Lord Murray, former Lord Advocate, has called on the Calman Commission established by the UK Government to review devolution, to examine ways of bringing under Scottish control the weapons of mass destruction stored here (in Argyll). In doing this, Lord Murray has lent his support to ongoing calls for such action from trade unionists, religious leaders and anti-nuclear campaigners.

The former Lord Advocate argues that the use of such weapons is illegal and that the very possession of them may contravene international law. He recommends that their control should be incorporated into Scotland’s constitutional arrangements.

As we have reported before, around two hundred thermo-nuclear warheads are stored at Coulport on the Rosneath peninsula, in the Royal Navy Armaments depot there. Up to forty-eight of these are taken to sea from Faslane on the Gare Loch, eight miles away, in one of the four Trident nuclear submarines operating out of there under the Clyde’s reliable cloud cover.

The Calman Commission was established by Gordon Brown in December 2007 following a request from former Leader of the Holyrood Labour MSPs, Wendy Alexander and with the support of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives but not of the Scottish Government.

Submissions already made to the Commission on the subject of nuclear weapons include those from trade union, Unison; the Church of Scotland; and the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Unison wants to see control over nuclear weapons in Scotland pass to the Scottish Government. It notes the majority votes of both Scottish MPs at Westminster and MSPs at Holyrood against the replacement of Trident. It suggests that these votes indicate that this is the view of the Scottish people and that devolved controls would enable such views to guide action.

The Church of Scotland points out that Scottish public opinion on nuclear weapons and on the replacement of Trident is very different from that of the UK as a whole. It suggests that the Commission might explore ways in which the views and wishes of different parts of the UK might be reflected in some new structure.

The Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament points out, through co-ordinator John Ainslie, that a change of one line of a Scotland Act clause reserving control of nuclear weapons to Westminster might be enough ‘to give the Scottish Parliament the power to prohibit their deployment in Scotland’. Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Roman Catholic Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh has supported the Scottish CND submission.

With Couport and Faslane – and weapons storage silos in Glen Douglas – all in Argyll, there is considerable local interest in this matter.

The Commission is to publish its first report before the end of this year with its final report to come in 2009.