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Reflections: Past and Present

In the past, the Church has given considerable thought and reflection to the question of Britain's nuclear capability most notably in the early 1980s when the Government first decided in favour of Trident.

The Church and The Bomb, a report commissioned by the then Board for Social Responsibility, was debated in February 1983 amidst wide publicity, in view of its recommendation for the UK unilaterally to renounce its deterrent. The recommendation was criticised by Archbishop Runcie and rejected by the Synod. Instead the Synod passed an amended motion that said it was not the task of the Church to determine the country’s defence strategy, but rather to give a moral lead to the nation by asking those moral and ethical questions that needed to be addressed before a decision was taken.

The Synod did however recognise that it is the duty of the Government and her allies to maintain adequate forces to guard against nuclear blackmail and to deter nuclear and non-nuclear aggression. These forces, it suggested, should be “unmistakenly defensive” since even a small-scale first use of nuclear weapons could never be morally justified in view of the high risk that this would lead to full-scale nuclear warfare.

The Synod therefore pressed all countries publicly to foreswear the first use of nuclear weapons in any form (a cornerstone of NATO’s then strategy, given the overwhelming Soviet conventional superiority). It called on the Government to take steps in conjunction with her allies to reduce progressively NATO’s dependence on nuclear weapons and to decrease nuclear arsenals throughout the world. 

On the eve of the end of the Cold War, the Synod again debated the issue. The focus of the debate in November 1988 was a report published by a Working Party of the Board for Social Responsibility, Peacemaking in a Nuclear Age. The motion passed by the Synod welcomed the more helpful relationship between East and West and urged the Government to take initiatives necessary to achieve major reductions in nuclear and conventional armaments, including working for agreement between the nuclear nations on a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Following the 2003 Iraq War the House of Bishops set up a Working Party to consider the issue of international security. The Working Party’s reflections on what peace and security means in a post 9/11 world was published in September 2005 with a report titled, Countering Terrorism: Power: Violence and Democracy Post 9/11. Although the report did not specifically address the question of the UK’s nuclear capability it did consider the deteriorating relationship between Iran and the wider international community.

In its concluding section the 2003 report noted: “The debate on nuclear weapons needs to be conducted with much greater honesty and consistency.  If certain countries retain their nuclear weapons on the basis of the uncertainty and potentially violent volatility of international relations, on what basis are the same weapons denied to other states? The non-nuclear weapon states need to be presented with rather more convincing arguments and incentives than they have been up to now as to why it might be in their best, long-term interests not to go nuclear.”

As part of its task of enabling churches and Christians to participate in the debate regarding the future of Trident, the Mission and Public Affairs Division has worked with its ecumenical colleagues to produce a briefing paper setting out the case both for and against Trident. This briefing paper, which is available on the CTBI’s website (www.ctbi.org.uk), was released in June 2006. A number of churches subsequently came out in opposition to renewing or replacing Trident.