Campaigners attack PM's nuclear bid

12 April 2012

Angry anti-nuclear campaigners have attacked the Prime Minister and said the tens of billions of pounds the Government intends to spend on Trident should be spent on public services.

Kate Hudson, chairwoman of CND, said she was "very very disappointed" with Tony Blair and accused him of not listening to the public.

"He talked vaguely about reducing the number of submarines and warheads but it is not clear what that would mean. I am sure many Labour MPs will be extremely angry because it is clear the Prime Minister has set out a pre-determined timetable," she said.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union, said: "We need to spend money on saving the planet, not on weapons that can help destroy it.

"The £25 billion the Government wants to spend on replacing Trident - and it could be three times that - could go a long way to helping Britain reduce carbon emissions, build some of the transport infrastructure we desperately need and to help bolster our public services.

"Blair took us into an illegal war over weapons of mass destruction that didn't even exist, and now he wants to tear up the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to build some new ones of his own - there is only one word for that, and it is hypocrisy.

"While there is starvation, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy and a grave environmental threat hanging over our planet it would be nothing short of obscene to go ahead with replacing Trident, whether it's with 200 warheads, 100 or just one."

Keith Hazlewood, national officer of the GMB union, said there were many practical issues which had to be debated in the coming weeks, insisting: "Unless new orders are placed soon the skills and technical expertise needed to do this submarine building will be lost to the UK.

"If this happens the UK would struggle to build these vessels if they were to be needed in the future.

"If Parliament decides not to go ahead it must pay heed to the impact on jobs and on communities that will be affected as well as the impact on UK manufacturing as whole."

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