“Scrapping Trident is an indivisible part of Labour’s forward march. The heated debate in Labour’s ranks is not reflected in public opinion. Talk to your next door neighbour, your mates in the pub or club, chat to that person sitting on the bus next to you. You’ll find little appetite for nuclear weapons.
Opinion has changed. Nuclear disarmament is mainstream. The problem is one of ‘operationalising’ those sentiments, putting pressure on politicians to understand and honour them.”
So says Carol Turner, longstanding Labour party member and CND activist, author of Corbyn and Trident: Labour’s continuing controversy. Highly topical, this book looks at the challenges facing Labour’s anti-Trident leader Jeremy Corbyn as he steers his party through a difficult defence policy debate where the question of nuclear weapons has again raised its controversial head.
Turner situates Corbyn’s dilemmas in the context of Labour’s longstanding and continuing controversy over Britain’s nuclear weapons possession – from the days of the first atmospheric tests, through Polaris and Chevaline to Trident and its replacement. The consistent theme is the struggle within the party – sometimes successful – to secure an anti-nuclear position.
“Drawing on interviews with big labour movement players of the last decades, Carol Turner has produced a fascinating account of the turbulent debates within the Labour Party over this most crucial of questions – and the impact of a CND vice-president in Labour’s top spot.”
Kate Hudson, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
