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Time UK abandoned its nuclear arms, says former Labour leader

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Feb 28, IRNA -- Former deputy leader of the Labour Party Toy 
Hattersley called on Prime Minister Tony Blair to decommission 
Britain`s nuclear weapons, if, as expected, his government is 
re-elected at the forthcoming general election. 
"The next (Labour) government will be bright enough to accept the 
strategic logic of abandoning the `so-called independent` nuclear 
weapon," Hattersley said. 
"The idea that military might is proof of national greatness is 
an outdated notion that a radical and reforming government should 
dismiss with a combination of derision and contempt," he said. 
In an article published in the Guardian newspaper Monday, the 
former deputy Labour leader said that the world had moved on from the 
old days of the Cold War when nuclear weapons were used as a 
deterrence. 
"In the modern world, where deterrence is impossible, the only 
reason to keep nuclear weapons is the genuine belief that one day they
might be used," he said. 
Hattersley, who served as a Labour cabinet minister during the 
1970s, said that a nuclear arsenal was `not going to stop a man with 
suitcase full of ricing wiping out Greater London`. 
He criticized the huge expense of maintaining what was called `the
balance of terror` and Britain`s total subservience to the US in 
developing and deploying such strategic weapons. 
"No one seriously imagined that the British bomb - or the British 
missile warhead into which it evolved - could ever be used without US 
agreement," said the former Labour leader, who is now a member of the 
House of Lords. 
He suggested that it was a delusion to think that the arsenal was 
`so-called independent nuclear deterrent` when in recent years, 
Britain has `not even been possible to deploy it without American 
assistance`. 
"It would be absurd to spend money that is desperately needed for 
other government enterprises on `upgrading` and `hardening` the 
missile system so that it can be used, as it always must be, in 
conjunction with the US," Hattersley warned. 
"Fifty years ago, we should have limited our role in the alliance 
to providing convenient bases for our American allies. Now we should 
abandon the nuclear weapons business altogether," he said. 
HC/2323/1412