One key fact that came into the public domain into the general election via the leaking of classified documents was that well before the actual invasion Tony Blair had reached a private agreement with George Bush to invade Iraq.
At the same time of Blair was publicly denying that there were any plans for an invasion. Deception and subterfuge on this scale is all part and parcel of bourgeois politics and should hardly come as a surprise to anyone on the left.
It would appear though that Blair has also privately agreed to upgrade Britain's nuclear weapons, principally an upgrading of the Trident missile system, which is likely to cost over £10 billion. The official government line though is that any nuclear weapons upgrade remains "under consideration".
The recent front page article in the Independent on May 2
(Right) The Aldermaston marches
built the base of the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament revealed secret government plans for the development of a new generation of nuclear missiles. The reasons for silence are self evident.
Blair and his new Labour government are currently too weak politically to fight two internal domestic battles against the anti war movement - namely the legitimacy of the invasion and occupation of Iraq on the one hand and nuclear rearmament on the other.
If this was true before the general election, it is even more true now, considering that Blair has come out of it considerably weakened politically.
The evidence, albeit circumstantial, of the decision to go for an upgrade of nuclear weapons has been around for some time.
in 2002 the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) published a plan to develop its facilities at Aldermaston. At the time an AWE spokesperson told the Guardian that with these new facilities it would be possible to design and produce mini nuclear weapons.
Since then the Ministry of Defence has applied for planning permission to West Berkshire District Council to build the new facilities at Aldermaston. These were initially withdrawn due to a legal challenge: but the application was resubmitted and is still in process though it is not being opposed by the Council.
Just over two decades ago CND rebuilt itself as a mass movement against the Thatcher government on the basis of the decision to upgrade Britain's nuclear weapons by adopting the Trident missile system.
At the time Margaret Thatcher was allied to the US administration under Ronald Reagan who was conducting a
war drive WKILMARNOC against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union. Today in place of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan we have Tony Blair and George W. Bush.
And in place of the evil Soviet empire we have the Muslim world who have been cast as the scapegoat for all the world's ills.
Now as then it is the responsibility of the left to build a movement to oppose the imperialist warmongering.
We may have failed to prevent British nuclear rearmament in the 1980s. But today any mass movement in Britain against nuclear rearmament and for unilateral nuclear disarmament may have tar greater potential given the already existing antiwar sentiment which exists and which it could build on. • Further Information Aldermaston Women's Peace Camp(aign) www.aldermaston.net Block the Builders www.blockthebuilders.org.uk Trident Ploughshares www.tridentploughshares.org (nuclear) power The Observer on May 8 revealed that secret proposals for a new wave of building nuclear power stations have been discussed, with papers prepared for incoming ministers.
The document, drawn up by civil servants at the Department of Energy, Productivity and Industry, presses ministers to take a swift decision to avert a steep drop in the supply of nuclear power output as obsolescent power stations reach the end of their working lives, with all but three of the 12 currently active due to close by 2020.
The government is also being lobbied by the Nuclear Industry Association to press ahead with the construction of ten new nuclear plants: the underlying claim is that despite the unresolved problems of disposing of their highly-toxic waste and spent fuel, nuclear plants are the "clean", "green" option since they do not emit carbon dioxide.
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denied the right to express their sexuality.
Nobody needs to tell me that there is homophobia, sexism and transphobia 'out there' in the real world of our different communities. It goes on day in day out everywhere. We need to be ready and able to tackle it whenever it rears its head.
We also need to break from In my view, that is a matter for each individual; for the wider ummah, my view is that LGBTQ Muslims are clearly among the mustad'afun filard-that is, they are among those individuals and groups mentioned in the Qur'an who, for no reason of their own, are pushed to the edges of society and live in oppression. Muslims have a duty to