Submitted to Daily Telegraph – 25 September 2024

Revisiting nuclear war horror films, including the BBC's 1984 drama 'Threads' (online review feature, September 24), should not be divorced from their political context. The arguments concerning our Trident strategic deterrent, as well as NATO's cruise missiles at two British bases, did not dispute the destructiveness of a nuclear holocaust – only the best way of avoiding one.

In 1984, the Labour Party was still advocating one-sided nuclear disarmament by the UK, despite Mrs Thatcher's landslide victory over Michael Foot the previous year and the successful deployment of cruise missiles at RAF Greenham Common soon afterwards. It took another huge Labour defeat in 1987 before Neil Kinnock reluctantly accepted that nuclear unilateralism was electorally disastrous.

Whether or not BBC dramatists admit it, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which removed both Soviet and US missiles of this type, resulted from the failure of campaigns to frighten us into throwing away our deterrent forces unconditionally. A framed letter of support from Neil Kinnock to the director of 'Threads', the day after transmission in 1984, shows that the dramatists were firmly on the wrong side of history.

Sir JULIAN LEWIS MP

Chairman, Defence Committee, 2015-19

House of Commons 

London SW1