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•We have in aet the darned thines in there somehow. THE invasion of Grenada has posed very clearly the key question of who will control the new American missiles in Britain. Reagan's decision to invade a Commonwealth country in defiance of the wishes of the British government suggests that the British government of the day would have no control at all over the missiles. There is only one finger on the button _ the Pentagon's. British governments no longer have the power to decide whether Britain goes to war oi not. A MORI poll in the Sunday Times shows that 73% distrust American assurances about joint control.

In his 1981 article 'Britain as a Colony"* Tony Benn analysed this situation.

It is in the area of defence policy that American dominance has become most pronounced. In analysing this process, I am basing my argument upon my personal experience as a minister who has had many dealings with the United States administration.

It began during the war, when Washington and London were the twin pillars of the Western Alliance. Britain desperately needed American support financial and industrial as well as military - and we got it but on strict terms laid down by the USA.

Lend/Lease sustained us, but at a cost of selling our overseas assets. The post-war American loan was granted on condition that the UK adopted a policy of convertibility which collapsed as mission in Whiteball Ere sen and she Ilegracioc STATED VI JUST Se Sran Di SO F7 DEĆ E the end of SevE i t restarted on the basis of cocoplete American spervisam of Bricain's security arafarents. Through these framework of our intelligence systems and to have access to the framework of our intelligence systems and to have access to what they produce; in return they provide some information from their own world-wide intelligence network.

In the field of atomic research we are both dependent upon their skills and obliged to seek their consent for our own developments. On one occasion I was obliged to appear before the United States Atomic Energy Commission to explain, and in effect to secure their consent for, changes in the structure of the British Atomic Energy Authority for which I was responsible. On another occasion it was necessary to clear a technical development with the US authorities.

This close relationship certainly assisted the build-up of Britain's own nuclear weapons. It also alienated the French and triggered off de Gaulle's first veto of Britain's application to join the EEC. But its most important effect was to give the USA a commanding position in the deployment of its own nuclear weapons in Britain.

Though I have been the minister responsible for the Atomic (aE= Research Centre at Aldermaston, and have served in four Cabinets and on occasions as a member of the key Overseas Policy and Defence Committee, as well as other, smaller committees dealing with nuclear policy, I was never told, and still do not know, the basis upon which US nuclear weapons sited in the UK can be fired.

The general assumption is that guidelines have been drawn up that constitute a working agreement governing their use and provide for consultation between president and prime minister, if that is practical. No Cabinet in which I have servec has ever been told the true position and I can only suppose that the key US/UK arrangements are in effect only known to the president and the prime minister,.

Decision

The essence of national sovereignty and independence lies in the capacity for a nation and its parliament to decide to go to war or to make peace. I believe that the sovereign right has long been ceded in law through a secret agreement with the USA; and in practice, by the very fact that no limitation on the use of US nuclear weapons based in Britain would be enforceable. Yet every student learning about the British Constitution is told how Parliament won from a reluctant Crown the right of control over the 'purse and the sword' . That is to say it demanded, and obtained, the right to an annual vote of all moneys required by the government; and the right to renew annually or not to renew the military discipline laws which gave our forces their legitiToday, both these democratic safeguards have gone. The expenditure on nuclear weapons and the programmes for which they are designed are concealed from Cabinets as well as Parliament; and we have on our soil the armed forces of a foreign power, armed with weapons of mass destruction that can be fired without Parliament's approval.

Those are, in effect, colonial arrangements under which, in a crucial area of government, we are a part of an American worldwide military system. They will soon be supplemented by a USinspired Rapid Deployment armament movement. Benn points to the need for 'tolerance' and 'unity' within a broad movement. But why no comment on the manifestly intolerant actions of the CND leadership -in particular, their attitudes on Force within which British troops will be engaged in operations never explicitly authorised by our elected representatives.

One final comment needs to be made here. The 1980 Labour Party conference resolved that all US nuclear bases in the UK shall be closed and that Britain shall adopt a non-nuclear defence strategy.

If that policy were to be incorporated in the manifesto upon which the next Labour government is elected and formal representations were made to Washington to withdraw those be important, but the answer real unity on the policies and the campaign.

This can only be built through a serious attempt to explain both the victories and the setbacks that CND has experienced over

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