Assuming that Jeremy Corbyn wants to make it Labour policy to scrap Trident, the UK’s nuclear weapons system, it’s a surprise that he initially appointed shadow Foreign and Defence Secretaries – Hilary Benn and Maria Eagle – who support its retention. But that’s the least of his problems. The greater insoluble is that there are thousands of people, union members all, whose jobs depend on the decision to renew Trident. Just as Corbyn was rearranging the names on his front bench, the GMB fired a missile that was supposedly aimed at an SNP MP named Brendan O’Hara, but whose real target was obviously Corbyn. O’Hara had called for the work on a successor to the Trident fleet to be abandoned. Gary Smith, head of the GMB in Scotland, retorted: “Thousands of Scottish jobs are dependent on the successor programme… These elected politicians agitating to sack our members are no longer bothering to promise pie-in-the-sky alternative jobs for workers who are vital to our national security. It makes no sense to abandon our longstanding overall defence strategy unilaterally for solely political reasons. GMB Scotland will not play politics on this and will stand up for our defence workers and their communities right across the UK.”
Independent 4th Jan 2016 read more »