Peer apologises after comparing nuclear base to Auschwitz
A former leader of Plaid Cymru apologises after linking jobs at the Auschwitz death camp with those at the Trident nuclear base.
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Lord Wigley was commenting on reports, denied by the government, that Trident nuclear submarines could be relocated from Scotland to Wales.
Speaking the day after the world marked 70 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, he said his party would be “tremendously opposed” to shifting the base from Faslane naval base to Pembrokeshire.
Asked whether the move would have some positive benefits, such as bringing jobs to the area, Lord Wigley said: “Look, this week we have been remembering what happened in Germany before the war.
“No doubt there were many jobs provided in Auschwitz and places like that, but that didn’t justify their existence and neither does nuclear weapons justify having them in Pembrokeshire.”
Trident deaths
Quizzed about why he was comparing a Trident base to a death camp, he replied: “The number of people that will be killed by Trident will be infinitely more.”
He denied he was making a moral comparison between being employed on a Trident base and working at a Nazi death camp, saying: “No, the point I was making was this, that you have to consider the nature of the work and not just that a job exists.”
Plaid’s election co-ordinator later apologised for his remarks, saying: “I am certainly sorry if my remarks were open to any misinterpretation and I apologise for any offence that has been caused.
“The point I was trying to make was that you can’t have jobs at any cost and I reiterate that.”
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But former Welsh secretary David Jones condemned his “crass” remarks, and said that while he was right to say sorry, “the apology is a bit mealy-mouthed”.
He added: “Nothing that ever happens in this country could ever be as appalling as what the Nazis did.”
On Tuesday, 300 survivors returned the the camp in Poland, where around 1.1 million people, a million of them Jews, were killed between 1940 and 1945.
Scotland’s SNP government opposes the renewal of Trident, but the UK government has dismissed reports that the Ministry of Defence is making contingency plans for the weapons to be relocated from Scotland to Wales.