Isolated UK continues “cavalier” attitude to nuclear non-proliferation campaigners say
ANTI-TRIDENT campaigners have said independence supporters will form a “pincer movement” with the international community, closing in on the UK’s increasingly precarious Trident nuclear weapon’s system, based at Faslane in Scotland.
The weapon system, set to be renewed at a cost of £205bn, is already on a “very shoogly nail” campaigners say, as a new UN treaty banning nuclear weapons is currently being thrashed out by UN member states, and the system can only be based on the Clyde and would likely be decommissioned in the event of Scottish independence.
The UK has joined the US and more than 40 countries in the western sphere of influence in boycotting the ban treaty talks.
The UK is boycotting procedures at the UN
Speaking to CommonSpace from the UN headquarters in New York, Vice Chair of Scottish CND Janet Fenton said: “Their coat is on a very shoogly nail anyway, as the majority of states move inexorably to creating the Ban Treaty.
Speaking on the announcement of a Scottish independence referendum, voted for by the Scottish Parliament on Tuesday (28 March) Fenton, who has been participating in an unofficial Scottish lobbying operation for months said: “Those who support independence for Scotland should welcome these negotiations as the other arm in a pincer movement that will ensure that UK can no longer be a nuclear weapons state.
“Despite their cavalier insistence that the weapons will all be deployed from Scotland there is no explanation on offer of how they would renew, or even continue, with Trident without control of Faslane.
“With the lack of infrastructure and amenities anywhere else in the UK, a fact that the UK Government nor the MOD has never denied, Scotland could non-violently force the issue, and start the badly needed unravelling of the P5 [the world’s officially nuclear armed states] and their nuclear addiction problem.”
International anti-nuclear weapons campaigners at the UN
States leading the boycott, including the UK and the US, have maintained they want to continue with the 1970 non-proliferation treaty (NPT), despite its failure to stop the spread of the weapons of mass destruction around the globe.
Nuclear weapons are the only weapons of mass destruction not specifically prohibited by international law.
The UK’s refusal to engage with the ban treaty, being written up by the vast majority of UN states, means it cuts an isolated figure in the body, at a time when the UK is severing many ties on the European continent and moving closer to a US in thrall to President Donald Trump’s “America first” isolationist stance. 129 states are currently formulating the historic ban.
Trump before the world: Scots UN delegates lash out over UK nuclear weapon ban boycott
Fenton added: “The nuclear weapon ban treaty is a categorical rejection of nuclear weapons. Its overarching objective is to help facilitate the elimination of nuclear weapons. This means it needs to set out prohibitions and obligations that stigmatise nuclear weapons The treaty can and should be seen as part of the larger architecture of general and complete disarmament, and of peace, security, and human rights. It is not an end itself, but a tool.
“Getting there requires creativity, especially when the nine states that possess nuclear weapons have exhibited no good faith commitment to nuclear disarmament. Creating a pathway to disarmament in this environment may appear impossible, but it is not. And it is happening.”
This week has also seen Hiroshima survivors meet with Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon [pictured], as part of the international drive to prohibit nuclear weapons.
Pictures courtesy of Scottish CND
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