Volume 17 - Issue 24, Nov. 25 - Dec.

08, 2000
India's National Magazine
from the publishers of THE HINDU

NUCLEAR ISSUES

NMD, a new threat to nuclear disarmament

Table of
Contents

Jeremy Corbyn has been a member of the House of Commons since

1983. His strongly articulated left-wing commitments present a
constant challenge to the New Labour strategy favoured by British
Prime Minister Tony Blair. For long a member of the Camp aign for
Nuclear Disarmament, he spoke to Sukumar Muralidharan in New
Delhi during the anti-nuclear convention.
We have seen that in the years that it was out of power, Labour stood
for a unilateralist position whereas now it is much more cautious. Is it
politically expensive in the British context to maintain a unilateralist
position?
SANDEEP SAXENA

I joined the Campaign for Nuclear

Disarmament (CND) in 1966 when I
was 16 and my views on the subject
have not changed. When I was first
elected a member of Parliament in
1983, CND was a very powerful
organisation and the Labour Party
conference had vote d for a non-nuclear
defence policy and reiterated its support
for unilateral nuclear disarmament.
After we lost the 1983 election and Neil
Kinnock became the leader, we had a
massive rally in October with about 300,000 people present.
Kinnock's speech th en was very strident in opposing the Trident and
Cruise missiles. But very tellingly, his exact words were that we
should put our missile programme on the negotiating table, where it
belongs, suggesting that in reality he was in favour of multilateral di
sarmament through negotiation rather than Britain unilaterally giving
up the weapons. What one observes after that is a general
manoeuvring by the party to get away from the unilateralist position,
and by the 1987 election they almost got there. Colleagu es who had
been elected with me in 1983 rapidly gave up CND membership and
adopted what they called a more responsible approach. The policy
now is to support global disarmament but it is rather unclear how that
would be achieved until some move is made i nitially. Now there is a

fresh danger of proliferation of nuclear weapons because of the

obvious manoeuvring by the U.S. to have a national missile defence
(NMD) system.
The British position on NMD today is in fact rather vague, whereas
the European Union has taken a fairly critical attitude.
The E.U. position generally is hostile to the NMD and supportive of a
common European security approach through the E.U. The British
approach has been much closer to that of the U.S. Whilst they have
not endorsed the NMD, they have refused to answer spec ific
questions to deny the U.S. facilities.
The U.K. of course has been generally supportive of a new global
profile for the U.S. What about the other European states?
Yes, there is opposition in France, Germany and Italy, particularly in
France and Italy. In Italy there is considerable opposition, partly
because there is a much more powerful Left wing in Italy through the
two communist parties. But there is also a muc h more unstable
electoral position there.
Could the anti-nuclear sections of the Labour Party seek to spread its
influence by coordinating with the European opposition to U.S.
ambitions?
Not in the short term. But the support for the non-nuclear defence
position and for significant cuts in arms expenditure in Britain is still
there. Within the Labour Party it is still there. At the moment I would
not say it is particularly strong. But I think the issue of NMD will
actually concentrate the minds of our party. And I would imagine that
if Bush gets the U.S. presidency, then he would go for NMD rather
quickly. Gore may be slightly more cautious about it but not very,
mainly because of the h uge defence contracts involved. I think he
would go for NMD but without the knobs on.
Is there likely to be a reaction in Britain?
Yes, there are concerns about the location of the listening posts and
launch sites. There are concerns about the costs as well.

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