Scottish Scrap Trident Coalition

Press release: 5th July 2016

Scottish anti-Trident campaigners have reacted strongly to the call by Tory leadership candidate Theresa May for David Cameron to arrange an early Commons vote on Trident renewal.

Speaking for Scrap Trident Coalition, the umbrella group for a wide-ranging group of Scottish organisations and parties[1] that oppose nuclear weapons, David Mackenzie said:

“There’s a transparent cynicism here. To boost her macho credibility May is ready to identify herself as willing to kill millions of innocent people. However, her sideshow is merely another indicator of the problem at the heart of this Westminster regime – its readiness to do the vilest things to maintain the elites it represents and the vanishing status of the UK.

The most recent indicator is the refusal of the UK government to participate in the United Nations working group on nuclear weapons at which a majority of governments have supported an urgent start to negotiations for a nuclear ban treaty[2]. Westminster has thus prevented a Scottish contribution being considered.

Along with Brexit, Westminster’s confirmation of its addictive attachment to weapons of mass destruction can only drive Scotland faster down the road to independence, which still looks like the quickest route to nuclear disarmament for the UK as whole. Trident was such a key feature of the last independence referendum campaign because it summed up clearly the toxic attitudes and politics we are desperate to escape from into a sane, wise and compassionate way of living. The same will hold true for the second referendum.

We can still hope beyond hope that the renewal will not in fact go ahead. We know that the Trident renewal programme is a complete midden [3]with planning timescale over-runs, ballooning cost, a shortage of engineers and an increased system dependence on the Pentagon. Who knows what the view of a post-Brexit Conservative government will be as the national budget will be ever more problematic? In that context our Scottish opposition to renewal will be vocal and persistent in our own Parliament, on the streets, at the gates of Faslane and Coulport and at the roadsides as the warhead convoys rumble through.”

Contact: David Mackenzie 07876593016