It seems to me that most British voters are mad about bombs and that any Labour politician who is serious about political power must share their passion.
The most successful Labour politician was Clement Attlee, and he and a tight clique of his colleagues determined that Britain would have the atom bomb. Neither the electorate nor the Labour Party, in or out of Parliament, nor the Cabinet were told of the decision before it was put into effect. His Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, siad he wanted an atom bomb “with a Bloody Great Union Jack on it.” Power stations, supposedly for the peaceful exploitation of nuclear energy were built primarily as part of the bomb project.
One of the proofs given for Jeremy Corbyn’s unfitness for high office is that he wants to scrap nuclear weapons. Another is that he opposes going to war against the principles of the United Nations Charter. British conscript soldiers were sent to Australia and left in trenches within a few hundred yards of Ground Zero when a Hiroshima type bomb was exploded. The British Government had first wanted to conduct nuclear tests in the Scottish Highlands. Perhaps the grouse-shooting and deer-stalking gentry put the Caip Bais on that idea.
But it might yet be revived. I’ve just heard that Boris Johnson is to be Foreign Secretary. Maybe the Highlanders are all doomed and the rest of us must panic?
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