Helensburgh and Trident will be election 'epicentre'

Helensburgh and the Trident issue will be at the epicentre of national election debate.

That's the view of SNP candidate Mike MacKenzie who claimed Faslane will be intrinsic to all parties' campaigning.

The SNP have said they want Scotland to be free of nuclear weapons.

Speaking on Tuesday when the general election date of May 6 was announced, Mr MacKenzie said: "If faced with the choice of closing health or education services, or cut Trident, we choose Trident.

"It was appropriate during the cold war period, but certainly not now. The SNP's position is clear, we want to abolish Trident."

But that's a stance fiercely contested by Conservative candidate Gary Mulvaney, who said: "The SNP would threaten the base, but without Trident there would be no base and it would have an impact on the local economy, jobs and house prices.

"If it came to that, then the police would be the last people leaving Helensburgh to put the light off."

Alan Reid, who is defending the seat for the Lib Dems, said: "With Faslane a major local employer I will campaign against any cuts there. It should have a secure future as the home to all of Britain's submarines.

"If this summer's Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty talks fail to reach agreement on eliminating nuclear weapons, Britain will need to retain a nuclear deterrent, but we don't need the massive firepower of Trident. When Trident is replaced in 2024, a less powerful nuclear deterrent will be enough."

Labour's candidate David Graham also challenged Mr MacKenzie's stance. He said: "In an ideal and peaceful world there would be no nuclear weapons and indeed no weapons at all.

"The Royal Navy Service personnel, MoD civilian workers, Babcock Marine workers and external contractors who continue to contribute around £260 million each year to the local and Scottish economy through wages and contracts will become very anxious if the SNP are ever in the position to break up the UK."

The debate about Faslane's future with or without nuclear weapons will be spotlighted further in an election hustings meeting in Helensburgh on April 20, organised by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

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Laura Downs
Unregistered User
Apr 9, 13:50
Comment: 10300

The issue is not whether the UK will abandon its nuclear weapons, but when. The government has stated that it is committed to achieving President Obama's vision of a world without nuclear weapons, and that it takes its obligations to disarm under the international Non-Proliferation Treaty seriously.

This means Trident will be leaving Scotland eventually, and the sooner we start preparing for this, the better. Research from Scottish TUC has shown that jobs at Faslane need not be lost if we adopt a sensible strategy for using skills of the workforce for other roles.

A big majority of the Scottish public is opposed to Trident and even the English are waking up to the fact that, at £97 billion, we can no longer afford to replace it.

Trident's days are numbered, and politicians round here need to take their heads out of the sand and start recognising that times have changed since the Cold War.
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Dave
Unregistered User
Apr 9, 14:22
Comment: 10303

Cold war nuclear weapons such as Trident are irrelevant to modern security needs.

The threats we face in the 21st century are from climate change, fundamentalism, and cyber-warfare. Nuclear weapons cannot protect us against any of these.

We should not be wasting huge sums of money on weapons which have no military purpose when troops on the ground in Afghanistan don't have the kit they need to win the war they are fighting.
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