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The Scottish Parliament is now led by a Scottish Nationalist Party administration
opposed to Trident. The result has been renewed optimism about making progress with
antiTrident campaigning, particularly by working through the Scottish Parliament.
However success will only be achieved if pressure is maintained on both Westminster
and Holyrood by further campaigns of direct action and lobbying, as well as an increase
in trade union involvement. Four Scottish based peace activists explain.
Trident
opposition in
Scotland puts
UK under
pressure.
Rebecca Johnson
In May 2007, Scotland elected a
minority government committed to getting rid of Trident.
Opinion polls showed that
opposition to Trident was the
foremost reason cited by people
who transferred their votes from
the Labour Party to the Scottish
National Party (SNP). It is
important to recognise that the
outcome was not due to an
upsurge in nationalist opinion,
but reflected disgust with Tony
Blair's government, not least
over Labour's decision to renew
Trident for a further 30 years.
Deputy First Minister Nicola
Sturgeon acknowledged this
when she paid tribute to Faslane
365 for mobilising public opinion and providing the impetus
for rejecting the imposition of
nuclear weapons.
After holding a Summit for a
Nuclear Free Scotland in October, the Scottish Government,
led by the SNP, has now
appointed a 12person Working
Group, chaired by the Minister
for Parliamentary Business,
Bruce Crawford MSP, to assist in
creating "a Scotland Without
Nuclear Weapons". It also let
the international community
know that Scotland seeks to
become an observer to the meetings of the nuclear Non–Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as it prepares
to become a nonnuclear country. Maintaining that nuclear
armaments are neither necessary
nor useful for security and that
Britain should take the lead in
turning away from these
weapons of mass destruction,
Scotland is also pursuing legal
strategies to counter the UK
position that defence and foreign
policy are "reserved" for London.
Faslane 365
By organising a year of non–violent blockades at the UK's premier nuclear base, Faslane 365's
approach was to challenge militarism directly whilst building a
broader, stronger community of
activists to share ideas and learn
from each others' struggles and
campaigns. The intense year of
blockading Faslane may now be
over, but the campaign to prevent the replacement – and,
indeed, continued deployment –
of Trident is building in other
ways.
Faslane 365 's strategy has
enabled Scotland to take the
lead, but we will not succeed in
getting rid of Trident without
further grassroots action and
international pressure to
denounce and devalue nuclear
reliance, as part of a broader
campaign for the abolition of
nuclear weapons worldwide.
Trident Ploughshares and
Scottish CND need to plan further direct action at Faslane and
Coulport, while activists round
the world should intensify pressure on the UK government to
match its actions to its disarmament rhetoric, reverse its decision to renew Trident and take
the lead in building a more
secure world without nuclear
arms.
Rebecca Johnson was a Senior
Advisor to the International Commission on Weapons of Mass
Destruction and part of Faslane 365
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