You might call it shock at AWE. At the end of last week the 4500 people working at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston learned that they had suddenly become a wholly owned subsidiary of three US contractors when the government sold off its final one-third share to a Californian engineering concern. The complex responsible for building the new generation of warheads and for all top-secret research into the nuclear weapons programme and development is now under the control of companies already locked into the US weapons programme.
You might call it shock at AWE. At the end of last week the 4500 people working at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston learned that they had suddenly become a wholly owned subsidiary of three US contractors when the government sold off its final one-third share to a Californian engineering concern. The complex responsible for building the new generation of warheads and for all top-secret research into the nuclear weapons programme and development is now under the control of companies already locked into the US weapons programme.
Not many people knew that. Certainly not our elected representatives, not afforded the basic courtesy of a Commons statement. Instead, news that the last fig leaf of pretence that Britain's nuclear deterrent was in any sense independent had vanished was whispered in a three-line statement on the BNFL website. And, in a classic ploy, whispered on the eve of the parliamentary recess.
The breathtaking arrogance of taking a decision of such incalculable strategic importance without recourse to the normal democratic process is as disgraceful as it is typical. To compound the infamy of the deal itself, the government and the MoD thought to bury any controversy by a time-"honoured" device, clearly hoping any outrage would have dissipated by the time the House resumed business.
For decades, successive defence ministers have intoned the importance of Britain having its own nuclear defence system; a passport to a seat at the big boys' table, a deterrent against whatever forces of darkness were politically fashionable at the time. And each one of them spoke with forked tongue. Our current nuclear force, the four ballistic-missile-carrying Trident submarines, have never, in any credible sense, been remotely independent. They carry missiles built and maintained by the US and leased from them. The crews are partially trained by the US. The manuals are produced by them. And the idea that any British commander could unilaterally fire them without US compliance and permission is risible.
Yet when the government pronounced, with minimal debate, that it wanted to replace the fleet at a cost of £76bn, the old discredited arguments about maintaining an independent nuclear presence were trotted out without a smidgen of ministerial blush.
Further, that pronouncement came after months of denials that any decision on a new Trident generation had been taken, despite AWE advertising for scientists specifically recruited for precisely that programme on which parliament had yet to be consulted. Plus ca change. Way back in the days of American Polaris subs, also Clyde-based, British voters and their elected representatives only found out by accident that the then defence minister, Denis Healey, had authorised a multimillion-pound refit. The Baron Healey, however, has made an interesting journey since then, pronouncing that in a post-cold-war scenario a nuclear capability is much less important and confessing that, had his finger been on the nuclear button, he could never have brought himself to incinerate 20 million civilians as an act of retaliation.
The random nature of the havoc warheads eight times more powerful than Hiroshima would wreak on combatants and civilians alike is at the heart of the moral indefensibility of this weapons system. But even in a strategic context it's surely difficult to argue that knowledge of a nuclear submarine patrolling the globe would impact on the plans of a terrorist intent on causing havoc on a civilian transport system. Especially if the criminal in question was intent on martyrdom. Similarly, what the modern army has been crying out for of late in those theatres to which their political masters have dispatched them are vehicles affording them adequate protection and sufficient numbers of helicopters.
The political dimension of pursuing a nuclear upgrade is equally unpersuasive. For starters, the very concept of introducing a new generation of warheads almost certainly contravenes the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to which we are a signatory. That same treaty expressly forbids the sharing of nuclear weapons technology, a clause through which the Aldermaston deal has just driven a nuclear-powered carriage.
And with what authority does this country or any other inveigh against the nuclear threats posed by North Korea or Iran while enthusiastically upping its own weapons ante?
One of the most significant potential flashpoints is a nuclear-capable, politically unstable Pakistan and its ever-febrile relationship with a similarly equipped India. Neither country suffered from a backlash of western hostility when it joined the club. It seems the rules of building a peaceful non-proliferating world alter with each shift of the geopolitical plates. Can we remind ourselves that we armed a certain Saddam Hussein in his not-so-brief cameo as a US ally? The whole business of defence is shot through with self-serving hypocrisy, the pack of heroes and villains shamelessly shuffled to chime with the vagaries of political self-interest. You may have noted that one of the largest donors to the William J Clinton foundation is Saudi Arabia, a country which eschews the preferred US democratic model, which has a highly dubious record on human rights, and among whose citizenry is Osama bin Laden, major-league American hate figure. You will not, however, find the US or British governments railing against any of the above as they might have, for instance, had al Qaeda's finest carried an Iranian passport. Saudi is far too loyal a customer of our respective arms trades, even if that loyalty has to be encouraged by a series of massive personal bribes.
The links with the House of Saud and the Bush dynasty are even more entrenched. Oil brothers in arms. And then we dare to lecture the world on the pursuit of honest brokerage.
But where has our anger gone over all of this? Where is the honest rage that propelled hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets to tell the government that it could not wage an illegal war in their name? Have we become so accustomed to our government by-passing democracy by taking important decisions behind closed cabinet doors that our outrage threshold is now too high for us to bother any more?
The handful of spokespeople who have challenged the government over the Aldermaston disgrace have been assured it will all be OK. The government has retained a "special share" to let them intervene in a crisis. Yeah. Right. The same MoD mantra was heard when it privatised DERA, its research and development arm, at bargain-basement prices. Is there nothing on which they won't hang a For Sale sign?
