The replacement of the Trident missile system cannot be justified on moral, economic or defence grounds. That's the conclusion of a new report launched in the Scottish Parliament today by the Jimmy Reid Foundation.
The moral and philosophical case against renewal is well understood, even by those who support Trident replacement. Inherently indiscriminate nuclear weapons can never satisfy the just war principles of discrimination and proportionality.
There is also a defence case against renewal; one increasing supported by former defence chiefs and others who recognise that the massive expenditure on Trident is at the expense of conventional defence. Equipment and resources that are needed to address real threats to our security, rather than a vanity project maintained largely to maintain a seat at the UN Security Council.
Important those these arguments are, the strength of today's report is in making the economic case against Trident renewal. The often vastly inflated claims of job losses are carefully debunked and the report calculates that some 600 civilian jobs are dependent on the existing Trident system at Faslane and Coulport. The replacement of Trident will cost at least £205bn - a figure that is likely to go up with the weaker pound (as much of the spending goes to foreign companies) and the normal cost drift of defence programmes. That means every Trident job costs £18m.
We also need to recognise the opportunity cost of spending £205bn on other public services. With more than 30,000 devolved public sector jobs lost in Scotland since the crash, these resources would provide many more jobs and services that people really need. It could also boost real manufacturing jobs in the UK, rather than transfers to banks and foreign multinationals.
As trade unions we cannot argue the indefensible, simply because it has job implications. What we have to do is to minimise the impact and negotiate a just transition to other work. It might be argued that this is easy for a union with no members linked to Trident replacement to make. However, there are other policy areas where we have taken just such an approach. For example, we are in favour of public ownership of the gas and electricity sectors, a policy that would result in the loss of sales jobs in the industry done by UNISON members. Our approach is not to defend the obvious waste in the current system, but rather to make the case to transition our members into more useful and more satisfying work.
In this context, the report calls on the Scottish Government to establish a Scottish Defence Diversification Agency, whose main focus would be the planning and resourcing of jobs away from Trident. The report outlines how this could be done and points to case studies from other parts of the world.
Spending staggering sums of public money on a useless weapons system cannot be justified at any time. However, given the current state of the public finances it is beyond indefensible. The strength of this report is that it focuses on the economic case against Trident replacement and offers a just transition for those who may be impacted by non-renewal. Their skills are much needed elsewhere.
The report will be available on the Reid Foundation website
http://reidfoundation.org
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