Dear All
One of the policies I have written on and campaigned on hard is the SNP’s policy on NATO.
Finally, the SNP is said to becoming round to the George Laird view, unsurprisingly and not for the first time, I am way ahead of the curve in the SNP by being visionary.
Now, the SNP leadership is considering proposing a change to the party's policy on NATO and it’s about time.
When it comes to major serious issues the SNP suffers blowback and is out of step with mainstream public thinking.
The party has been opposed to membership of the military alliance for more than 30 years, 30 years of getting it wrong.
The next meeting of the SNP National Council is expected to discuss whether an independent Scotland should remain in NATO, there is no discussion; it is a self evident truth.
Another problem to campaign on; is the SNP maintaining its commitment to ditching nuclear weapons.
That is more crap that has got to go.
NATO is more than just a military alliance; it is the cornerstone of western ideology, the world’s policemen, a check on aggressive militarisation of the Russian and Chinese influence.
Is it successful?
Undoubtedly so, the ‘war’ has switched to financial warfare and territories being conquered not by bullet and bomb but by Russian and Chinese government using investment. This is a new tool of warfare which is startling successful, rather than blowing up a hospital or school, build it.
China has been particularly successful in this regard in Africa.
Professor James Mitchell of Strathclyde University said his research suggested any proposal to remain part of Nato would get a fair hearing from the SNP membership.
He said:
"The majority of members would support Scottish membership of NATO, but it has to be said that it is a bare majority and the strength of feeling on this is not great. In other words very few of the SNP's members feel that this is a matter of great urgency and great importance".
Which again highlights my proposal for an educated SNP membership to have a world view; a George Laird view.
Former SNP advisor Ewan Crawford said:
“If this in any way compromised the SNP's anti-nuclear stance it wouldn't even be countenanced”.
The SNP stance to nuclear weapons is old thinking, from a time when the party was unelectable and not relevant to Scots or Scotland.
Modern politics demands that the SNP goes Pro nuclear, not just in support of weapons but also power stations.
Nationalist MSP Jamie Hepburn said NATO was a destabilising factor in the West's relationship with Russia.
If it wasn’t for nuclear weapons people like Hepburn would be speaking Russian.
In a bizarre rant he says that the continued use of nuclear weapons serves no useful purpose in the modern world.
Out of touch!
Two government ministers Angela Constance and Aileen Campbell were among those who supported the motion.
And they are also part of problem.
The SNP provost of Stirling, Fergus Wood has written a letter to a national newspaper earlier this week in which he said he supported an independent Scotland retaining its NATO membership.
Ewan Crawford says the SNP staunch anti-nuclear stance is "part of the SNP's DNA".
DNA can be extracted.
He told BBC Scotland:
"Even although clearly this is a discussion that the leadership is having, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if this in any way compromised the SNP's anti-nuclear stance it wouldn't even be countenanced. The other point of course is that although the SNP is hostile to nuclear weapons, it wants to be international, it wants to join things. Therefore if they can join international communities, if they can engage in international cooperation without doing anything to overturn the SNP's anti-nuclear stance, then clearly that's something they are at the very least going to consider".
There are many hurdles to independence that the SNP need to cross and fixing its out dated and outmoded policies is one of them.
The SNP currently advocates Scotland becoming a member of Partnership for Peace, like Sweden, Austria, Finland and Ireland, which allows bilateral cooperation between Nato and non-Nato countries.
Bollocks!
Partnership for Peace, what a load of wank that is!
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
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