SCRAP TRIDENT AND LET SCOTLAND LEAD THE WAY - Why I’ll be marching on Saturday.

It is another measure of the paucity of argument offered by the defenders of nuclear weapons remaining on the Clyde when David Cameron claims, as he did last week, they are there to protect us from North Korea. It is not clear whether he had been drinking or not!

Kin Yong Un and the poor impoverished, frightened, North Koreans seem, for the moment at least, to have taken the place of the Russians, the Iranians and even the French as our gravest potential enemies in the ‘dangerous world’ the militarists never cease to warn us about. They have invented one supposed threat to Britain’s security after another for the past 50 years to insist we must continue to threaten the world with nuclear annihilation.

The fact remains Britain is one of only 9 ‘rogue’ states with these indiscriminate nuclear weapons of mass civilian slaughter in the world today; the USA, Russia, China, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea being the others. Whilst the US is said to have around 60,000 nuclear warheads, North Korea is suspected of having just one and no one is quite sure if it even works. Be that as it may, launched from a site on land it certainly can’t reach Britain. Korea is 6,000 miles away. Trident on the other hand is a submarine based system constantly at sea and therefore capable of potentially annihilating people in any country in the world.

Furthermore given that it is Britain [and the US] that has been invading and occupying countries all around the world in recent years, perhaps the question most people who share this planet with us will be asking is ‘Who protects us from Britain and America?’

Opinion poll after opinion poll in Scotland show a large majority of people here want rid of Trident. On Saturday that view will again be demonstrated as thousands take to the streets demanding Scotland scraps Trident and leads the way to a nuclear free world.

We in the Scrap Trident coalition want rid of them for many reasons. We are outraged Scotland should be associated internationally with such immoral missiles. They are in the last analysis un-useable militarily. And we firmly believe the £100bn earmarked for a second generation of nuclear weapons would be better spent creating jobs, building houses, hospitals and schools and creating a better world, not threatening to destroy this one.

That’s why I will be marching in Glasgow this Saturday alongside my colleagues in the Scottish Socialist Party. It’s not the first Trident protest the SSP has been involved in these past 15 years and it probably wont be the last. But it is nonetheless where all progressive minded, peace loving, internationalists should be this weekend.

Saturday’s march and rally is the centre piece of a weekend of action against Trident. There are workshops on non-violent direct action on Sunday and a mass blockade of Faslane Naval base on Monday.