SCOTTISH Labour will debate Trident at their party conference in the Autumn.
New leader Kezia Dugdale said it was important for Scottish Labour to make space to debate the issue. She made the announcement after her deputy Alex Rowley told The Herald on Saturday that although Trident was a “military issue” there were “serious question marks over whether it is the best way to defend the country”.
Rowley continued: “On such a massive issue, there should be debate across the party, the country, and a referendum. I have not seen the case made as to why we would renew but the most striking thing is a complete lack of debate.”
Speaking on a visit to a Lloyds Bank call centre in Glasgow, Dugdale said: “What Alex and I both support is a more democratic Scottish Labour Party. That means not being afraid of having the type of political debate that the country wants to see, and that means at our party conference in October creating the space for party members to decide and debate the big ideas, the big issues, of the day.
“The big focus of that has got to be the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections. There’s big questions that we have to grapple with as a party and resolve, so we’ll be creating the space for party members to do that and Alex, like myself, is just pointing out that one of the big issues we will need to debate in the future is things like Trident and Scotland’s place in the world.
“We’ll never shy away from having democratic debates at party conference.”
The party conference takes place in Perth at the end of October. It will be the party’s first mass gathering since they were heavily defeated in May’s General Election.
She added: “Alex and I have both said that we think it’s the right thing to do for the Scottish Labour Party to have policy and to talk about all areas that affect Scottish life.
“I don’t think your average voter in the street stops and thinks whether something is devolved or reserved before they have a view on it, so why should the Scottish Labour Party?”
Last week Dugdale said she was a multilateralist rather than a unilateralist. The best way to get rid of nuclear weapons, she said, was to work with other countries.
Jeremy Corbyn, the left-wing candidate most likely to become leader of the UK Labour Party next month, is a long-time unilateralist. Corbyn has set out plans to immediately scrap the renewal of Trident and retrain existing nuclear defence workers. His rivals Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall all back the renewal of Trident.
SNP MSP Bill Kidd, co-president of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, said: “Labour are all over the place on this issue, with Kezia Dugdale making it clear just last week she is not personally against Trident renewal.
“We very much welcome her deputy Alex Rowley’s rethink on Trident – he joins a coalition of voices from across politics, civic Scotland and military experts calling on the UK government to abandon its plan to waste £100 billion on replacing these morally-obscene nuclear weapons.
“While the Labour Party continue to tear themselves apart with in-fighting on this and other issues, the SNP is crystal clear that we remain completely and utterly opposed to these abhorrent weapons of mass destruction.”
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