Scotland is a unique country in that it has the potential to disarm a nuclear armed state.
All of the UK nuclear weapons are primed for use from Scotland’s Faslane naval base which depends on the warhead store at the nearby Coulport site. No-one has come up with a viable alternative site outside Scotland, whose parliament and government oppose nuclear weapons. For Scotland to fulfil its potential in disarming a nuclear armed state, the Scottish Government must commit to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) publicly and specifically. A Scotland that achieved self determination and membership of the UN and acceded to the Treaty would not require any special negotiations for the removal of the UK weapons system.
So, we must continue to insist that the Scottish Government’s clear and specific commitment to the TPNW is regularly articulated in the face of UK pressure. This requires the electorate and our MSPs to have a much better understanding of the TPNW and we must take every chance to highlight it.
While our elected representatives in the UK Government also present clear opposition to the UK nuclear weapons policy, even with 100% Scottish support at Westminster for the TPNW, they cannot enforce a change to it, and this situation gives the lie to any claims that the UK Government has a democratic mandate for its nuclear weapons policy over the territory on which they depend to sustain it, making central Scotland a potential target as well as the kitchen of hell.
The TPNW entered into force on 22nd January, a sweet moment for a strong statement from the then FM. Nicola Sturgeon said:
“nuclear weapons are morally, strategically and economically wrong. They are indiscriminate and devastating in their impacts; their use would bring unspeakable humanitarian suffering and widespread environmental damage. The Scottish Government is firmly opposed to the possession, threat and use of nuclear weapons and we are committed to pursuing the safe and the complete withdrawal of all nuclear weapons from Scotland.
While the Scottish Government is unable to become a Party to the Treaty, as First Minister I strongly support the principles of the Treaty and the work of the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom. An independent Scotland would be a keen signatory and I hope the day we can do that is not far off.”
At a press conference for proposals to provide a permanent, modern, written constitution for an independent Scotland her successor, Humza Yousaf said that the removal of nuclear weapons from Scottish soil will be enshrined in a post-independence constitution: “Successive UK governments have taken Scotland in the wrong direction and with independence we would radically shift where power lies and put it back in the hands of the people who live in Scotland. What we will not see under these proposals, are nuclear weapons on the Clyde. This proposed constitution would ban nuclear weapons from an Independent Scotland.”
In March 2023, on behalf of ICAN , Janet Fenton addressed the UK on its Human rights record with a statement to the Human Rights Council on the Universal Periodic Review of the UK’s Human Rights:
“The Scottish people and their elected representatives are precluded from representation in decisions about nuclear weapons, yet the placement of the nuclear weapon submarine base as Faslane and the related nuclear weapon store at nearby Coulport puts the Scottish people’s right to life at particular risk from accident or attack involving the nuclear weapons store and base. Radioactive waste has been discharged into the Gare Loch, violating the Scottish people’s right to health and to a clean environment, while the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency is debarred from intervening.”
Scottish nuclear disarmament campaigners have had a sympathetic audience within the counterculture and its associated media, but the ratcheting up of a ‘war fever’ arising from the situation in and around Ukraine is blinding people to the threats of nuclear accident or attack, and creating hostile and dismissive reactions to efforts for diplomacy and disarmament that need serious and informed responses and concrete alternatives.
Can our distinct legal system and the legislation afforded by Holyrood be utilised to seek a way to ratify at least some of the Treaty’s terms in Scots Law? Perhaps Scottish lawyers and politicians as well as police officers could all examine their consciences with regard their part in banning weapons that could so easily bring such unspeakable suffering and environmental degradation to the world.
For more information on Scotland’s relationship with global disarmament, check out the below post written by Dr Nick Ritchie:
