British Labour minister Griffiths resigns from Blair government on Trident

After British Labour MP Devine, another resignation from Tony Blair’s government in protest against Blair’s nuclear weapons policies.

This time, Minister Nigel Griffiths:

Example to others

(Monday 12 March 2007)

NIGEL Griffiths’s decision to resign from his ministerial post rather than toe the line on Trident replacement is an example to others in the government and on the back benches.

A number of former ministers, once out of office, have pleaded for understanding of their plight in having voted to send 700,000 Iraqis to their deaths as the price for their remaining in office.

Had they followed the lead of Robin Cook, they might have tipped the political balance and prevented Tony Blair’s slavish tailing behind the White House.

Their refusal to support the Prime Minister’s brazen flouting of international law could even have precipitated his ousting from Downing Street.

But a lethal combination of timidity and self-serving indifference to the fate of others allowed Mr Blair to press ahead with his imperialist adventure on the basis of doctored evidence.

And he still refuses to take responsibility for any of the current chaos that afflicts Iraq.

Every minister and backbencher must think long and hard about the danger of repeating such a dereliction of duty.

Voting to replace Trident doesn’t simply pour billions of pounds of public money down the drain – £25 billion as an initial cost, rising, with maintenance expenses over a 20-year period, to three times that.

It also, once again, demonstrates contempt for international law.

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) has the status of international law.

The government is fond of drawing attention to the legal obligation on non-nuclear powers not to seek to acquire nuclear weapons, but it attempts to obfuscate the duties incumbent on the five designated nuclear states.

See also here.

And here.

Tories and Trident: here.