Defending Defences

The UK government has just voted to renew Trident, the UK's nuclear deterrent, which comprises of a fleet of "constantly deployed" submarines off the coast of Scotland.

Opinion, as with most things the UK government does, is divided.

The cost (over £200billion...) is the thing that most people who are against Trident are angry about - especially when the UK has suffered under several years of "austerity" which has seen salaries and services slashed, threats to privatise the NHS (National Health Service), government support for zero-hours contracts (which pay per hour worked, provide NO minimum guaranteed hours, and often include an "exclusivity" clause, meaning a person employed on a zero-hours contract can't work another job alongside the zero-hours one), and money being taken away for spurious reasons from the unemployed and disabled, along with rampant harassment, bullying, and humiliation of such individuals by the very people who are paid (quite well) to help them develop the skills - including self-confidence - to manage sustained employment.

The cost is often countered by the idea that Trident supports employment in the area - estimates of jobs "dependent on" Trident remaining in place vary from the hundreds to the thousands - a  brief Google search for "employment related to Trident" includes figures ranging from 520 jobs to 13,000!

Undoubtedly, defence is a big industry, and, especially in predominantly working-class Scotland, industry and employment are necessary. However... when other industries are closed down, such as the British steel industry, the general attitude, particularly from government, is that affected individuals can "re-skill in alternative sectors."

The issue - with British steel, with jobs lost if Trident is ever scrapped - is that, to date, the UK has not had a government that is prepared to ACTIVELY SUPPORT re-skilling, to genuinely invest in helping people - often the "wrong side of 40", who have spent their working life in a particular industry - to gain the skills and experience needed to access the "next generation" of jobs; hell, there often isn't the interest in providing this level of support to disadvantaged young people trying to get into the labour market for the first time, who may not have had the opportunity to develop the required skills as part of their formal education, which is overwhelmingly focused on passing exams and ticking boxes, rather than relevant hard and soft skillset development, and readying young people for adult responsibilities, including employment.

The question, in the end, shouldn't come down to cost, or jobs: it should come down to relevance. To the threats currently facing the UK, and Trident's ability to deal with them.

So far, the biggest threat - to any country - has come from home-grown terrorists acting alone, often with very simple, but effective, kill methods.

It is likely that, in the next 40 years, cyber-terrorism will increase as a viable threat, computers and internet access being typically easier to get hold of than nuclear weapons, cheaper, and capable of causing much more wide-ranging devastation.

Trident can't answer either of those threats - it's not meant to.  Our largest single defence expense is designed and funded to NOT counter what look like becoming the two biggest threats we'll face.

But we can't. either, ignore the people who will be left unemployed if Trident is ever scrapped - as it eventually will be.  This government - the one the UK has now, in 2016 - needs to actively invest in sustainable employment in working-class areas, and in the up-skilling and re-skilling of workers in "at risk of obsolecence" industries, as well as the education, and readying  for adult responsibilities of those currently in school - from primary school onwards. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) needs to drastically improve its services for, and attitude to, the unemployed.

Trident is a Catch-22, not because of the presumed "status" we're told it confers on the UK, and thus the potential "loss" of that status should it be abandoned, but because the UK can't abandon Trident without further investment in alternative employment, and the necessary skills training across all age groups and social demographics that alternative employment will require, yet such investment will never take place while there is the option of Trident - because the latter is far more effective as an "ego boost" to the current political class, and also far more tangible an asset on the cost sheet of the UK budget: you look at £200billion pounds spent on a submarine fleet, broken down into the manufacture of the vessels, the equipping of them, maintenance, staffing, etc, etc, and you can nod and smile and understand. "Employment and employability" are vague terms, terms which cause problems when people try and understand the amount of money spent on them.

So much needs to change before calls to scrap Trident have a hope of being heeded - we need to stop thinking we can run a country like a business. We need to educate our politicians and media in how to explain, and our populace in how to understand, the costs and benefits of intangible assets. And, most of all, we need to find our pride in people, and their success and quality of life, rather than in brute power, and how much of it we have.