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Speech in Scottish Parliament Lord James Douglas-Hamilton |
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| May 2006 | ||
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Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Happily, I will never be Prime Minister, but I can tell Mike Rumbles straight away that, for a deterrent to be credible, the potential aggressor must believe that it is capable of being used. The 2003 defence white paper stated: "the continuing risk from the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and the certainty that a number of ... countries will retain substantial nuclear arsenals, mean that our minimum nuclear deterrent capability ... represented by Trident, is likely to remain a necessary element". Churchill summed up the matter when he said: "Once you take the position of not being able in any circumstances to defend your rights against aggression, there is no end to the demands that will be made nor to the humiliations that must be accepted." What should our policy be? Phil Gallie referred to the Cuban missile crisis, when the world came closer to nuclear war than at any other time. President John F Kennedy hit the nail on the head when he said: "we prefer world law in the age of self-determination, to world war in the age of mass extermination" and that "if a beachhead of co-operation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavour, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved." It follows that, in all possible circumstances, we should avoid wars, through the involvement of the United Nations, which Kennedy called "the protector of the small and the weak and a safety valve for the strong". However, I challenge those who wish to give up our nuclear weapons unilaterally with an unanswerable question: who would follow our example? I will end with a comment by Dean Inge, who told his congregation that it is no use for sheep to pass resolutions about vegetarianism when there are wolves about that like mutton. He was right because, for evil to succeed, it is necessary only for the good man to do nothing. I submit that the renewal of Trident is extremely regrettable but essential. |