Bairns not Bombs - Seriously?

The SNP government’s aversion to arms is unsustainable post Ukraine

The Scottish government is the only actively unilateralist administration left in Europe. Other governments, like Ireland and Norway, oppose nuclear weapons. But the SNP is the only administration seeking actively to remove nukes already on its soil, which is what unilateral disarmament means.

This week, following Keir Starmer’s promise to enlarge and enhance Britain’s nuclear weapons on the Clyde, John Swinney has reaffirmed his opposition to them. “Bairns not Bombs” is the trite slogan favoured by Scottish nationalists.

Defence is not a responsibility of the Scottish government. But the pacifist SNP seems determined to making life as difficult as possible for the UK government as it seeks to rearm and is even opposing investment in conventional defence. I think it is time for all of us to realise that the old order is rapidly changing.

Like many Scots of my generation, I grew up in an intellectual climate in which militarism, arms manufacturing, and nuclear deterrence were anathema. From the Greenham Common women’s peace camps to the “Bairns not Bombs” placards of the Scottish independence movement, a knee-jerk pacifism was the industry standard. Yet the idea that a country can exist in a dangerous world without credible means of defence is clearly fantasy.

What were we thinking? The answer was that we weren’t: popular culture did the thinking for us.

“How many years must the cannonballs fly,” sang Bob Dylan in Blowin’ in the Wind, the definitive anthem of the 1960s, “before they are forever banned?” The folk singer Donovan’s Universal Soldier was no longer a hero who had defeated fascism in World War Two, but a victim, manipulated by governments and sacrificed on the altar of imperialism.

This sentimental aversion to conflict still lingers, like the ghost of CND marches past, in the Scottish Government, even as the geopolitical weather has turned. Europe is rearming. Sweden and Finland have joined NATO. Even Germany, still burdened by Nazi war guilt, is rearming faster than at any time since the 1930s. But the unilateralist Scottish National Party, which has governed Scotland now for nearly two decades, has yet to acknowledge the vibe shift. While Labour and the Tories alike compete to look toughest on defence, the SNP still speaks the language of disarmament, as if the Peace Dividend were still a thing.

Trident remains an anachronistic red line in the SNP’s independence prospectus, even as the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, promises to enlarge and refit Britain’s nuclear arsenal on the Clyde. “Nuclear weapons,” said the First Minister, John Swinney, this week reaffirming his Government’s pledge to remove them, “have not managed to stop the conflict we are wrestling with in Ukraine.”

Yet the Scottish Government retains a prejudice even against conventional defence. Swinney has just vetoed funding for a Glasgow-based project developing advanced marine welding skills on the grounds they can be used for building submarines. The SNP has refused to allow Scottish Enterprise to award £2.5 million in financial support to the Rolls-Royce-backed project, despite warnings that this might scupper it.

“The difference between us and the UK government,” said the SNP minister Mairi Gougeon piously, “is that when we have principles, we stick to them.” I’m sure Vladimir Putin would approve of her moral righteousness.

The Scottish Government likes to see itself as simply enacting, in a political space, the ethical investment practices of large corporations. The ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) protocols that direct trillions of dollars of global investment often treat arms manufacturing as morally equivalent to tobacco or fossil fuels. Defence companies are typically excluded from ethical portfolios, as if providing a nation with the capacity to defend itself were inherently immoral.

Yet we are clearly at the end of the progressive long wave that began in the late 1950s with Aldermaston Marches and pacifist folk songs. Political parties like the SNP did raise legitimate questions about the political dominance of the military-industrial complex. The left was often justified in exposing Western hypocrisy about nuclear proliferation and arms control. But if history teaches us anything, it is that moral absolutism is rarely a sound basis for statecraft.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 didn’t just shatter illusions in Kyiv and Brussels; it began to unravel the give-peace-a-chance consensus that had dominated Western liberal thought for over half a century. The universal soldier is no longer just “a pawn in their game”, but once again a patriot fighting fascistic aggression in Ukraine. With countries like Iran on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons, those like the SNP who still pretend we can build a world without them must realise that they would be leaving their people without protection.

“Bairns not Bombs” is not a choice anymore of it ever was. As the “cannonballs fly” again in Europe, the SNP’s simplistic slogans of pacifism have never sounded so naïve. The only actively unilateralist government in Europe seems unable to grasp that, to paraphrase Dylan, the times they are a-changin’. Again.