THE SNP’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament group has accused a key party committee of watering down their anti-Trident motion amid a growing grassroots backlash against the body.
Office bearers in SNP CND have signed a hard-hitting letter in which they said the conference committee had “almost completely disregarded” the views of branches when drawing up the programme for the party’s annual conference.
They are the third SNP group to have hit out publicly over the organisation of the party's online conference, which takes place online from November 28 to 30.
The CND members' intervention follows criticism from Angus MacNeil and Chris McEleny over the rejection of their Plan B motion, while the Common Weal Group hit out over the lack of involvement of the grassroots.
Dissatisfaction over the programme has focused on the omission of motions from branches or individuals and the publication instead of six lengthy composite resolutions without any accompanying amendments from individuals.
The party has suggested the move is to ease the organisation of the event being held remotely but internal critics claim it is an attempt to shut down debate.
Writing in The National today, Bill Ramsay, convener of SNP CND, along with group secretary Jean Anderson, treasurer Ron Dickinson and executive member David Peutherer, accuse the conference committee of making the strongly worded motion they had submitted into a much weaker statement.
The group had called for an independent Scotland to be a sovereign state signatory of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and ensure the removal of all nuclear weapons from Scottish territory with the support of the United Nations and international law.
However, the composite motion drawn up by the conference committee omitted the explicit commitment to sign the UN Treaty.
“It is an insult to the generations of SNP activists who played a key role in the anti-nuclear movement that the members of the SNP are to be denied their opportunity to explicitly embed in party policy the United Nations TPNW.
"Those in charge of conference arrangements have made a conscious decision to stick with an anodyne sentence, one that even prominent British multilateralists could sign up to.
"Conference will have before it nothing more than a meaningless rhetorical flourish, itself grammatically clumsy. It reads: ‘We will be able to remove Trident nuclear weapons from our shores, which are an affront to basic decency with inhumane destructive power’.
“Inexplicably, the agenda committee rejected a solid policy proposal that reads: ‘We (Scotland) will choose to be a sovereign state signatory of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and ensure the removal of all nuclear weapons from Scottish territory with the support of the United Nations and international law’.
"The wider membership may be aware that the First Minster gave the thumbs up to the TPNW publicly in 2017. Indeed all SNP parliamentarians in Holyrood and London have signed the ICAN Pledge to support the TPNW.
“Notwithstanding, it appears those in charge of the conference have decided (even where Covid presents no impediment) to ignore these facts and diminish the role of card carrying members in the formulation of party policy.”
Commenting, the group said in their letter to The National: “The preparation for the online conference has been disrespectful of ordinary card-carrying members of the party in terms of communication and even gives the appearance of eliminating any role members should have in policy formulation.
“We have come to this dispiriting conclusion as four ordinary members who have had successful careers and wide experience in serious institutions both public, private and voluntary.
"It is an insult to the generations of SNP activists who played a key role in the anti-nuclear movement that the members of the SNP are to be denied their opportunity to explicitly embed in party policy the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”
An SNP spokesman said: "SNP conference (this weekend) will be invited to restate our long-standing opposition to the inhumane destructive power of nuclear weapons and call for the removal of Trident from our shores."
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