use would inevitably involve the widespread massacre of civilians and would thus be legally defined as a war crime."
The Greens pointed out that "Scrapping Trident would only be the first step. We need to make sure that we don't then pour money into some other unusable nuclear weapon system."
Lib Dems are not anti-nuclear, just anti-Trident
The Green Party said that while the Liberal Democrats may be opposed to the renewal of Trident, they do not advocate the total abolition of nuclear weapons; they would merely refuse to replace Trident "like-for-like" (4)
"Nuclear weapons are political weapons of terror and are disproportionate to any threat," the Green Party's spokesperson added. "Real security cannot be based upon a balance of nuclear terror, nor upon a global domination by a group of states operating largely from self-interest."
"Unlike Liberal Democrat plans to re-invest a lot of the £100 billion saved from decommissioning Trident into a different nuclear weapons system, under Green Party proposals all the money saved would be put towards creating sustainable jobs and a fairer society," the spokesperson concluded.
The Greens believe that "Scrapping nuclear weapons is yet another policy where the Green Party is more closely in tune with the British electorate than Labour, the Tories or the Lib Dems."
Notes
1. SNP and Plaid Cymru conducted a joint press conference on the morning of 23 April 2010, presenting their opposition to replacement of the Trident weapons system and nuclear armament in general. On page four of the SNP manifesto it states: "We will press for the scrapping of Trident nuclear missiles and a halt to their replacement". The Green Party of England and Wales and the Scottish Green Party have always emphasised a clear commitment to the immediate decommissioning and non-renewal of Trident.
2. The Greens did however criticise the SNP for the "disingenuous tactic" of claiming to be the only anti-nuclear party in Scotland; of course the Scottish Green Party has always been opposed to nuclear and all other weapons of mass destruction.
3. Earlier this month US President Obama and Russian President Medvedev signed a treaty lowering their deployed strategic warheads to a level 30% lower than before: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8608993.stm.
4. P 57 of the Liberal Democrat manifesto.
5. In a Guardian and ICM poll (July 2009) 54% of all voters would prefer to abandon nuclear weapons rather than put money into a new generation of Trident warheads: www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jul/13/icm-poll-nuclear-weapons.