nuclear-news

The true cost of the nuclear weapons industry

The CND responds to Starmer’s growing militarism with a ‘Tour of the bases’ protest. TONY STAUNTON reports from Plymouth 

 Morning Star 6th June 2025 https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/true-cost-nuclear-weapons-industry

 NE of the most outrageous elements of Starmer’s offensive Strategic Defence Review is the suggestion of a “Defence Dividend.” Our demand for “Welfare not Warfare” is acutely illustrated by the reality of life for working-class communities surrounding military nuclear sites.

Plymouth Devonport, with the Trident nuclear submarine base situated at its heart, is one of the poorest electoral wards in southern England.

The Devonport nuclear naval base is managed by Babcock International plc, the arms manufacturer with an annual turnover of £4.5 billion, profits mostly contrived out of taxpayers’ hefty payments.

That the nuclear weapons are in the hands of private corporations for profit surely undermines the concept of national security — Babcock is the main benefactor of the local freeport, deregulating its secret nuclear enterprise.

Plymouth’s Establishment constantly reminds the population that the nuclear facility is responsible for 10 per cent of the city’s economy. This alone is a fabrication. The highly paid nuclear engineers and scientists at the base live outside the infrastructure-poor city and take their incomes with them.

It’s been like this for 40 years. There has been no “Plymouth dividend.” One in three children in Devonport and neighbouring wards live in poverty, surely impossible were the dockyard to really be a “jobs magnet.”

In fact, a total of 5,500 people work there, half as naval service personnel with little local connection. The wages of many of the rest are nothing to shout about.

Meanwhile Devonport’s local index of social deprivation according to the Public Health Service is 44, twice the annual average. Nuclear weaponry does not produce social wealth and prosperity.

Investment in arms industries take the money away from social infrastructure. Plymouth has the huge regional hospital, Derriford, now in a financial meltdown, making cuts to the 11,000 staff and standards of service.

The hospital is reliant upon the addition of medical staff from the Royal Navy, offering a false-propaganda device for Babcock as the city’s benefactor.

Plymouth University is in financial crisis, with over 5,000 staff easily competing with the dockyard as an income generator for the city (students live in the city centre), now making 200 redundancies.

Babcock funds nuclear research and training at the Uni and FE College, making them beholden, uncritical, and pro-nuclear across the curriculum.

Plymouth’s Labour Council, combating potential bankruptcy and absurd debt levels, has always supported the nuclear dockyard, championing the military nuclear cause, the status of nuclear weaponry, and the nationalism it projects.

The council has half the workforce of 20 years ago. Our schools are crumbling, all “academised’ with the continuous shedding of staff.

Meanwhile, there have been at least 10 serious accidents at the dockyard including spills of radioactive waste in the past 30 years, Babcock was fined over £600,000 in 2022 for breaches in health and safety regulations (H&S). Human-made toxic radioactive elements are identifiable in our sea, rivers, soil and air.

Plymouth is the decommissioning centre for nuclear vessels, 15 rotting nuclear submarines bobbing at anchor and costing £30 million a year to “keep safe,” their nuclear cores needing constant cooling and the rusting hulks routinely patched to prevent leaks.

The subs are the subject of stalled decommissioning, the authorities not sure what to do with these hulks of radioactive waste. Were the UK’s nuclear weapons to be cancelled tomorrow, there is at least 100 years of work here, just to decommission and clean up the contamination.

Yet now they’re going to build more. Plymouth Devonport nuclear dockyard is receiving £1 billion to refit the dry docks in order to service the Dreadnought super-submarines carrying nuclear warheads up to 300 times the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The contract will suck-up 600 construction workers much needed for house building and home-retrofitting, the city is littered with half-finished buildings lost to skill shortages.

We all can list what £1 billion could do for the city if invested in social infrastructure and climate jobs.

Plymouth, our coastline dramatic and beautiful, could long have been a centre for construction of wind and wave electricity generators, our geography predisposed, but those industries are not nearly as profitable as the tax-funded nuclear blank-cheque cash cow.

Nuclear weapons are not just illegal weapons of mass destruction, they represent the impoverishment of working-class lives.

Join us on Saturday to send a powerful message to the government to shift its disastrous direction and invest in Peace not Nukes! March and rally. Meet at 12 noon at the Guildhall Square, Armada Way, Plymouth and from 2pm at Devonport MoD Naval Base, Camels Head.

Tony Staunton is CND vice-chair and Plymouth resident.

June 7, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, UK