KAUFMAN'S KITE STUCK IN TREE

Tribune, 26 July 1991

Gerald Kaufman's attempt to 'clarify' Labour's policy on nuclear arms reductions leaves it as ambiguous as ever, writes Paul Anderson

The current dispute over Lab­our's policy on nuclear weapons, which has been sim­mering since Gerald Kaufman, Lab­our's foreign affairs spokesman, hinted in a Guardian article a fort­night ago that a Labour govern­ment would keep nuclear weapons “as long as anyone else had them”, is unlikely to degenerate into inter­necine strife as previous Labour defence rows have done.

With the possibility of a general election in November, even the ster­nest Labour critics of the leader­ship's apparent political trajectory are likely to fall silent in the in­terests of party unity. Unless it does something really stupid, the worst the leadership can expect is a few murmurs of dissent at October's party conference.

Unlike in 1983 and 1987, it is the anti-nuclear Left rather than the pro-nuclear Right that is unhappy about the policy – and, however fractious in between election cam­paigns, the Left at election time tends to keep its reservations to itself. The Right, as James Callaghan demonstrated famously in 1983, is often less self-disciplined.

Nevertheless, Kaufman's remarks have undoubtedly touched a raw nerve. He wrote that "Britain should remain as a participant" in nuclear arms reduction talks "until they are successfully and finally concluded with an agreement by all thermo-nuclear powers completely to eliminate these weapons", and journalists were apparently briefed that this implied that Labour would keep Britain's "independent deter­rent" for as long as the other nuc­lear powers retained nuclear weapons.

On this interpretation, Kaufman was flagging a radical change in Labour policy. The party had never before advocated retaining nuclear weapons until everyone else got rid of theirs. Unsurprisingly, the reac­tion from the Left was unenthusiastic.

Bruce Kent, Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate for Oxford West and Abingdon, writing in Tri­bune last week, said that the article was "a final surrender to David Owen, Peter Jenkins, Robert Max­well, Alf Garnett and all".

But it is possible to put a different spin on Kaufman's words. It is perfectly feasible for a country to remain a participant in arms reduc­tion talks after its own stocks of a particular sort of weapon have been negotiated away or unilaterally abandoned.

Indeed, that is precisely the situa­tion Britain is in today in the talks aimed at the elimination of chemic­al weapons: Britain unilaterally abandoned chemical weapons in 11957 but has remained a partici­pant in talks ever since.

On  this  reading,  Kaufman's statement did not imply that Lab­our would keep the bomb as long as anyone else had one. All he was saying was that a Labour govern­ment would stay in nuclear arms reduction talks to the very end – which would include the possibility that Labour would bargain away the "independent deterrent" but stay in the talks in order to press the remaining nuclear powers to reach agreement on reductions.

Stated explicitly, this would in­deed have been a clarification of Labour policy rather than a change. But Kaufman has refused to elabo­rate on the precise meaning of his words. His intervention has merely stirred some already muddy waters. Labour's position on Britain nuc­lear arms remains as ambiguous as before.

According to the policy passed at party conference in 1989, the year that Labour dropped unilateral nuc­lear disarmament, the line is that British nuclear arms do not consti­tute a deterrent: they are useful only as "bargaining chips" in nuc­lear arms reduction negotiations.

Because it would be too expensive to cancel the Trident nuclear mis­sile submarine project at this late stage, a Labour government would build three of the four boats cur­rently planned. But it would attempt to get Trident and its Polaris predecessor included in the second round of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START-2), and it would drop Tory plans to replace the ageing WE-177 free-fall nuclear bombs with new air-to-surface mis­siles, either bought from the United States or developed jointly with France.

The crucial vagueness in the poli­cy is that it says nothing about how Labour would get Britain into START-2 and little about what its negotiating position would be once it was in.

In part, this is for the very good reason that no one could possibly know in 1989 what the situation in the START process would be when Labour came to power. But the vagueness was also a means of papering over differences.

Those on the Left accepted put­ting British strategic nuclear forces into START-2 only on condition that the talks would quickly result in a deal to bargain them away; those on the right saw the policy as meaning that Labour would keep the deterrent if Britain's entry into START-2 was blocked or if the talks got bogged down.

Kaufman's intervention is perhaps best understood as a piece of "kite-flying" to see what would happen if he made an explicit commitment to keeping British nuclear arms as long as anyone else had them. He expected to he de­nounced by the hard left and by the peace movement but to be given the benefit of the doubt by the centre-left of the party.

Instead, the centre-left, includ­ing senior Shadow Cabinet and National Executive Committee politicians and the normally mild-mannered Labour Co-ordinating Committee, stuck its neck out. It is clear that Kaufman would provoke a really serious row if he tried explicitly to change the position on START before the manifesto is drawn up and it seems likely lhat he will now let the matter rest.

Which is not to say that Labour's position on other nuclear weapons isues will remain the same. The party is coming under increasing union pressure both on Trident and on Polaris, and the signs are that, at least on Trident, the leadership is set tn change course.

The unions at the VSEL shipyard in Barrow-in-Furncss, situated in a Labour target marginal constituen­cy, are pressing hard for Labour to commit itself to building lour rather than three Tridents because the yard will shed thousands of jobs, and almost certainly close, if the fourth submarine is not built.

Martin O'Neill, Labour's defence spokesman, has already indicated that a Labour government might build the fourth submarine if can­cellation charges in the (yet-to-be-signed) contract made it more ex­pensive to cancel than to build. Further movement is expected in the run-up to the election.

Polaris is a potentially far more difficult problem. Unions representing fitters working on maintaining the ancient and decrepit Polaris fleet are becoming increasingly con­cerned at the radiation exposure dangers their members now face.

Only one of the four submarines is now fully operational: the other three are suffering from cracks in the coolant systems of their nuclear reactors. Fitters are being exposed to levels of radiation close to or above the maximum permitted in a desperate attempt to patch up the damage so that Britain has a nuc­lear missile submarine force until Trident becomes operational in the late nineties.

If the unions' radiation exposure fears prove justified in the run-up to the election, Labour will have little option but to say that it will scrap Polaris on safety grounds. Because the missiles for the Trident sub­marines have been seriously de­layed by the inability of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment in Aldermaston to build the war­heads, this would effectively amount to ial least temporary) un­ilateral nuclear disarmament. The more cynical Labour leaders must be praying that no one comes up too soon with authoritative evidence that Polaris is too dangerous to keep afloat.