With thanks to Veronica Tudhope organiser with Scottish CND and Jonathan Russell Chair of Aberdeen and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and member of Aberdeen Climate Action also Duncan Hart who produced the you tube videos.
On March 25th Aberdeen Climate Action and Aberdeen and District Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament jointly sponsored a meeting on the above.
The idea of the meeting was to share ideas of the challenges faced by diversification and to kick-start change.
This is the fourth of five articles being produced for Aberdeen Voice and concerns a talk on Diversification from Nuclear Weapons by Veronica Tudhope Organiser with Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament who has written the below as an introduction to her talk:
“Everybody was covered with blood and burned and blackened and swollen, and skin and flesh were hanging from their bones. Parts of their bodies were missing. Some were carrying their own eyeballs.”
The words of Satsuko Thurlow, a Japanese Hibakusha (A-bomb survivor) provide the context for the argument that we need Trident for jobs. We cannot set aside the moral issue to just talk about jobs.
Jackie Baillie’s famous claim that,’’1,000 jobs could be at risk’ without Trident is both morally bankrupt and wrong. In fact, 520 civilian jobs would be lost. The correct context for this is the regular loss of jobs in longstanding Scottish industries such as 7-900 jobs lost when Johnny Walker closed in Kilmarnock, repeated all over the country and widely disregarded. In fact Trident replacement is known to suck jobs away from other parts of the defence sector.
In a spirit of internationalism trade unions, can be expected to be against preparing to bomb workers in other countries but that’s clearly easier for unions without members in the defence sector. In fact, most, apart from the GMB have a clear anti-nuclear stance. The STUC and SCND have called for a Scottish Defence Diversification Agency, “whose main focus will be planning and resourcing the diversification of jobs away from defence projects such as Trident, and promoting the greening or the Scottish economy”
Imminent negotiations at the UN in New York which are expected to result in a new treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons on the 7th July 2017. It will prohibit nuclear weapons, and make using, possessing and developing nuclear weapons illegal under international law.
This can be expected to lead, eventually to Trident renewal cancellation, and an end to the erroneous justification of this deadly, inefficient job creation scheme.
The you tube clip below is Veronica Tudhope’s talk at the public meeting.
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