Party groups oppose policy change proposal

Published on 08/08/2012 01:40

THE SNP leadership’s move to abandon the party’s anti-Nato stance has attracted opposition from a number of groups and individuals within the party.

The Scotsman previously revealed that John Duffy, head of the 500-member SNP trade union group, was campaigning against the policy change on the grounds that it would make it harder to pursue plans to scrap the Trident submarine fleet at Faslane in an independent Scotland.

Mr Duffy previously said: “Nato is a nuclear umbrella, and if we look at non-nuclear states in the alliance, they can end up having nuclear weapons on their soil.”

The SNP’s youth wing has also come out against the leadership on Nato, with the group claiming that backing for the defence pact would be at odds with the party’s opposition to nuclear weapons.

SNP Youth national convenor David Linden, also convenor of the Young Scots For Independence (YSI) movement, said in an email to members that we “cannot afford to get it wrong and we most certainly cannot begin to waver in our opposition to nuclear”.

The proposal to overhaul the Nato policy has also provoked strong reaction within the SNP at grassroots level, with the Cumbernauld and Kilsyth constituency association among those opposing a change.

The association, backs the stance of its SNP MSP Jamie Hepburn who previously argued Nato served no useful purpose in the modern world.