Liberal Democrats must 'follow the logic' on Trident, says CND

Ahead of an anti-Trident protest outside the Liberal Democrat Conference on 14 September, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has welcomed Danny Alexander’s description of the Trident nuclear weapon system as "the UK’s last, unreformed bastion of Cold War thinking."

Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, the Liberal Democrat Minister stated said "there are credible alternatives [to Trident] that don’t compromise UK security or our close cooperation with the US, but do allow us to move on from the Cold War."

CND’s General Secretary, Kate Hudson, said "It is time that the cobwebs of Cold War dogma were swept out of defence thinking in the UK.The Liberal Democrats are unique in the three big Westminster parties in their clear-sighted appraisal of the archaic and irrelevant nature of Trident. But they appear to have blinkered themselves when it comes to the only sensible conclusion: follow the logic and scrap Trident.

"Danny Alexander is right to say that challenging Trident replacement is not a ‘threat’ to the special relationship between the US and UK. And as the recent vote on Syria in the House of Commons shows, this relationship is not, and cannot be, built on joint wars and cooperation over weapons of mass destruction."

CND and Scottish CND will be joined by Liberal Democrat members in a protest outside the party’s conference in Glasgow on Saturday, calling on delegates to support the anti-Trident amendment to the Defence Policy Paper.

[Ekk/4]