Britain’s leading anti-nukes group has written to Liberal Democrat MPs calling on them to vote for scrapping Britain™s Trident nuclear weapons in an expected vote on Tuesday.
Kate Hudson, the General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), said she has sent the letter ahead of the Lib Dem annual conference™s vote on a scaled-down alternative to the coalition government™s current like-for-like Trident replacement plan.
Hudson told the Lib Dem MPs that their party will be seen as disappointing, despite leading Trident reassessment debates in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, if it fails to embrace complete elimination of Trident nukes.
œThe proposal before you in Motion F32 of a Trident-lite – a scaled-down model – will not only disappoint those who voted for the party for the first-time in 2010, but many long-standing party activists who have consistently campaigned for nuclear disarmament for many years,” Hudson said.
œThere are some positive steps forward in the motion, such as removing warheads from submarines and ending continuous patrols, but the motion itself is a clear commitment not only to retaining nuclear weapons, but also astonishingly looks ahead to a further nuclear-armed submarine fleet to succeed Trident replacement,” she added.
Hudson further stressed the Lib Dems should start with œAmendment One to Defence Policy Motion F32”, as put forward in her letter, to œcancel the successor programme and eliminate entirely the UK™s nuclear deterrent.”
She said failure to do so will undermine the party™s œprincipled position” in the eyes of Lib Dem supporters and the wider public that, according to the polls, would rather have the £100 billion cost of a Trident replacement spent on health, education and green energy.
CND estimates keeping Trident nuclear weapons system costs British taxpayers £3 billion a year aside from the cost of replacing the nukes.
Alongside anti-nukes activists inside Britain, London has been also challenged by former United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix on the claim that Trident can help the country better protect itself.
The Swede told an audience at the Hay literary festival back in May that even the US is not pursuing such a œcostly rearmament” and questioned whether Trident is œrequired to protect UK independence or UK pride”.
“I know that the British military are not very keen on it. I don’t think Britain would be more protected by [Trident] and Germany and Japan seem to be managing without them [nuclear weapons],” he said, stressing œit would be a big gain” if Britain gets rid of its whole nuclear stockpile.
AMR/HE
Copyright: Press TV