Former Plaid Cymru leader apologises for comparing Trident to Auschwitz
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Version 0 of 1. Plaid Cymru’s former leader Dafydd Wigley has apologised over comments he made comparing the Trident nuclear base to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Speaking about reports that Trident would be moved to Wales from the Clyde in Scotland, Plaid Cymru’s honorary chair told the BBC’s World at One: “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.” When asked if he thought the comparison was a fair one, Lord Wigley said: “The number of people that will be killed by Trident will be infinitely more.” Wigley was speaking a day after Holocaust memorial day marked the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp. The peer issued a swift apology after complaints about the comments. “I am certainly sorry if my remarks were open to any misinterpretation and I apologise for any offence that has been caused,” he said. “The point I was trying to make was that you can’t have jobs at any cost and I reiterate that.” David Jones, the former secretary of state for Wales, hit out at what he called “stupid remarks” and after Wigley’s apology said the comments were not “open to misinterpretation”, but “crass and bound to cause offence”. The secretary of state for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, condemned the comments as “offensive” and said that “if you trivialise … you increase the risk that something like that could happen again”. The Scottish Daily Mail on Wednesday reported that the Ministry of Defence was secretly planning to move nuclear-armed submarines from Scotland to Wales. The MoD denied the reports, saying it was fully committed to keeping Trident in the Clyde: “We can be very clear the MoD is therefore not planning to move the nuclear deterrent from HM Naval Base Clyde to Wales, or anywhere else.” Like the Scottish National party, Plaid Cymru wants the Trident missile programme to be scrapped. |