FOR one who has, since I've been old enough to think, held it to be

axiomatic that possession and implied use of nuclear weapons are bad,

and probably mad, I feel curiously detached from from the current

excitements about Labour's policy review.

Over the past decade, I have fought three elections on a variety of

defence policies, the details of which are now largely academic since

all three elections were lost. I can't honestly recall feeling more

righteous about Labour being defeated in 1983 or 1987, than I did in

1979.

I am not a great reader of policy statements or manifestos, far less a

believer in their contents. It's almost certainly a mistake to believe

that spelling out aspirations in the form of a detailed programme helps

any party to get elected. Mrs Thatcher has never made that error.

Equally, it's a mistake to get too worked up about what is and is not

being promised since the relationship between word and subsequent deed

is far from guaranteed, even if the electoral hurdle is cleared. That's

possibly more true, in recent political history, about promises to get

rid of weaponry and military bases than about any other single subject.

Ask the Greeks or the Spaniards.

But even more relevantly, consult what happened in the 1960s. Harold

Wilson didn't need tying down to a unilateralist commitment -- he

offered it with banners flying. He had proposed ''the permanent

rejection'' of British nuclear weapons and foreign nuclear bases. When

Polaris was purchased, he declared contemptuously that ''it will not be

independent, will not be British and will not deter''.

Then on his first visit to Washington as Prime Minister, he ratified

the Holy Loch agreement which Macmillan had entered into and, for the

rest of his time in office, presided over a defence policy which was

predicated upon possession of nuclear weapons.

Who knows whether Wilson ever believed his own anti-nuclear rhetoric?

But the certainty is that intense pressures were, and would increasingly

have been, brought to bear by the United States to make him abandon it.

Wilson was a great believer in the ''special relationship'' with the US

and was forever on the hot line to LBJ to reinforce the myth.

The point is that military policy, nuclear or non nuclear, is an

extension of foreign policy. Unless there is independence of actions in

international affairs, it is extremely unlikely that there will be

unilateral action on nuclear weapons -- whatever it says in a manifesto.

Yet we know that the actions, even of a progressive Labour Government,

will be constrained by alliances and other imperatives.

These will include the political climate of the day. It is unlikely

that the Labour Government after the next General Election will have a

large majority. If there is a knife-edge majority for instant removal of

nuclear weapons and a similar division in the country, it is difficult

to see the action being carried through with the sweeping gesture which

Labour's last manifesto envisaged.

If these are the realities, then why get hung up on the word

''unilateral''? What surely matters more is to secure a Government which

is genuinely committed to de-nuclearisation at as fast a pace as

objective circumstances permit. It's more important to say it, mean it

and then possibly be in a position to achieve it, than to put your faith

on a word in a policy review or manifesto.

There are aspects of the defence document which I would quibble with,

but the general thrust is sensible, honest and in tune with the public

mood. It seems far fetched to suppose that the majority which has

hitherto withheld support from unilateralism, and which now senses the

possibility of getting rid of nuclear weapons in all countries through

negotiation, will suddenly change its mind.

Of course, some critics regard it as treachery to take electoral

calculations into account in such high moral matters. I take the

contrary view that it would be treachery not to, for there are an awful

lot of people who yearn for a Labour Government as a matter of

necessity, rather than as an optional extra, and whom we have not served

very well over the past decade.

The Wilson years of Polaris and Vietnam created a generation of

cynicism about Labour politics. The Kinnock government will have to be

of a very different hue, if the same sense of disillusionment is to be

avoided. I have faith in that prospect, and being honest about what is

electable and attainable seems to me a good start in that direction.

There will have to be a foreign policy based on different criteria

from those of the sixties and seventies, without the slavish adherence

to Washington's line. That will extend logically into a determination to

work towards the elimination of nuclear weapons. These are ends worth

attaining and, through the possession of power, expanding upon.