24th June 1974 - a day that will live in infamy

The Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), was signed by President John F. Kennedy in Moscow on August 5, 1963. The LTBT prohibited testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, underwater and in outer space.So thery went underground in Nevada.

On 3rd July 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT) and ABM Treaty Protocols were signed. TTBT limited U.S. and USSR nuclear tests to 150 kilotons. The ABM Treaty Protocol reduces the number of allowable U.S. and Soviet ABM sites from two to one (the U.S. dismantled its single site at Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1976).

Only days earlier on June 24th 1974 (just in time to beat the Treaty, so solemnly signed) Wilson's Labour Government admitted that an underground nuclear test had been undertaken in Nevada in the previous weeks (the actual date is still unknown) . The Minister of Defence, pipe smoking, smug, Barnsley MP Roy Mason explained that the tests had been arranged under a previous Conservative Government.

He said he could understand why people in the Labour Party were opposed to the tests and emphasized there was no party commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons and said the government had not broken a manifesto pledge or international agreement by exploding the device.

"If we had purposefully taken the decision to abandon the test we would have been prematurely taking the decision to abandon our strategic deterrent - that's not on," he said.

The BBC (God Bless them) still have archive video you can see of Frank Mason and Frank Allaun debate the issue - wonderful vignette performance by Day as the neophyte Paxman.

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves." Ed Morrow.

I await with interest the sheeple of the Parliamentary Labour Party who will raise their voices against the continuation of the US owned nuclear weapons and their submarine platforms.