Skip to main content

Trident Undone - The Spokesman 127


In late 2014, the US Navy awarded an $84 million cost-plus-fixed-fee modification contract for 'tactical missile tube manufacturing'. In total, according to the US Navy, 17 missile tubes will be manufactured:

'12 for the UK Successor lead ship, four for the OR [Ohio class ballistic missile submarine Replacement] First Article Quad Pack and one for the Strategic Weapons System - Ashore (SWSA) test facility.'

What is this arcane language telling us?
The $84 millions is to fund 'joint United States and United Kingdom Common Missile Compartment (CMC) missile tube manufacturing'. According to Rob Edwards (Sunday Herald, 23.11.14), 70 per cent of this cost is being paid by the UK. Curiously, 12 of the first 17 tubes are for the 'UK successor lead ship'. This is curious for two reasons. Firstly, the UK government has deferred until 2016 the 'main-gate' decision on Trident replacement. Secondly, the UK government has repeatedly claimed in public that it would use only eight tubes. Is it now being compelled to build in capacity for four additional tubes and, in so doing, facilitating significant expansion at some time in the future of the number of nuclear warheads carried on British submarines?

Contents

Editorial

Paradigm Shift - Robert Green

The Politics of Trident - Jeremy Corbyn MP, Julian Lewis MP

'Mingled Asset Ownership' - Shannon N Kile, Hans M Kristensen

Why I rejected nuclear deterrence - Robert Green

Einstein and Russell

Remember Guantanamo - Andy Worthington

Syriza and Europe - Alexis Tsipras, interviewed by Haris Golemis

The Curse of Minerva - Lord Byron

Realising Europe's recovery proposals - Stuart Holland

Looking ahead - Alistair Crooke

Pilgrimage - John Kinsella

The 1970s - Tom Unterrainer

Yuri Larin's Space

Reunion with Yura - Anna Larina

Reviews: Cathy Davis, Barry Baldwin, Christopher Gifford, Jo Vellacott, Michael Barratt Brown, Theodore N. Iliadis, Alan Tuckman

Buy NOW
ISBN: 978 0 85124 8455
Price: £6

Comments

tonyon said…
...all wars... See soldiers jumping innocently from the deadly and muddy trenches, forced to the force by order of their inflexible "superiors", to massacre them from enemy´s machine gun nests...while the causers of those wars: monarchs, politicians and of all religions pontifex in their golden palaces were eating partridges. (To the next war that going at trenches: pontifices, monarchs and politicians...and fight between them, then rapidly already NO MORE WARS).

Popular posts from this blog

'Not as dumb as he looks' - Muhammad Ali on Bertrand Russell

In his autobiography The Greatest: My Own Story , Muhammad Ali recounts how Bertrand Russell got in contact with him, and their ensuing correspondence: *** For days I was talking to people from a whole new world. People who were not even interested in sports, especially prizefighting. One in particular I will never forget: a remarkable man, seventy years older than me but with a fresh outlook which seemed fairer than that of any white man I had ever met in America. My brother Rahaman had handed me the phone, saying, ‘Operator says a Mr. Bertrand Russell is calling Mr. Muhammad Ali.’ I took it and heard the crisp accent of an Englishman: ‘Is this Muhammad Ali?’ When I said it was, he asked if I had been quoted correctly. I acknowledged that I had been, but wondered out loud, ‘Why does everyone want to know what I think about Viet Nam? I’m no politician, no leader. I’m just an athlete.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this is a war more barbaric than others, and because a mystique is built up ...

Safe at Work?

Dave Putson, Spokesman, 183 pages, paperback, £15 How many times have the tabloid headlines screamed: ‘Health and safety gone mad!’ The idea that the rules governing our health and safety are an ‘albatross around the neck of British businesses’, as David Cameron announced recently, gives a clue to the reasoning behind the media offensive. Dave Putson’s book, Safe at Work? is a welcome riposte. Putson, a health and safety rep for London courts, traces the development of health and safety legislation, from the campaign to eradicate ‘phossy jaw’ suffered by Victorian match women and legal disputes over compensation, to the role of factory inspectors. Before the comprehensive 1974 health and safety legislation, there was carnage across industry, with death and serious injury at work commonplace. The new laws were an important breakthrough, yet the number of people who still lose their lives or contract serious illness is frighteningly high – in 2012-13 some 148 people died at...

Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain

Tate Liverpool: Exhibition 28 February – 11 May 2014 Adult £8.80 (without donation £8) Concession £6.60 (without donation £6) Help Tate by including the voluntary donation to enable Gift Aid Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain , is a new take on how the changes in the meaning of words reflect the cultural shifts in our society. This dynamic exhibition takes its name and focus from the seminal 1976 Raymond Williams book on the vocabulary of culture and society. An academic and critic influenced by the New Left, Williams defined ‘Keywords’ as terms that repeatedly crop up in our discussion of culture and society. His book contains more than 130 short essays on words such as ‘violence’, ‘country’, ‘criticism’, ‘media’, ‘popular’ and ‘exploitation’ providing an account of the word’s current use, its origin and the range of meanings attached to it. Williams expressed the wish some other ‘form of presentation could be devised’ for his book, and this exhibition i...