CND damns government over nuclear firm

 

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CND brands Forth bridge contract “disgraceful”

By Bruce Whitehead 

SCOTTISH CND has attacked the government for having double standards after it emerged that the contractor building the new Forth crossing is now also a manufacturer of nuclear weapons, which the SNP strongly opposes. CND Scotland’s treasurer Jim Taggart said the government’s determination to continue the contract with Jacobs Engineering, which bought part of the Aldermaston nuclear weapons establishment last month, was disgraceful.

Mr Taggart asked: “Are the SNP opposed to nuclear weapons, or are they not? There’s all this hype about Scottish CND saying that the SNP are on-side, but one wonders if it’s just a case of not-in-my-backyard.” The comments by Mr Taggart, who also represents Labour CND, exposed a policy rift among senior organisers at Scottish CND after its co-ordinator John Ainslie, who’d initially promised a statement, then decided not to comment.

Mr Taggart said that in his view there should be no nuclear weapons  anywhere, adding: “There’s no point if they are thrown out of Scotland and Her Majesty’s Government then simply ships them all to Devonport.”

The government rejected suggestions of a confused nuclear weapons policy, saying Jacobs Engineering, which is project-managing the £2.3bn scheme to build a second Forth bridge, had won the contract fairly under European Union tender rules. Just before Christmas Jacobs purchased the UK government’s remaining one-third stake in the Aldermaston weapons establishment, maker of Trident nuclear warheads, which the SNP wants removed from Scotland.

The party’s 2007 election manifesto promised “peace with prosperity” to build a nation which would be “free to remove nuclear weapons from Scotland’s shores.” All forty-seven of its MSPs voted against Trident renewal in 2007 and last year the government set up an anti-Trident working party to look at ways to stop the £50bn upgrading of the Clyde-based British nuclear deterrent. However, despite the apparent policy clash in allowing the new Forth crossing to be overseen by a firm which makes nuclear bombs, the government said that European Union tender rules prevented clients from imposing conditions on bidders regarding their other interests.

Green MSP Patrick Harvie said the contract to build the bridge had much in common with the Trident programme: “It’s vastly expensive, entirely unnecessary, and it damages the environmental credentials of the Ministers who promote it. We would urge Ministers to think again about dealing with a company so heavily implicated in weapons of mass destruction.”

A spokesman for the Scottish Labour party criticised the SNP, saying that its policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament would lose thousands of defence jobs and leave the country open to threats from what he called rogue countries like Iran which might develop nuclear weapons. He said the British government had done more than any other to reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Thirty-nine Labour MSPs abstained from the Trident vote in June 2007, although five rebelled and voted against renewal.

Although Britain’s main nuclear weapons are carried by submarines based in Scotland, defence policy is reserved by Westminster.