FOR many years the annual conference of the STUC has passed resolutions against Trident.

This week the Scottish TUC and Scottish CND will launch a new report entitled Trident and Jobs — The Case for a Scottish Defence Diversification Agency.

The report sets Trident in the context of today’s world — a weapon designed for the cold war and irrelevant to the multipolar world of today.

Trident, the report argues, does not act as a deterrent because no-one believes that it can be used.

Nor are nuclear weapons relevant to the real security issues faced by the people of England, Wales or Scotland — terrorism, cyber-attack and natural disaster.

Around 140 countries have indicated they support a global ban on these weapons.

But four of the original five nuclear weapons states, including the US and Britain, are determined to stop that happening.

David Cameron may claim that he favours multilateral rather than unilateral nuclear disarmament, but the truth is that his government is consistently blocking all international bodies’ efforts to have these weapons outlawed.

The report goes on to describe how spending on Trident squeezes the rest of the defence budget, destroying jobs in conventional defence manufacturing and resulting in huge cuts in armed forces personnel.

In the next decade, Trident will consume up to 40 per cent of Britain’s defence equipment budget.

At precisely the time when annual spending on Trident will rise from around £2 billion a year to £4bn a year, “non-protected” budgets, including defence, are scheduled for a 30 per cent reduction.

In terms of jobs, the report states that less than 600 civilian jobs would be lost by the cancellation of Trident — a far cry from the fantasy figures of 12,000 jobs claimed by some Trident supporters.

But for workers in the defence industry, it’s not enough to talk in general terms about how the money for Trident could create far more jobs other areas of the economy.

We have been doing that for years. We need to answer the concerns of the 600 workers at Faslane who would lose their jobs now. How will they find other and equivalent jobs?

Perhaps the most important part of the report, therefore, is the call for the Scottish government to establish a Scottish Defence Diversification Agency.

Such a body would take a lead in producing and implementing a plan to provide alternative and equivalent jobs in event of partial or complete closure of defence establishment such as Faslane.

The agency must be adequately funded and staffed and engage with trade unions and the workforce to produce proposals which have the confidence of the workers.

Experience of the Base Realignment and Closure programme in the US, which guided the closure of hundreds of cold war military installations, shows that with enough time and resources, plenty of alternative jobs can be created.

It is one thing to pass resolutions opposing nuclear weapons in principle.

But Trident has always been a difficult issue for unions like Unite, GMB and PCS which organise significant numbers of defence workers.

This report can help provide the confidence for key defence workers that opposing Trident need not mean economic suicide for them and their families.

•  Alan Mackinnon is secretary of Scottish CND.