THE LEADERSHIP evidently wants the NEC's defence statement to conference to achieve one thing: end the open season on defence and NATO within the party and put these great issues back where they are supposed to belong - in the hands of the 'experts' in the parliamentary leadership. They want to take defence politics' again inside the labour movement, the way Wilson managed to do after 1963.
To achieve this purpose, right-wing leaders like Denis Healey and Roy Hattersley have been persuaded to accept Pretty firm commitments by the NEC on unilateralism (minus what looks like clever lawyer's escape Polaris). They have also been persuadaccept all sorts of noble sentiments about non-provocative conventional defence. But at the same time, they have been offered a green light for creased spending on weapons, and an unconditional commitment to NATO.
Finally, they have no doubt been given a nod and a wink intended to convey roughtly the following: 'look, old boy, this is only an NEC statement. If the rank and file think they've ron, then we'll have a quiet life for four years on defence, will go down and, who brew might be diluted in the manifesto ad then it could turn out to have gone off with age, and we could flush it into the Thames from the Cabinet Office toilets if we manage to get into them after the elections.' Polaris Let us first itemise the commitments on nuclear weapons. Page 10 says: 'we are committed to remove cruise missiles and all other nuclear weapons from Page emphasises Labour 'will remove any cruise missiles British territory or. in waters'. The statement re-enforces this om page 21 by saying Labour is committed to the unconditional removal of weapons and nuclear bases from British soil and British waters...These missile F1-11 bases nuclear missile submarine declares unambiguously, 'Labour will, on assuming office, immediately cancel the Trident programme.' It calls for the of all NATO battlefield nuclear weapons and the reconversion of British weapons platforms to exdesively non-nuclear munitions, ding that the scrapping aakes 'must not be made conditional on "improving" NATO's conventional forces' (page 12)
All this is very positive and it is reenforced by a commitment that Labour 'will regularise the presence of the other US forces in Britain to ensure a physical British veto over the use facilities in the interests of collective security and in NATO Treaty' (page 22).
Then we come to the formula on Polaris. On the face of it, the commitment here seems firmer than the phrase • the manifesto which mould be thrown into the East-West aegotiations on arms control and added that, within the life-time of a parliaaent Labour would go over to a nonaclear defence policy.
The statement declares:
beeves that Polaris should be phased successful international arms acgotiations in the next few years.
this is not done, Labour will, on assuming office, decommission Polaris from service!' nagging bese is this lapse into technical jargon at the end with 'decommission from serrice. Could this possibly mean, stop Using with Polaris, but keep it in "is reserve' 'out of conventional really knows? The British the base.' It adof battlefield word like 'scrap'.
ambiguity over the right on of such with the has not materialised.
said Polaris anti-Labour unequivocall on beefing up strength in There happy. der top secret con On the Body lez. tion of GDP as those of 'our major European allies'. But it also — and this is the new point - makes clear that it is paying nothing more than lip service to this idea, by saying the following: "This could not be achieved in the life-time of ains leaders In idiots blundering dark?
The authors also put forward all sorts ot nuclear free zone pillasts Europe for peoples freedom.
NATO just a bunch of around in the proposals for here or there, for burope, of conventional evidently defenthe bloc system in Europe by suading both NATO and the Warsaw dissolve themselves. Let us be clear what such persuading Americans tht it is in their best interests to surrender their hegemony in Western the sake of giving of Eastern Europe more Why on earth should it be in the best interests of American capitalism to ridiculous to suggest, as the authors do western Europe? that somehow the US leadership will be brought round to such views by reasoned argument in the confidential atmosphere of the NATO Council.