Peace Group says views misrepresented

Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group has expressed surprise and extreme disappointment at the way in which its views were misrepresented in statements made by Simon Danczuk to Rochdale Online.*

Pat Sanchez from the Peace Group has written to the prospective parliamentary candidate for Rochdale saying: "I was very surprised to read the comments attributed to you in reports of our discussions on Wednesday night (13 February 2008). I fear that you may have misunderstood and subsequently misreported some of our views. This is, perhaps, inevitable in the midst of a lively and ongoing debate, but, on behalf of the Peace Group, I would obviously like to put the record straight.

1. Terrorism:  in a discussion where we had said that nuclear weapons could be no solution to terrorism we pointed out that terrorism is not a new phenomenon in the UK.   For years we lived with the threat of IRA terrorist attacks.  Nuclear weapons were as useless then as they are now as an answer to the threat of extremist terrorist attacks.  In our opinion, succeeding generations of terrorist attacks are largely a response to misguided foreign policy decisions on the part of the UK and the US governments over many decades.  Meanwhile, I am very clear that no one at the meeting ever said "a Labour Government is solely responsible for the terrorist threat in this country" and I think that you are confusing a rather different point. This was, that any terrorist threat in the world has been greatly increased by the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq in 2003 and by events subsequent to it.

2.  Iran: You are confusing nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Firstly your linking of Iran with nuclear weapons.  We pointed out that the US had recently declared that Iran had no nuclear weapons nor any preparations for acquiring them.

We oppose the possession of nuclear weapons anywhere by anyone.  We campaign principally against the UK/US ones because we have to clean our own backyard before we can challenge - without hypocrisy - other nuclear weapon armed states.  We work for the implementation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty which our country signed and is required to implement.  This treaty recognised that some states already possessed nuclear weapons and in return for a commitment on their part to take genuine steps towards nuclear disarmament they offered negative security guarantees to non-nuclear weapon states, ie they promised not to use their nuclear weapons against them.  In addition, they agreed that nuclear power would be made available to non-nuclear weapon states.  Therefore, although we are totally committed to the elimination of nuclear power, we have to recognise that legally Iran is entitled to develop it.  (By the same rule the UK is legally obliged to take genuine steps towards nuclear disarmament, instead of which we are aiding the proliferation of nuclear weapons.  If you would like further information on this we should be most happy to provide it to you.)

We also consider that it is hypocritical of the government to criticise Iran for wanting to develop nuclear power when it plans to build several more nuclear power stations in Britain. We further pointed out that one of the many reasons why we should immediately decommission the Trident nuclear weapons system is that unless we do, other countries will justify development of their own nuclear weapons on the grounds that the UK possesses them.

I hope that this has helped you to understand our actual views on these matters. I am sorry that you could so misunderstand our policies as to have misrepresented them so seriously on the internet.  We look forward to seeing a corrected version of your statement."

A spokesperson for Simon Danczuk said that he had emailed Ms Sanchez personally to confirm the accuracy of Mr Danczuk's statement based on "thorough notes taken at the meeting" and had received no response to challenge this.
 
“I’m disappointed that Rochdale and Littleborough Peace Group are continuing to be antagonistic,” he said. “Some of their members do not want any genuine debate; they just want to try and score points in the media. We have made every effort to try and open a debate with this group and yet it’s becoming very clear that they have their own agenda.  At several points in our meeting we asked this group why they do not lobby their own MP, Paul Rowen, and they refused to answer this.
 
“I find it very strange that they continue to aggressively challenge Simon about nuclear power when their own MP has come out in support of this and they say nothing about that. They also tried to challenge us about wind farms – which we support – and yet they say nothing to Paul Rowen who is against wind farms in Rochdale.
 
“Simon has made it very clear that he’s happy to be challenged and is keen to debate a wide range of issues with community groups. But since he has no power in Parliament I would appreciate it if these groups would look to their MP for some leadership and challenge him as well.”

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* See final paragraph of:

• www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/News/news.asp?ID=5890