Faslane: this was a nuclear weapon for the SNP

The rumoured plans for the naval base were a reminder of how deeply unpopular Trident is among Scots

The MoD’s, or Whitehall’s, or whoever’s plans to designate Trident’s Faslane base “sovereign UK territory” earlier this week seemed, at best, petty – an attempt at humiliation timed to balance Andy Murray’s cheering victory. It was a gift to the SNP, now denied and passed from hand to hand like a vomiting baby. That the idea was ever floated offers us another reminder of the colonial attitudes so catastrophically embedded in nuclear policy; a fundamental, fatal dismissal of “ordinary” people.

Once, it was relatively easy to acquire a colony if you had access to industrialised military production when the people you were invading didn’t. But by the end of the 19th century there was nowhere desirable left to steal, and industrialised armies finally faced each other. The results were intolerable: massive national debt and casualties that could mount by tens of thousands a day.

But then, in the 1920s, Britain’s airforce successfully bombed undefended Iraqi villages into quiescence. Italy followed suit in Ethiopia, and Germany in Spain. The age of “intimidation by bomb” was born, and with it the dream that killing a high enough percentage of a civilian population from the air would destroy a country and win a war with low military casualties.

“Bomber” Harris, who served with the British air force in Iraq, went on to lead RAF Bomber Command in the second world war. He led a remarkable body of men into a moral vacuum, area-bombing cities, creating firestorms, killing civilians en masse. Vital targets like ball bearing factories and petrol plants didn’t attract him. Railway routes into concentration camps were left intact. Harris aimed to discover the percentage of German civilians he had to kill in order to break the nation.His actions tainted the reputation of bomber command, and may have prolonged the war.

Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe, was equally beguiled by the idea that ordinary people would crack under bombing. Early in the war he largely halted raids against the RAF and moved on to bombing cities – helping to lose the war for Hitler.

In the second world war civilians of all nations often behaved extraordinarily under bombing pressure. They didn’t break. Conventional, costly combat brought victory. But there was another option, tested in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons had the potential to destroy utterly. They offered the prospect of no survivors, no resistance, no revenge – only a wilderness that would be peace.

The UK’s military were highly ambivalent about acquiring nuclear weapons, not least because they could not be launched without US permission. Nuclear bases on British soil have always been de facto US bases and we pay US firms for provision and maintenance. But politicians wanted them. Being a nuclear power is almost as good as still having an empire.

Trident, the UK’s current nuclear weapon system, is in Scotland because London isn’t. That’s …read more