MSPs will be warned today that Trident nuclear submarines on the Clyde are a threat to the country’s population, as a major conference this weekend says the base would be better used as the HQ for Scotland’s conventional defence force.
SNP MSP Bill Kidd will lead a debate at Holyrood this afternoon calling for the removal of the weapons system from the Faslane and Coulport naval bases.
His intervention comes just weeks after it emerged that a major glitch in a test fire of Trident last summer saw a dummy missile head towards the US.
The unarmed Trident II D5 missile, which can kill millions when fitted with a nuclear warhead, experienced a serious malfunction during the practice launch off Florida last June.
Weeks after the test, shortly after Theresa May replaced David Cameron as Prime Minister, MPs voted overwhelmingly to spend up to £40 billion on replacing Trident, without knowing about the malfunction.
In a motion ahead of today’s debate, Kidd welcomes a report by the Jimmy Reid Foundation which puts the case for the base to be used as a conventional defence HQ.
It says that the case is based on employment diversification plus moral, philosophical, economic and defence arguments.
It adds: “Trident’s continued presence would be a threat to Glasgow and the majority of Scotland’s population.”
Professoressor Mike Danson of Heriot-Watt University, SNP MP Brendan O’Hara and The National’s columnist Lesley Riddoch will be among the speakers at a CND conference in Helensburgh this Saturday.
The event at Helensburgh Parish Church will be led by Alannah Maurer of the group Navy Not Nuclear.
The conference website said it is argued that the removal of Trident from the Faslane Naval Base would be detrimental to the local economy and to the wellbeing of surrounding local communities.
It adds: “This is a message of stagnation and despair, calculated to frighten people into accepting the presence of weapons of mass destruction on their very doorsteps. Our conference intends to show that the removal of nuclear weapons from Faslane would be the making of this area, in terms of the necessary decommissioning and decontamination post nuclear, the establishment of Scotland’s own conventional defence force HQ and the freeing up of the Clyde estuary for alternative usages currently proscribed by the presence of nuclear.”
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