When I launched my little lonely boat under the name Anti-NATO, it was a comparatively calm sea. Since then it has become a turbulent one. I had been uneasy for some time about just how firm the SNP’s anti-NATO stance was. Professor William Walker, in an article in the Scotsman early in January of this year, fanned my little flame of doubt into something more alarming by this statement -
Desiring to appear reasonable, the SNP might adopt a stance that would allow the present Trident system to operate out of Scotland during its remaining lifetime but refuse to house its replacement. It would commit Scotland to a phase-out rather than sudden closure. This would provide England with ample time, the argument might go, to develop other sites and systems and would give fair notice to Nato member states. But such a stance would not change the fundamentals. Without alternative sites, phasing out the current system would entail phasing out the UK’s deterrent. As the first boat is expected to retire in the late 2020s, it also implies that Trident would remain in Scotland for decades rather than years to come. This would be a hard sell, especially within the SNP.
(The highlighting and emphasis is mine.)
Then we had another Professor on the scene, James Mitchell of Strathclyde University who, with his co-authors, published the first full results of a survey originally conducted in 2007/2008 of 7,112 SNP members which revealed that 52.7% believed Nato membership was in Scotland's strategic interests, compared with only 22% who still believed in an independent Scotland the alliance, with the remainder being more or less apathetic.
Various sectors of the media then began to speculate, putting flesh on rumours that the SNP strategic leaders were actively considering a U-turn on NATO membership. and perhaps worse, while continuing to issue robust statements of a totally anti-nuclear, anti-Trident policy to reassure the faithful, who are not given to thinking very deeply on such matters. And of course, the Mitchell finding emboldened the pro-NATO group.
I began to tweet cautiously, hoping to tease out a clear-cut statement, only to be the object of a barrage of tweets from SNP supporters and bloggers indignantly claiming that no such thing was contemplated, it was all being got up by the villainous unionist media, led by the arch-villain, BBC Scotland. It was suggested bluntly that I was giving aid and comfort to an unsubstantiated rumour. This metamorphosed gradually into a “Well, yes, some misguided party member might just submit a resolution to Conference, and there will be a token debate, and it will be voted down”.
At no point in this phoney war period did the SNP communications department or any senior figure make a clear-cut statement of intent, but the language very tentatively began to firm up. There probably would be a resolution – originator unspecified – and it would be debated, the new theme being “Well, after all, we are a democratic party, and we periodically review policy” etcetera, etcetera.
One blogger/tweeter still pursued the “It’s all a unionist lie, being promulgated by the wicked media” with me, in such aggressive style that I reluctantly had to block them on Twitter. But something was clearly at work, since quite a number of correspondents (blog comment, Twitter, YouTube comments) now felt emboldened enough to defend a “possible NATO policy change”, moving gradually from “it might not be a bad thing, really” to enthusiastic statements of support, confirming Professor Mitchell’s survey findings.
The tone and style of comments directed at me changed to “This is entirely a matter for the Party’s internal democracy, not for the general public, and you are harming the cause of independence and nuclear disarmament by your position.” I had rather brought this on myself by making it clear that if the Party approved a policy change on NATO, I would resign.
But then the nuclear NATO cat jumped out of the bag. all aglow, with the release of the defence paper by its co-signatories, Angus Robertson MP and Angus MacNeil MP, and at last the party was prepared to speak openly about its position. Even after this, some of my correspondents were trying to maintain the risible position that there was no evidence that the First Minister endorsed the recommendation, despite the spectacularly obvious point that it would never have seen the light of day without his prior approval and support.
Parliament went on its summer vacation shortly afterwards. The timing is of course entirely coincidental. My long series of blogs on NATO more or less track these events, as do my YouTube videos. Meanwhile, the Scottish Affairs Select Committee inquiry into the minutiae of independence – uncontroversially titled The Referendum on Separation for Scotland went merrily on with its McCarthyite attempts to get sundry witnesses, expert and otherwise, to say what an expensive, job-destroying, incompetent disaster it would all be, threatening not only national security and world order, but also the jobs and pension of Scottish soldiers.
Despite the absence of any SNP representative on this Labour-dominated committee (the SNP official reasons being the alleged insult to Eilidh Whiteford and the use of the word Separation in the title: real reason probably that they would have had nothing of substance to say at that point) the Committee were unsuccessful in many instances in getting the M.O.D. representatives and other experts to respond appropriately to their negative and increasingly desperate prompts, feeds and leading questions.
I’ll try to cover the comment themes tomorrow sometime.
CORRECTION
In a recent blog I wrote on how NATO would launch a nuclear strike, and on what authority -
(At the moment NATO effectively has been given a political blank cheque by the USA, France and the UK to launch a nuclear strike instantly on the strategic judgement of its command structure, without reference to any of their three elected decision-making bodies – e.g. the House of Commons - but with the token endorsement of their heads – the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of France and the Prime Minister of the UK.)
Once again, I am indebted to my invaluable Danish contact for correcting me on this, as follows -
In the case of France, it is not the prime minister who has power over the military, it is the President of the Republic who is commander-in-chief in a literal sense, in particular in regard to nuclear weapons; it is only the President who can order a nuclear strike, specifically because only he/she has the launch codes for them.
When France elected a new president in May, you might have seen the hand-over ceremony reported on. While that had a lot of ritual and formality to it, there was one rather practical bit. When Hollande talked with Sarkozy in private, that was when he was given the launch codes for France's nuclear weapons.
Of course, NATO and Hollande won’t launch a nuclear war without the permission of Alex Salmond and Angus Robertson - not to mention Angus MacNeil - when we’re happily members of this nuclear alliance, and have a promise that Trident will be gone some time in the next 20 years or so.. After all, the SNP is anti-nuclear – and there’s the Auld Alliance and a’ that …
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