CND welcomes the 'Better off without Trident' campaign launched by an alliance of Churches today, urging the government to scrap Britain's nuclear weapons system.
The Methodist Church, the Baptist Union of Great Britain and the United Reformed Church have produced a briefing on the economic costs of Trident which slams the projected £55bn expenditure on running and replacing Trident over the next 15 years. The briefing can be viewed here: Better Off Without Trident.
A statement from the Churches read:
"Each year for 15 years, Trident will cost the UK £3.7 billion. For the same amount, the Government could invest in: 15,000 more health visitors; 15,000 more teachers; 300 Sure Start centres; 12,500 new council houses per year; solar energy for 345,000 council houses and still leave an additional billion pounds available to support our troops. The three Churches are encouraging people to make the case against Trident to their MPs.
The Revd Leo Osborn, President of the Methodist Conference, said: “This is one of the biggest capital projects in the Government’s spending plans. We are being told that we must accept cutbacks in public services. At a time when the protection for the poorest in our society is under pressure it is surely wrong to tie up so much public money in nuclear missiles and their delivery systems. There is still time for the Government to say "no" to Trident.”
The Revd Jonathan Edwards, General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, said: “In these days of austerity and severe cutbacks it would be extraordinary not to revisit the Trident issue. We fully appreciate the need for the country to have appropriate defence, but urge the Government to abandon this extraordinarily expensive project which relates to a defence context that has long since disappeared.”
Spending on Trident is unpopular with many senior Ministry of Defence staff who have seen other capital projects cancelled, whole regiments axed and Forces personnel put under strain due to the intensity of operational deployments. Trident consumes six per cent of the Ministry of Defence revenue budget. The new START treaty signed by the US and Russia has strengthened calls for progress towards complete nuclear disarmament. Church leaders said that if the Government continues with the Trident programme, the UK would be locked into nuclear weapons for the next 30 to 40 years. From the perspective of Christian ethics the Churches have expressed concern about the moral implications of becoming accustomed to violence and the exercise of power associated with continued possession of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era. They called on the Government to adopt a leadership role in the multilateral disarmament processes in order to enable progress towards a world without nuclear weapons."