“We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs,” Labour’s Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin reportedly said in the 1940s, adding, “we’ve got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it”.
That “thing” was the atomic bomb, but since the UK acquired its first nukes, the party has changed its mind several times over whether they’re a good thing. Nuclear weapons, said the BBC, have “always been a divisive issue within Labour”.
Anti-nuke ‘fixture’
Michael Foot, who became party leader in 1980, was a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and “a fixture at anti-nuclear demonstrations”, said socialist magazine Tribune.
When Neil Kinnock took over as leader in 1983, Labour’s policy, which he supported, was unilateral nuclear disarmament and the removal of all US nuclear weapons and bases from British soil. But this policy was only supported by a minority of the British public and Labour lost the 1987 general election.
By 1989, Kinnock had convinced the party to drop these policies but “many on the party’s left” remain “vehemently opposed to that decision”, said the BBC.
Previously ‘unthinkable’
As a young MP, Tony Blair was a member of CND but it is believed he never favoured unilateral disarmament and by the time he was party leader, he was on board with the party’s pro-nuclear policy.
He announced in 2006 that Britain would maintain its nuclear deterrent, and said “we cannot be sure that a major nuclear threat to our vital interests will not emerge over the longer term”.
Looking back on his decision of 2007 to retain and replace the Trident nuclear weapons system, he wrote in his book “A Journey”: “You might think I would have been certain of that decision, but I hesitated over it.” It is “frankly inconceivable we would use our nuclear deterrent alone, without the US”, he said, but it would have been a “big step to put that beyond your capability as a country”.
Blair said that before reaching his decision, he “had a perfectly good and sensible discussion about it” with Gordon Brown, chancellor at the time, who was “similarly torn”. After Brown succeeded Blair in No. 10, he stuck with the party’s policy. But, in a speech in 2009, he said “the power of international co-operation” could enable nations to achieve the “previously unthinkable” aim of global nuclear disarmament, said Rusi.
A ‘nuclear-free world’
Like Foot, Jeremy Corbyn was an active member of CND before he became party leader in 2015, rising up to be vice-president of the campaign group. He told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme that if he became prime minister he would instruct the UK’s defence chiefs never to use the Trident nuclear weapons system.
“I am opposed to the use of nuclear weapons,” he said. “I am opposed to the holding of nuclear weapons. I want to see a nuclear-free world. I believe it is possible.”
Corbyn added that there were “five declared nuclear weapon states in the world” and 187 countries “don’t feel the need” to have nuclear weapons to protect their security. “Why should those five need it themselves?” he asked, adding that the Cold War was over.
‘Unshakeable’
Corbyn’s successor, Keir Starmer, has moved the party back to a staunchly pro-nuclear policy. Writing in the Daily Mail last week that his commitment to the UK’s nuclear weapons is “unshakeable” and “absolute”.
In a major shift from the Corbyn years, he said Labour is now “utterly committed to our nation’s defence” and that he would make sure “our nuclear deterrent is properly equipped and armed to face the challenges of the decades to come”.
Asked by ITV News if he would be willing to push the nuclear button if Britain were under attack, should he be elected prime minister, he said “deterrence only works if there is a preparedness to use it”.