If it wasn’t so serious it would make you laugh out loud. Kew archives have today released papers from 1980 giving a further insight into Margaret Thatcher’s government and its workings.
First off an agreement between our dear Prime Minister, her Defence Secretary and her Cabinet Secretary to stall in the face of the decision of the defence select committee to hold an enquiry into strategic nuclear weapons policy. The reason? To give them time to announce to the House that they had already decided to replace Polaris with Trident. Read more from today’s Guardian article.
They felt it important to keep the goodwill of the select committee pending that announcement. Let’s hope the current members of the defence select committee are made of sterner stuff. We’re told that the decision to replace that generation of Trident has been deferred but what exactly is going on behind the scenes at Aldermaston? Will this be another instance where, like the aircraft carrier, we find we have committed so much that we can't afford to pull out when the day for the decision comes along?
PS Then scroll down to the next item. As a supporter of London Greenpeace I’m rather pleased we came up on the radar; shame they didn’t get what we’re trying to achieve.
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