Nuclear success

The points raised by Robert Veitch (Letters, 28 April), in his analysis of the need for a British nuclear deterrent, were trenchant and incontestable.

He could have added that the weapons themselves, though detestable, have proved their worth and provided Europe with an unprecedented era of peace, freedom and no world wars.

In that sense they have been eminently successful in doing what they were intended to do – deter aggressors and maintain peace.

It is ironic that the SNP complains endlessly about the cost, and the churches and others about the morality, of the weapons.

It is the existence of our nuclear deterrent that prevented this country and western Europe being overrun by the Soviet Union during the post-world war, Cold War era.

If that had happened those politicians and churchmen now complaining of the weapons that gave them the right to moan and pontificate would be making their protests in the gulags.

That is if they had not been instantly eliminated.

ALEXANDER McKAY

New Cut Rigg

Edinburgh