Labour and nuclear weapons: a turbulent ideological history

"We've got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs," Labour's then foreign secretary Ernest Bevin reportedly said in the 1940s, and "we've got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it".

That "thing" was the atomic bomb, but since being acquired by the UK, nuclear weapons have been a "divisive issue" within Labour, said the BBC. 

Anti-nuke 'fixture'

Michael Foot, who became Labour leader in 1980, was a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and "a fixture at anti-nuclear demonstrations", said socialist magazine Tribune. 

When Neil Kinnock took over as leader in 1983, the party's policy, which he supported, was unilateral nuclear disarmament and the removal of all US nuclear weapons and bases from British soil. But this policy was only supported by a minority of the British public, and Labour lost the 1987 general election.

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By 1989, Kinnock had convinced the party to drop these policies, but "many" on the Labour left remain "vehemently opposed" to that decision, said the BBC.

Previously 'unthinkable'

As a young MP, Tony Blair was a member of CND, but he was never strongly in favour of unilateral disarmament, and as party leader, he was on board with the party's pro-nuclear policy.

Blair announced in 2006 that Britain would maintain its nuclear deterrent, because "we cannot be sure that a major nuclear threat to our vital interests will not emerge over the longer term".

In his memoir "A Journey", Blair said that he "hesitated" over his decision to retain and replace the Trident nuclear weapons system, however. It is "frankly inconceivable we would use our nuclear deterrent alone, without the US", he wrote. But it would have been a "big step to put that beyond your capability as a country".

He added that before deciding, he "had a perfectly good and sensible discussion about it" with then chancellor Gordon Brown, who was "similarly torn". After Brown succeeded Blair in No. 10, he stuck with the party's policy. But, in a speech in 2009, Brown said that "the power of international cooperation" could enable nations to achieve the "previously unthinkable" aim of global nuclear disarmament, said Rusi.

A 'nuclear-free world'

Like Foot and Blair, Jeremy Corbyn was also a CND member, rising up to be vice-president of the campaign group before he became party leader in 2015. Corbyn told BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme that if he became prime minister, he would instruct the UK's defence chiefs never to use the Trident nuclear weapons system.

"I am opposed to the use of nuclear weapons," he said. "I am opposed to the holding of nuclear weapons. I want to see a nuclear-free world. I believe it is possible.”

Corbyn added that while there were "five declared nuclear weapon states in the world", 187 countries "don't feel the need" to have nuclear weapons to protect their security. "Why should those five need it themselves?" he asked, noting that the Cold War was over.

'Unshakeable'

Corbyn's successor, Keir Starmer, has moved the party back to a staunchly pro-nuclear policy. In an article in the Daily Mail last week, he said that his commitment to the UK's nuclear weapons was "unshakeable" and "absolute". Labour is now "utterly committed to our nation's defence", he wrote, and would make sure "our nuclear deterrent is properly equipped and armed to face the challenges of the decades to come".

Asked by ITV News if he would be willing to push the nuclear button as PM if Britain were under attack, Starmer said that "deterrence only works if there is a preparedness to use it".