U.K. Labour chooses conventional defence

Press, 5 October 1984, Page 6

U.K. Labour chooses conventional defence

NZPA-Reuter Blackpool

The British Labour Party has voted overwhelmingly to scrap Britain’s nuclear arms and require the removal of all American nuclear weapons, including cruise missiles, from British soil.

The party’s annual conference in Brighton, northwest England, endorsed yesterday a statement supported by its leader, Mr Neil Kinnock, committing a future Labour Government to effective non-nuclear defence within N.A.T.O. The former Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, and a former Labour Defence Minister, Denis Healey, argued in vain against the non-nuclear policy. Mr Callaghan said that nobody could know the consequences of dismissing the Americans without consultation.

Mr Healey said that conventional defence in Europe would be impossible if the Americans were driven to remove their troops from Europe.

The conference rejected a more radical resolution that would have meant closure of all United States bases in Britain, nuclear and conventional.

It was a Labour Government under Clement Attlee that took the original decision after World War H to build a British nuclear bomb. But in recent years the party has come increasingly to represent the views of nuclear disarmers.

Britain’s nuclear weapons are based on four ageing Polaris submarines. The Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher wants to replace them with the American Trident system.

Labour fought a General Election last year with a non-nuclear defence policy and lost badly to Mrs Thatcher.

Right-wing newspapers said yesterday that Labour had again opted for a policy which would lose votes.

An opinion poll published in “The Guardian” daily newspaper yesterday showed the Conservatives

slightly ahead of-Labour, 38 per cent support against 36 per cent. Labour had been leading slightly for several months, having recovered some of its popularity since the election.

• The party evicted a top newspaper editor from its conference in the latest round of a running battle with the British press. Delegates voted to withdraw the credentials of Sir Larry Lamb, who edits the conservative “Daily Express,” after he was accused of conniving in the issue of a writ against the miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill. Conference delegates have accused the national press, in particular the “Daily Express” and the mass-circulation “The Sun,” of helping Labour to lose the last election and of highlighting divisions in the party. Sir Larry denied the accusations, telling reporters that he was “mildly annoyed but not unduly disturbed” by his expulsion.