The Peace PeopleIt is with great sadness that I heard of the sudden and tragic death of Robin Cook.
He will be missed as he was indeed a politician of principle and his incisive predictions on the consequences of the illegal invasion of Iraq have tragically come true.
Although not seeing eye to eye with all his decisions, I am very much in agreement with his recent article in the Guardian entitled Worse than irrelevant. In this he argues that replacing Trident is against both our national interests and our international obligations. He further argued that the collapse of the cold war has removed even the theoretical justification for our (UK) possessing strategic nuclear weapons. I share this belief, together with his insight that the spirit of the cold war lives on in the minds of those who cannot let go of fear and who need an enemy to buttress their own identity. Hence the vacuum left by the cold war has been filled by George Bush's global war on terror. It is tragically true that terrorism, partly as a result, is now a worse threat than ever before.
Cook was right in asserting that Nuclear Weapons are hopelessly irrelevant to the threat of terrorism, and yet in Aldermaston they are already spending hundreds of millions of tax payers' money on a refit of the production line for nuclear warheads. We are told that at the next Parliament the British people must make up their minds if they wish to spend billions replacing the Trident Nuclear Submarine (which has a current life span of about two decades) Trident cost £12.5bn. Much of this goes into US pockets, as Britain does not even own the missiles but leases them from the Pentagon.
In the early 60s million of people in Britain marched to ban the bomb and they were ignored by their Government (as indeed millions marched against the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq, and were equally ignored). However, it remains to be seen if in the upcoming debate on Nuclear Weapons replacement, the PM Tony Blair will listen to the voice of the people, and also uphold International obligations, and decommission its nuclear weapons, or if big business and corporations (particularly those in USA) will continue to win the day with nuclear weapons and war.
I believe that it would be a fitting tribute to the late Robin Cook, if Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Government took up Robin Cook's challenge and in his words could "find the courage to let Trident be the end of Britains futile and costly obsession with nuclear-weapon status". This also would be a fitting tribute to the Peoples of Hiroshima (140,000 dead) and Nagasaki (70,000 dead) who 60 years ago, this month of August, died when the USA dropped two Nuclear Bombs unnecessarily on these Cities of Japan.
The USA never said they were sorry for this Holocaust, and something not repented can be repeated. This is the perhaps the most important reason why Britain and the World must abolish Nuclear Weapons.
Mairead Corrigan Maguire (Nobel Peace Laureate) Peace People, Belfast. (9.8.2005 Nagasaki Day)