Now that Britain's Labour party has declared its hand and decided to plump for a nonnuclear defense policy, the ruling Conservative government, confident that the country is no more prepared to surrender its nuclear deterrent in 1987 that it was in 1983, will make defense the central issue of the approaching general election.
It was in 1983 that Labour, under leadership of Michael Foot, went into the post-Falkland Islands War election clinging to a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament and was handed its worst defeat since 1935.
Today, in 1987, with Labour committed to a policy of independent nuclear disarmament, the Conservatives intend not only to paint Labour as the party prepared to turn Britain into a powerless, third-rate country but also to exploit the fact that Labour leader Neil Kinnock has backed down from several earlier pledges, due, supposedly, to pressure exerted on him by senior colleagues.
"They've got no idea what they want, and they've got absolutely no idea what the British people want. Labour is in a muddle, and between now and the election we will make sure everyone in the country remembers that," said Michael Mowles, member of Parliament for Nottingham.
"Not only have we produced a highly controversial policy, but we've also come up with one that we don't all agree with," said a Labour member of Parliament, who wished to remain unidentified.
Whereas last October, at Labour's annual party convention, Kinnock announced that all U.S. nuclear weapons would be ejected from Britain within a year, the timetable for their removal has now been extended and nothing, Kinnock promises, will happened without "complex and through discussions" with Britain's European allies.
Kinnock also has shifted his position dramatically on the matter of accepting the American nuclear umbrella within the NATO alliance. Earlier, he said Labour would not accept any nuclear umbrella; now he respects the need to abide by an "agreed strategy within the alliance," which must be "indivisible."
So much for the backpedaling. Other pledges have been honored. A Labor government would phase out Britain's existing nuclear deterrent, Polaris; cancel its Trident submarine program; and close down - in time - all U.S. nuclear bases on British soil.
The money it would save by scrapping the nuclear arsenal would, according to Labour, be enough to "so strengthen NATO's conventional forces in Europe as to rule out military aggression."
Kinnock is confident that he would be able to retrieve nearly all of the $15 billion that the conservatives have committed to Trident, giving the government enough to build "50 warships for the Royal Navy" as well as to strengthen conventional defenses along the central front.
Further savings would be found through restructuring Britain's commitment to the Falkland Islands, which under present Conservative policy costs the country some $630 million per year. Spending that amount on "Fortress Falklands" is "a quite unacceptable
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