Tribune leader, 17 January 1992
It is almost incredible that the Tories have decided to make
a big issue of Labour's defence policy in the election campaign. Almost, but
not quite.
Although fear of the Soviet threat is no more, it has been
replaced in the popular mind by a vague sense of unease at what the former
Soviet republic will be like; and, in the wake of the Gulf war, many people are
worried by what nuclear-armed Third World dictators might do. The military
industries, despite large-scale redundancies, in the past year, remain major;
employers and workers in those industries are worried about their future.
There are probably also a few votes in pandering to nostalgia among older
members of the electorate for the days when Britain really mattered in the
world.
The Tories believe Labour to be vulnerable on defence,
despite its policy U-turns in the past four years, on several grounds. First,
they think that Labour cannot live down having so recently advocated unilateral abandonment of British
nuclear weapons. Then there is the detail of Labour's current policy. The party
leadership might now say that a Labour government would retain British nuclear
weapons as long as other states kept theirs, but Labour would not build the
fourth Trident (unless it turns out cheaper to build than to cancel) nor
develop a British tactical air-to-surface nuclear missile. Labour conference,
although disowned by the leadership, has consistently voted to reduce arms
spending to the "average European level".
So how should Labour respond to the Tory assault? It
certainly should not trim any more. Further "minor adjustments" in
Labour's position, particularly on the fourth Trident, would be a very bad
idea. As Tribune has argued tune and again, there is now no significant nuclear
threat to Britain that anyone can convincingly identify as a justification for
"deterrence": the "independent deterrent" serves no
function apart from deluding the British public that Britannia still rules the
waves. Three Tridents are three too many; a fourth might-stave off the collapse
of VSEL in Barrow-in-Furness for four years, but in the long run far more jobs
would be saved, and still more created, if the money earmarked by the present government
for the fourth Trident submarine were diverted at once into funding a
comprehensive arms industry conversion programme. The same goes for the
European Fighter Aircraft and several other large-scale military spending
projects.
In the Labour Party's current mood, however, such arguments
are unlikely to dissuade the leadership from moving still closer to the
Government on defence. What might dissuade it are electoral considerations. The
party's shifts on defence policy since 1987 have been motivated by the belief
that affluent working-class voters were particularly turned off by namby-pamby,
middle-class nuclear pacifism. Now those voters are back on board - but Labour
has lost a great deal of credibility among those who were broadly in favour of
nuclear pacifism. So far, most have stuck to Labour but if the leadership goes
any further, it risks losing even their grudging support. Party strategists
should remind themselves just how big CND was in the mid-eighties - and
remember that the explicitly anti-nuclear Greens took 15 per cent of the vote
in the 1989 European elections. Of course, times have changed, and defence
policy is unlikely to be the sole determining factor in even the most ardent
CNDer's choice at the general election.
But with the polls as tight as they
are, for Labour to throw away the (already wavering) nuclear pacifist vote
could be to throw away the chance of office.
