Labour's nuclear future THE RECeNt Labour Party annual conference voted by a large majority to phase out nuclear power within 20 years. A proposal, supported by the National Union of Mineworkers, to close down all nuclear power stations within the term of a labour government was passed, but failed by 24,000 votes to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to make it Labour Party policy for fighting
The Labour leadership's proposal for a 20 year phased shutdown of nuclear power in Britain needs to be seriously discussed by all socialists. The proposal to close down all nuclear power stations within the term of a Labour government would have been clearer commitment to end nuclear power in Britain, although to implement the proposal would require planning of industrial resources on a scale similar to that of a socialist planned economy. Even the phased shut down over 20 years, it it is seriously tended tor implementation by the Labour leadership, and let's assume that it is tor a moment, would represent a major attack on both capitalist energy policy and the nuclear policy of the NATO alliance.
The phased shutdown over 20 cludes a commitment not to fuel up the
Torness and Heysham advanced gas cooled reactor and to use the new Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) at Sellafield (Windscale) for waste disposal from decommissioned nuclear power stations. The resources necessary to implement this proposal will require major planning, research and mobilisation of the trade unions involved in the energy industry.
If the Labour leadership is serious in its commitment to phase out nuclear power it must establish now a working party, to include representatives of all energy industry workers, to start the detailed planning required and to ensure that workers in the nuclear industry will be fully employed, with their agreement on policy, wages and working conditions, in the decomissioning operations and in the development of alternative energy resources. Only on the basis of an agreed and published plan for phasing out nuclear power can the future Labour government be kept to its policy commit-
A future Labour government will also have to face the military establishment as the civil nuclear power programme in Britain is the route by which weapons-grade uranium and plutonium is made for nuclear weapons, and also sold to the American military to make up the shortfall in America's massive nuclear weapons programme. There will be tremendous pressure, if the planned phase out of nuclear power does, in fact, see the light of day, tor the weapons programme to be entirely handed over to the military. This policy therefore presents Labour with a contradiction as there is as yet no commitment to cease nuclear weapon production, but without transferring weapons-grade plutonium and uranium production to the military, no nuclear weapons production can
The labour movement must demand that no sections of the Sellafield plant or existing nuclear power plants are transferred military control in order to continue nuclear weapon production.
Crucially, the campaign to close nuclear power stations must win the support of the workers in the industry who are in the main in the pro-nuclear unions — GMBATU, the AEU and the EETPU. To achieve this, the Labour leadership must campaign in the wider trade union movement for its anti-nuclear policy. In this way popular support can be mobilised for a non-nuclear energy policy and for unilateral disarmament. 13
How Red are the